SMILE CITY provides realistic circular systemic solutions to support the evolution towards a carbon-neutral, environmentally sustainable, toxic-free, circular economy by 2050. The contribution to C02 reduction works on two levels: - an intensive use of recycled materials in replacement of virgin ones, without decreasing the performance of final products; - the use of such products and applications to increase sustainable mobility. The project aims to integrate innovative systemic solutions in up to 100 km of cycling paths and implement 20 e-bike charging stations, developed using different types of recycled urban waste: construction materials, EoL tyres and EoL batteries from Electric Vehicles. The foreseen innovations include the creation of e-bike charging stations made of recycled concrete precast elements and PV panels equally produced with recycled materials, the installation of recycled rubber moulded products for urban furniture such as rubber bollard, lane dividers, and rubberized asphalt, which contributes both to increase sustainability and safety. SMILE CITY will thus assemble the technological state of the art of the different value chains involved to implement circular systemic solutions in 7 different EU and non-EU countries, backing the transition towards a regenerative, inclusive and circular economy at local and regional scale across Europe and therefore boosting interregional and cross-border cooperation. In addition, the project will also increase resource efficiency, reinforcing Europe’s strategic autonomy and reduce the negative environmental footprint related to current recycling techniques of the considered urban waste value chains. By supporting awareness raising and information spreading, SMILE CITY will engage both citizens and industrial leaders in the green transition towards climate-neutral solutions for Circular Cities, bolstering the market uptake of circular solutions through regional and local actions. Two partners are CCRI members.

CLAiR-City will apportion air pollution emissions and concentrations, carbon footprints and health outcomes by city citizens’ behaviour and day-to-day activities in order to make these challenges relevant to how people chose to live, behave and interact within their city environment. Through an innovative engagement and quantification toolkit, we will stimulate the public engagement necessary to allow citizens to define a range of future city scenarios for reducing their emissions to be used for supporting and informing the development of bespoke city policy packages out to 2050. Using six pilot cities/regions (Amsterdam, NL; Bristol, UK; Aveiro, PT; Liguria, IT; Ljubljana, SI; and Sosnowiec, PO), CLAiR-City will source apportion current emissions/concentrations and carbon emissions not only by technology but by citizens’ activities, behavior and practices. CLAiR-City will explore and evaluate current local, national and international policy and governance structures to better understand the immediate policy horizon and how that may impact on citizens and their city’s future. Then, working with the new methods of source apportionment to combine both baseline citizen and policy evidence, CLAiR-City will use innovative engagement methods such as Games, an App and Citizen Days to inform and empower citizens to understand the current challenges and then subsequently define their own visions of their city’s future based on how their want to live out to 2050. The impact of these citizen-led future city scenarios will analysed, to develop city specific policy packages in which the clean-air, low-carbon, healthy future, as democratically defined by the city citizens, is described and quantified. The results of the CLAiR-City process will be evaluated to provide policy lessons at city, national and EU levels. Additionally, the toolkit structure will be developed for all EU cities with more than 50,000 citizens establishing a basis to roll out the CLAiR-City process across Europe.