The CrAFt project will place the transition to climate neutrality at the heart of urban stakeholders. We will support the Mission Board on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities and the H2020 LC-GD-1-2-2020 one-stop platform in designing and deploying Climate City Contracts, based on experience-based knowledge from CrAFt’s 3 Sandbox Cities (Bologna, Prague and Amsterdam) and 70 Reference Cities engaged in testing and sharing knowledge together with cultural, artistic and creative sectors, property owners and tenants, and citizens and communities. We will deliver a “Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Guidance Package: NEB Edition” featuring at least 160 collaborative local governance models, tools, examples or stories. This will be supported by a NEB-inspired impact model that helps cities to harness the value of inclusiveness, aesthetics and sustainability, as understood within the local contexts of their city, in their transformation towards climate neutrality, in at least 80 local emblematic projects. More than 30 European universities and schools of arts and design will be engaged in supporting their local cities, with more than 100 students engaged in STEAM teams, internships and local capacity building. We will deliver at least 6 policy briefs informing European policy and programmes about the learnings of these activities, and a storytelling campaign to co-create positive and inclusive narratives towards climate-neutral futures, for, with and by citizens and communities. Together, we will create actionable, climate-neutral futures across Europe by supporting the deployment of NEB-inspired collaborative local governance models, leaving no one, and no place, behind.

ClimaGen will demonstrate how Climate-resilient regeneration and renaturing for, by and with vulnerable neighbourhoods, can help cities and regions in their transitions towards net-zero. 5 Demonstration cities (Belgrade, Gdańsk, Tartu, Torino, and Trondheim), will implement 25% increased share of newly created and/or restored public green spaces in each city. 4 Replication Cities (Cluj-Napoca, Eindhoven, Gernika and Thessaloniki) will experiment with shorter-term co-creative measures with the same objectives and methods to plan for future implementation of the measures. All 9 cities will run their own Work Packages in ClimaGen, supported by 5 cross-cutting concepts and 4 transversal WPs: ClimaGreens will nurture integrated renaturing measures that create resilience at several scales, and avoid maladaptation in the journey to climate-neutrality. ClimaLabs will provide local and regional collaborative governance, with arts, culture and youth, entrepreneurship and financing, and organisational resilience in long-term planning strategies. ClimaImpact will generate evidence-based decision support and valuation of co-benefits, in easy-to-understand and, where possible, visualised formats. ClimaValue will offer outreach, capacity building and policy guidance, with strategic advocacy together with sister projects and close collaboration with Missions/NEB communities, while an evidence-based ClimaGen Guidance Package will disseminate results and knowledge to cities. City Dialogues and cross-cutting Sense-Making Sessions will support local implementation and common learning. Together these define impact pathways to knowledge sharing, scaling and replication. The ClimaGen Games will tie these activities together with a portfolio of participatory, gamified, citizen-science-based methods to engage all partners and stakeholders in an inclusive manner, and to use their diversity as a strength.