TRIK involves market parties and municipalities to develop and scale up streamlined processes and customized services for in-depth renovation of private homes and small homeowners' associations, offering, implementing, financing and guaranteeing commercially and socially feasible integrated sustainability projects for these customers, with customized solutions and on a large scale. Locality mobilises stakeholders, co-develops financial solutions and supports learning.
The ClimaGen project -Climate-resilient reGeneration and renaturing for, by and with vulnerable neighbourhoods- is a European initiative funded by the Horizon Europe programme, involving nine cities: Belgrade, Gdansk, Tartu, Turin, Trondheim, Cluj-Napoca, Eindhoven, Gernika and Thessaloniki. Through its mission-driven and co-creation approach, these 9 European cities, will demonstrate how climate neutrality and resilience can be achieved not only through technical interventions but by renaturing, regenerating, and empowering communities. ClimaGen operates under the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities and Adaptation to Climate Change Missions, and aligns with the values of the New European Bauhaus (NEB), promoting transformation that is inclusive, beautiful, and sustainable.
As a partner in the project, Locality contributes to the development of practical tools and guidance to support cities in implementing climate-resilient regeneration strategies. This includes the creation of the ClimaGen Guidance Package, which will provide cities and urban stakeholders with tailored methods, real-world use cases, and best practices for advancing sustainable and inclusive urban transitions. By engaging directly with local and regional actors, assessing needs, and validating methodologies through iterative feedback, Locality ensures that its outputs are both evidence-based and action-oriented—bridging the gap between policy ambition and practical implementation.
Horizon Europe CrAFt project wants to develop local collaborative mechanisms in the spirit of New European Bauhaus: not only sustainable but also inclusive and beautiful. With NTNU, Locality organised 9 CrAFt Cities sessions for its community of 70 cities to uncover good practices for urban transformation and shed light on local decision and policy making processes. These experiences have been integrated into the following publications:
Locality is part of a team of four experts from EURAC, Bax & Company and Free University Brussels, which investigates the ins and outs of energy communities for the 120 cities participating in Horizon Europe-funded Smart City Lighthouse projects, with a special focus on which role municipalities can play to endorse energy communities, setting up partnerships, motives and impact realised, and scalability.
The Horizon 2020 Smart City Lighthouse (SCC-01) projects between 2014 and 2022 feature 42 lighthouses that are deep demonstrators of energy-efficient and smart buildings, clean mobility and logistics, and smart use of urban data in advanced IT infrastructures. They could not have been achieved without intensive engagement of and co-creation with citizens, businesses and other stakeholders, without bold city visions and political leadership, without innovative ways of finding finance and business opportunities, without working across domains and experimenting with new processes, roles and organisation chart within city administrations, and without in-depth peer-to-peer learning. Together with 78 ‘Fellow cities’ eager to implement adjusted versions of these demonstrations in their own areas, these 120 cities and their partners are sitting on vast body of knowledge and experiences that is highly relevant for any city administration looking for good examples that help to create climate-neutral and smart cities, including those that: are member of the Covenant of Mayors and want to implement Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs); signed up to Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs); are working on digitalisation to achieve the goals of the Green Deal; are working on climate-neutral city contracts as part of the Mission on Climate-neutral and Smart Cities; and also those that want to achieve their local or national targets in a sound manner. Locality led a team of five experts in 2022 that harvested the main recommendations flowing from the collective intelligence from the 120 cities participating in Smart City Lighthouse projects, exemplified by best and good practices in governance, providing not only inspiration for adjusting these solutions to your own local situation, but also helps to build the tenacity needed for these trajectories, and to consolidate its learnings in an accessible way.
Platform 31 transfers knowledge and experiences on actual topics to local governments. Locality supported the organisation of two roundtable talks with several European cities where experiences and best practices were exchanged in Fall 2022, and helped to synthesize the findings of the sessions in a paper.
The Action Clusters on Sustainable Districts and Built Environments, Integrated Infrastructures and Processes, Sustainable Mobility, Citizen Focus, Business Models and Integrated Planning, Policy and Regulation, are at the heart of this and were coordinated by Locality. They exchanged knowledge, built capacity, and addressed barriers for implementation of climate-neutral, smart solutions, and shaped future projects. Locality was responsible for the support and coordination of Action Cluster work, the promotion of synergies between them, and ensuring Action Clusters’ contribution to matchmaking with investors as coordinated by RdA.
Locality executed this study, in collaboration with Cleantech Scandinavia, for the Dutch Enterprise Agency, Dutch Embassy to Sweden, Innovation Quarter and City of Rotterdam. It assessed the possibilities for scaling up and replicating smart and clean-tech solutions tested solutions in tested in Dutch and Swedish cities and for and for market development for companies. It developed a roadmap for the exchange of knowledge and learning between testbeds, living labs and system demonstrators in Sweden and the Netherlands, which will lead to a better uptake of smart, sustainable solutions and local economic growth.
Locality contributed to the Foresight Study, which supported the newly established Mission Board on Smart and Climate-neutral Cities and was led by AIT. The Foresight Study has investigated specific topics around the feasibility of smart and climate-neutral cities and reflected on how city administrations can be engaged and mobilised. Here, Locality provided in-depth knowledge on delineation of smart city concepts, different contexts and realities of smart city projects across Europe, feasibility and viability of proposed smart and climate-neutral urban solutions, possible pathways and common hurdles in planning and implementation such as siloed governments and collaboration with external parties.
As Initiative Leader in the Smart Cities Marketplace Action Cluster Integrated Planning, Policy and Regulations, Judith Borsboom has led the work on compiling the Smart City Guidance Package, collecting the experiences and best practices of nearly 100 European cities, businesses and research, many of them Horizon2020-funded smart city lighthouse projects as REMOURBAN, TRIANGULUM, SMARTER TOGETHER and RUGGEDISED, but also adjoining networks such as JPI Urban Europe, Global Covenant of Mayors, European Energy Award, and city networks as ICLEI and Eurocities. The team clustered common obstacles and best practices for making cities smarter and more sustainable in a logical way and made them available in a low-threshold, easily accessible document which helps city administrations to develop a proper strategy for integrated planning and implementation of smart city projects, aligned with ISO standards and in an inclusive way, while taking replication into account from the beginning. January 2021, a summary was published entailing more information on securing finance.
