NEUTRALPATH aims at demonstrating that PCEDs designed and implemented under participative and human-center principles are cost-effective and feasible solutions to contribute significantly to the cities’ transformation towards climate-neutrality, allowing to speed up the process even to reach SCOPE 2 emissions reduction in 2030. Dresden (Germany) and Zaragoza (Spain), with strong experience in urban transformation projects and fully committed to be climate neutral in 2030, will demonstrate 2 PCEDs from the design to the implementation and evaluation stages acting as Lighthouse Cities. Both cities also ambition to act as front-runners of this process creating Climate-Neutral LABs conceived as Innovation Hubs with the aim of fostering faster upscaling and replicability at EU level, making three Fellow Cities (Istanbul[Turkey], Ghent [Belgium] and Vantaa[Finland]) through their own CN-Labs direct participants of the processes and later on main protagonists by means of their own PCED design and implementation. NEUTRALPATH will deliver a strong contribution to meet the EU climate targets establishing a collaboration agreement with the Cities Mission Platform focused on exchanging knowledge and experiences, as well as with the main EU initiatives as H2020 SCC Lighthouse projects and SC Marketplace or Covenant of Mayors.

JUST STREETS is the project proposal from a team of 30 partners from 17 countries, including 12 cities representing more than 4,5m citizens. It aims to transform cities’ car-centered mobility narratives that take for granted that streets are for motorized traffic only, promoting walking, cycling and other active modes of mobility. JUST STREETS will be re-shaping street infrastructure and changing individual mobility behavior in 12 cities, while proactively sharing the generated “how-to-do-it” knowledge with hundreds of cities for rapid replication across Europe. In close collaboration with citizens, policy makers, experts, and interest groups the project will not only develop a new vision of spatial justice where streets become public space for all, but equally important find ways to rapidly implement changes. A strong focus is on displaying how necessary transformations in the face of climate change can (and must) successfully improve social justice, accessibility, inclusivity, and security along the way. Putting marginalized social groups, the most vulnerable mobility users, as well as those citizens at the core of JUST STREETS that have been previously underrepresented in mobility infrastructure decision-making will allow the project to create highly valuable knowhow, critical in creating better, more just, and sustainable cities for all citizens. The unique composition of the JUST STREET consortium is critical in making sure this knowledge is not only created, but subsequently shared with as many urban decision makers as possible from cities across Europe who have the means to initiate transformation in their cities. Top-level research and organizations with vast experience in the fields of mobility, urban planning, climate change, and social transformation are collaborating with the communication and dissemination expert partners who have established channels to reach and interact with tens of thousands urban decision-makers that will shape the future of cities

USAGE (Urban Data Space for Green Deal) aims to provide solutions and mechanisms for making city-level environmental and climate data available to everyone based on FAIR principles. USAGE will support the implementation of the European strategy for data and various European Green Deal priority actions at the level where climate change is mostly felt: cities and towns. USAGE will provide innovative governance mechanisms, consolidated arrangements, AI-based tools and data analytics to share, access and use city-level data from Earth Observation (EO), Internet of Things (IoT), authoritative and crowd sources, leveraging on standards for data and service interoperability. USAGE wants to become a decentralized infrastructure for trustworthy data collection, processing and exchange based on commonly agreed principles, facilitating the combination of heterogeneous data for policy analysis. USAGE will validate its solutions in four diverse pilot areas located in four different countries, focusing also on the reusability of the solutions in other urban areas. The consortium consists of 11 interdisciplinary partners from 5 European countries and, within the 3 years of activities, will also realize a long-term sustainability and growth strategy plan of project solutions.

DISCO will develop and demonstrate - in real-life conditions - a federated European urban freight (UF) data space as one stop shop of data sharing on digital urban logistics solutions and smart tools for ambitious decision making. It will be a continental Ten-T – oriented and distributed real-life ecosystem to prove its value via demonstrated and replicable Use Cases (UCs), build upon innovation drivers to code concrete transformation of urban planning and land use by an open and collaborative UF Data Space with a smart governance model. The DISCO UF Data Space is voluntary based (incentivized), co-created and open framework to achieve a radical transformation and alliance in purpose-oriented data sharing, enabling smart access, fast and resource efficient acquisition, and focused provision, improving knowledge and capacity of city authorities and planners guaranteeing future data availability for dynamic (and predictive) integrated urban logistics planning, synchronizing real-time demand for transport & warehousing with logistics supply, (e.g., as Uber matches the demand for private car transport service with its road drivers’ fleet). DISCO will support European urban logistics players in reducing economic, societal and technical dependence from private digital platforms owned by large global providers, magnifying the scope of a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) converging to data-driven Sustainable Urban Logistics Planning (SULPs), expanding them beyond traditional urban boundaries (e.g., rural areas, towns and suburbs, cities, and urban areas according to World Urbanization Prospects ) and beyond Covid-19, to optimally manage, monitor and dynamically predict city freight flows, changing urban nodes accessibility by properly serving Functional Urban Area - FUA on a larger, mixed-use, and flexible scale , and deliver advanced and well-informed planning and purpose oriented, optimised land use within a TEN-T and global dimension.

Solid urban waste (SUW) is an abundant source for circular products production, but it is generally not exploited. In fact, over 500 kg of municipal waste per capita were generated in the EU in 2020, while only 45% was recycled. The proximity of resources and people, a sufficient scale for effective markets and the ability to shape urban planning and policy are key factors for cities to achieve advancements in this area. REDOL has been conceived to take advantage of this scenario and transform cities into hubs for circularity that implement zero residues strategies while fostering industrial-urban symbiosis (I-US) approaches among local and regional actors. To this end, REDOL will redesign 5 value chains for SUW (packaging, plastics, CDW, textiles, WEEE) ending-up in the production of 12 circular products. Along the value chains a range of new solutions will be implemented for 1) upgrading management technologies to collect, sort and classify SUW, 2) enhancing the processing routes of sorted materials to avoid landfilling and 3) applying cutting-edge digital tools to optimize value chains and interaction among key players. Moreover, REDOL will provide the required organizational procedures, business models and social innovation actions required for the establishment of successful I-US interactions and hubs for circularity at local level. Such an approach will result in the development of guidelines and recommendations for major decision-making bodies and will achieve improved citizens’ perception on SUW as a local resource and on recycled products, thus increasing their participation in separate collection schemes. REDOL will be implemented in Aragon, with Zaragoza in the center of the hub for circularity. This way, REDOL will support its transition towards a zero residues city by 2040. This will imply 144.720 tons SUW/year being re-used, valorized or transformed into secondary raw materials, leveraging economic and GHG emissions savings over 14B€ and 280 ktCO2/year