Railway stations hold a unique position in the urban landscape: they not only act as complex nodes of mobility and transport, but also as public places that can be seen as integral elements of the city. Consequently, stations have a decisive impact on their urban surroundings as places of everyday life, affecting all stakeholders including citizens and the environment. The central ambition of RAIL4CITIES is to develop a new operational, readily available and highly applicable model of stations (SCP model), combined with a common European methodology and tool for its effective implementation. The project takes inter-dependent impediments (profit-orientated business model, complex web of agents and stakeholders, policy gaps) into account and provides decision makers with the tools to transform stations into promoters of sustainable cities. The model will be applied to 5 living labs addressing the stations’ transformation into hubs of green and active mobility (FR), energy hubs (IT), towards Transit Oriented Development (DE), into a socially-inclusive services hub with using Nature Based Solutions (PL) and services hubs enabling the 15-minute city and circular economy (BE). This will be enhanced by 3 case-studies from the high-speed rail line from Lisbon to Oporto (PT) to study the resilience of infrastructures for both adaptation of spaces to new future uses, and adaptation to climate-change issues and health crises. With 14 partners from 7 European countries, further supported by 9 institutions through letters of support, the RAIL4CITIES consortium and ecosystem integrates the relevant stakeholders from universities, industry, government and the public, and is therefore in the position to design, evaluate and publish a EU-wide model for transforming existing stations or designing new ones into socio-technical systems operating as city’s greening engines for the surrounding environment, and new urban hubs aggregating multiple services for the users and its citizens

STARGATE is the response of a consortium of 22 entities led by Brussels Airport committing to create green airports as multimodal hubs for sustainable and smart mobility. STARGATE follows an ambitious strategy to impactfully contribute to the strengthening of the competitiveness of the European air transport ecosystem. The mission of the STARGATE consortium is to develop, test and deploy a set of innovative solutions making the airport ecosystem significantly more sustainable. Our vision is to build with STARGATE a benchmark and be source of inspiration to other airports in Europe and the world. STARGATE is grounded on five main pillars. The first one is the application of a Digital Twin ecosystem for airports and extensive development to model the Lighthouse Airport, its transport flows, airport process, energy production and supply and emissions management. The second pillar is the focus on multimodal, sustainable and smart mobility through an innovative mobility governance practice to create an intermodal hub, and dedi-cated tools to enhance digitalisation and decarbonisation of transport for both people and goods. Third, the opti-misation of terminal operations, including the deployment of a Terminal Command Centre, a novel approach to circular resource management and the minimisation of resources and waste generated. The fourth pillar tackles the investigation in the energy field and production and use of SAF. Finally, the fifth pillar covers cross-cutting aspects such as minimisation of noise and emissions, assessing non-technological framework conditions and promoting new multi-actor governance arrangements. In STARGATE all actions undertaken are widespread as much as possible, not only to create awareness, but also to serve as valuable inputs and groundwork for other initiatives and projects in the sustainability field. Ultimately, this value chain will improve the quality of life of European citizens and provide solid foundations for a sustainable future

Port Cities can be seen as multidimensional laboratories where challenges connected with urban mobility are more complex due to the dual system of gravity centre: the city, the port, not to mention their shared hinterland.These peculiarities are at once a challenge and an opportunity, as they provide scope for planning, researching and implementing integrated mobility solutions in distinctively complex urban contexts. Civitas PORTIS designs, demonstrates and evaluates integrated sets of sustainable mobility measures in 5 major port cities located on the North Sea (Aberdeen and Antwerp), the Mediterranean Sea (Trieste), the Black Sea (Constanta), and Baltic Sea (Klaipeda). The project also involves a major international follower port city on the East China Sea (Ningbo). Thanks to the Civitas Initiative, the partner cities expect to prove that more efficient and sustainable mobility is conducive to the establishment of vital and multi-modal hubs for urban, regional, national and International movements of passengers and goods. To do this, they establish integrated living laboratories clustering local measures according to four major aspects of sustainable urban mobility: 1. Governance: to increase port-city collaborative planning and participation, leading to enhanced forms of SUMPs. 2. People: to foster less car-dependent mobility styles, leading to modal shift in favour of collective and more active transport. 3. Transport system: to strengthen the efficiency of road traffic management to/from the port and through the city, and foster the use of clean vehicles. 4. Goods: to enhance logistics and freight transport, improving the efficiency and coordination of city, port and regional freight movements. Working with port cities, Civitas PORTIS will generate a strong and twofold replication potential: 1) specifically to other port cities, and 2) more generally to cities presenting major transport nodes and attractors for the benefit of the whole CIVITAS Initiative.