Urban systems globally experience significant and interlinked societal challenges including pressures on public health and well-being and growing inequalities and social disruption. At the same time, urban systems are particularly vulnerable to impacts of climate change and suffer from degraded or lack of natural ecosystems to help alleviate these impacts. A promising approach to deal with these challenges is to work with nature’s capacity and qualities in a sustainability perspective. Working with nature in urban settings has advantages over other approaches: multi-functionality, multi-benefits and cost-effectiveness. Nature Based Solutions (NBS) are interventions that seek to restore, improve, enhance or conserve natural capital and biodiversity in terms of habitats or ecosystems. Subsequently, these ecosystems provide enhanced multiple ecosystem services that contribute to social and economic benefits, reducing the urban societal challenges. They can help build climate resilience in cities, improve liveability, and in collaboration with other urban priorities contribute to building inclusive communities, closing social equality gaps, while promoting innovative businesses and jobs. The aim of Regreen is to generate evidence for how Nature-based solutions (NBS) underpinned by improved urban governance, and public and private participation can systematically integrate ecosystem services and biodiversity and advocate their benefits and values in urban planning to meet societal challenges including climate change resilience, public health and well-being, and social inclusion. Co-creation with urban planners, citizens and business in urban living labs and educational programs for children ensure long-term sustainability of solutions, and support to business development assist further realization. This to accelerate the crucial transition toward smart, green and healthy cities in Europe and China.

The DREAMS project aims to examine how co-created and user-centric mobility services, mobility and flexible activity hubs can contribute to accessible, sustainable and inclusive 15mC neighbourhoods in urban outskirts in European cities and regions. DREAMS will conduct research in six living labs across Europe: Budapest, Brussels, Munich, Paris, Utrecht and Vienna. DREAMS will firstly provide a comprehensive and comparative analysis of 15mC lifestyles in a variety of low- to mid-density suburban and urban outskirts in the five regions. Secondly, DREAMS will develop and test new business models and governance frameworks for new shared mobility services and flexible activity hubs in low/medium density areas. Thirdly, DREAMS will develop and apply a decision support tool for the co-creation and impact assessment of mobility services, mobility hubs and flexible activity hubs in the DREAMS living labs. Fourthly, DREAMS will examine the mobility, accessibility and wider societal impacts of the mobility services, mobility hubs and flexible activity hubs services. Finally, the last aim is to give policy recommendations on pathways towards creating sustainable and inclusive urban mobility in 15mC neighbourhoods in urban outskirts through the utilisation of co-created and user-centric mobility services, mobility and flexible activity hubs and new governance-business models

Europe’s cities are some of the world’s greatest tourism destinations. The socio-economic impact of tourism is extraordinary and urban tourism, but it brings at the same time a range of negative externalities, including high levels of unsustainable resource consumption and waste production. In comparison with other cities, tourist cities have to face additional challenges related to waste prevention and management due to their geographical and climatic conditions, the seasonality of tourism flow and the specificity of tourism industry and of tourists as waste producers. UrBAN-WASTE will support policy makers in answering these challenges and in developing strategies that aim at reducing the amount of municipal waste production and at further support the re-use, recycle, collection and disposal of waste in tourist cities. In doing so UrBAN-WASTE will adopt and apply the urban metabolism approach to support the switch to a circular model where waste is considered as resource and reintegrated in the urban flow. UrBAN-WASTE will perform a metabolic analysis of the state of art of urban metabolism in 11 pilot cities. In parallel a participatory process involving all the relevant stakeholders will be set up through a mobilization and mutual learning action plan. These inputs will be integrated in the strategies along with a review of the most innovative existing technologies and practices in the field of waste management and prevention. The strategies will then be implemented in the 11 cities and the results will be monitored and disseminated facilitating the transfer and adaptation of the project outcomes in other cases.

CREATE addresses the task Tackling Urban Road Congestion, taking a long-term view of how this can be achieved, especially in cities experiencing rapid growth in car ownership and use. It deals with most of the issues set out in the recent Urban Mobility Package. Objectives: • Rigorously and systematically develop practical definitions of urban road congestion and of network performance, and identify factors influencing conditions in different cities. • Work with Western European (WE) cities that have succeeded in decoupling traffic growth from economic growth, to analyse quantitatively the objective factors which have contributed to this, and the qualitative factors which have enabled a policy evolution from ‘supporting traffic growth’ to ‘encouraging sustainable mobility’. • Develop concrete guidance and provide capacity building for cities in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and the EuroMed region, enabling them to move rapidly to develop a feasible, effective and deliverable Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP). • Anticipating future pressures on city transport systems (congestion and overcrowding), to investigate how new transport technologies might increase transport efficiency, and how non-transport technologies and changes in business and social practices could reduce pressures on transport systems. These objectives will be achieved by: • Analysing congestion and network performance data provided by INRIX and WE cities. • Using detailed household travel data from repeat surveys in WE cities since the 1970s/1980s and complementary data on network, economic and demographic conditions; and documents setting out historical policy development. • Preparing detailed guidance and training for our CEE cities, which will then be delivered to a much larger set of cities. • Working with leading technology providers, businesses and futurists, to explore what options there might be to provide high quality mobility in cities facing increasing population and employment.

SCREEN aims at the definition of a replicable systemic approach towards a transition to Circular Economy in EU regions within the context of the Smart Specialization Strategy, through the identification and implementation of operational synergies between R&I investments from H2020 and the European Structural and Investment Funds, thus contributing to novel future eco-innovative and horizontal business models across different value chains. The concept of the action is to develop a EU reference framework for establish operational synergies between Horizon 2020 and the European Structural and Investment Funds related to Circular Economy by: a) Sustaining the regional actors’ participation at H2020 The mechanism of the “vouchers”, already adopted in the past, will be reinforced an harmonized, in order to ensure common rules in EU regions and therefore encouraging to composition of international Consortia applying for circular economy projects related to the regional Smart Specialisation. b) Encouraging the entrepreneurial initiatives based on H2020 project’s results The participating Regions will agree about a specific rule in their Structural Funds giving an advantage for those initiatives targeted to the exploitation of the H2020 project results with a circular economy approach. c) Investigating the possibility of maximizing the H2020 investment through a “recovery”(fully or partial) of well ranked unfinanced proposals dealing with circular economy Even if there is a clear presence of several bureaucratic and operational barriers, a possible solution could have an impressive multiplier effect on the H2020 results. The approach of the action is to leverage on growing industry sectors in EU regions to act as a driver also for the less performing ones, through a circular economy approach, and to support the emergence of new actors in the regional economies leading to new or redesigned value chains.