CapaCITIES 2.0 is designed as a support action for national and regional authorities to advance their governance structures for providing dedicated support for cities to achieve the EU Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission (EU Cities Mission) - answering to the Call HORIZON-MISS-2024-CIT-02-01. As a central initiative to foster and strengthen national narratives for the EU Cities Mission, it will coordinate actions across climate-neutral initiatives for cities in Europe, align and speed up efforts towards the goals of the Mission. CapaCITIES 2.0 will further shape a European environment conducive to urban climate neutrality transitions for national, regional and local authorities. It will initiate and strengthen national change processes to establish and mature national networks and platforms as well as multi-level governance in the entire EU, building on the experience of the CapaCITIES that already started setting-up national platforms in 15 EU countries. It provides dedicated support for public authorities to put enabling conditions and measures for cities in place to achieve the EU Cities Mission. Thereby, it contributes to reach (1) Increased preparedness and capacity of national, regional and local authorities in EU Member States and countries associated to Horizon Europe to engage in cities’ transition towards climate neutrality; (2) Improved ability to effectively address country-specific challenges and barriers for cities to achieve climate neutrality related to current regulatory frameworks, funding and financing, and governance structures and promotion of best-practices through transnational exchanges and sharing of experience and (3) Enhanced synergies with R&I national/international communities, relevant initiatives, and partnerships such as the ‘Driving Urban Transitions to a Sustainable Future’ Horizon Europe Partnership and the NetZeroCities – the EU Mission Platform(NZC) for the implementation of the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission.

In NEB-STAR, 16 partners will join forces to make the transition to climate-neutral cities inclusive, beautiful and sustainable - for, by and with all stakeholders. Stavanger as the first-generation NEB Lighthouse will provide experimentation, demonstration, insight and guidance on NEB principles in urban transitions in cooperation with twinning cities Prague and Utrecht, and peers in Europe and the Nordics. The project will demonstrate how Territorial Transformation Plans can be operationalised with NEB principles to accelerate the journey towards climate neutrality. In NEB-STAR, NEB principles will be used to address four emblematic challenges: (1) co-creating a new sense of aesthetics for climate-neutral cities and communities that captures places' unique qualities, history and potential, and generates a sense of belonging, pride and ownership; (2) Reconnecting with nature to boost resilience and a sense of community, giving new life to the spaces in between buildings through food and nature; (3) Creating temporary meeting spaces in urban transition areas, that embrace diversity and strengthen the identity and uniqueness of people and places that need it most; (4) Co-creating co-benefits for the neighbourhood and city through multi-functional use of spaces and infrastructures. The project will deliver a Detailed Roadmap for full-scale implementation of Stavanger’s Territorial Transformation Plan, supported by an extensive Co-Creation Process, a Portfolio of Policy Strategies and Tools, Financial and Partnership Models. The plans will be co-created with local stakeholders and partners, tested in Demonstrators in the three cities, jointly evaluated with stakeholders and experts, and exploited and replicated in cooperation with Nordic and European NEB and Missions communities. The NEB-STAR Impact Model will capture the social, cultural, financial, governance and technical impact on the built environment, and the stakeholders that affect / are affected by them.

The proposal aims to promote the interest and investment of small-and-medium-sized enterprises of Tourism Sector (SMEs) in relation to utilizing design and transforming design activity into tradable deliverables that manifest exploitation. To achieve this, three organizations that facing this issue with different expertise are joining forces to create the most suitable and sustainable supporting instrument. TOURISM ID project adopts a co-creation focused on breaking down the above barriers by evolving all the relevant stakeholders to the process for the creation of the dedicated Support Instrument for Innovation In tourism industry and gathering insights from the smes in order to reframe the barriers.