The general aim of FUSILLI is to support the participant pan-European cities (and their peri-urban areas) with the aim to address by a strong cooperation for knowledge sharing and mutual learning the challenges of the food system transformation. The main objective is to build an urban food plan to reach an integrated and safe holistic transition towards healthy, sustainable secure, inclusive, equitable and cost-efficient food systems, through feasible and replicable innovative urban policies leading to deploy improving actions in all stages of the food value chain in line with the four FOOD 2030 policy priorities (Nutrition for sustainable and healthy diets; Climate-smart and environmentally sustainable food systems; Circularity and resource efficient food systems; and Innovation and empowerment of communities). Each city will create or improve the development of a living lab, which is an open innovation ecosystem where concrete actions will be deployed to develop and implement urban food systems policies delivering on the four FOOD 2030 priorities. These living labs have an objective to solve with the implementation of different innovative actions through all the stages of the food chain: production and processing, distribution and logistics, consumption, food loss and waste, and governance. Living lab will involve several stakeholders representing all the actors in the food system at local level: it will have at least a public authority, industry partner (SME or association), consumer association and education. A Knowledge Community will compile the current local initiatives to develop a catalogue of best practises to implement and exchange within the network of the participant living labs as well as other global initiatives.

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.

For proGIreg three front-runner cities (Dortmund (DE); Turin (IT); Zagreb (HR))will create Living Labs in urban areas which face the challenge of post-industrial regeneration. These areas suffer from social and economic disadvantages, inequality and related crime and security problems. They lack quality greenspaces, have a negative impact on human health and wellbeing and are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Going beyond the current state-of-the-art with Green Infrastructure as a one-off state intervention, the proGIreg Living Labs will develop NBS which are citizen owned and co-developed by state, market and civil society stakeholders. Innovation will take place on the technical level through the NBS deployments, on the social level through co-designing, co-creating and co-implementing NBS with local communities and on the economic level through combining NBS with market-ready business models. Four follower cities in Eastern and Southern Europe (Cascais PT, Cluj-Napoca RO, Piraeus GR, Zenica BA) will be co-steering the research process to assure replicability and adaptability to their local context resulting in urban plans for NBS deployment. The NBS to be tested i.a. include: regenerating industrial soils biotic compounds, creating community-based urban agriculture and aquaponics and making renatured river corridors accessible for local residents. Scientific assessment and monitoring results from the Living Labs will be made available on the EU NBS platforms OPPLA and THINKNATURE and will contribute to the European reference framework for NBS. Global impact will be achieved by a training programme for cooperative planning, implementation and management of NBS. It will be provided by partners from the cities, SMEs and universities involved. Training events will be organised in cooperation with the partner ICLEI. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) will be distributed via EdX, the most renowned MOOCs platform worldwide.