About – Project -

UP2030 project

UP2030 in a glance

UP2030 aims to support cities in driving the socio-technical transitions required to meet their climate neutrality targets by leveraging urban planning and design. Within the project city stakeholders and local authorities will be supported and guided to put neutrality on the map of their communities in day-to-day actions and strategic decisions. An innovative methodology (5UP-approach) will be developed and applied through the co-development and implementation of science-based - yet practical - tools, and methods.

Inclusive participation is key throughout the project’s full cycle of activities so that real needs of communities are reflected in the city-specific visions, and co-designed interventions maximise delivery of co-benefits. As such, UP2030 will have a measured positive impact on spatial justice in the pilots, and give the opportunity to citizens to participate in the transition by becoming agents of change themselves through their sustainable behavioural shifts.

UP2030 looks at mainstreaming the climate neutrality agenda using urban planning and design as a vehicle for also enhancing the liveability of urban communities. The emphasis on liveability will connect the urban planning and design approaches to the provision of multiple socio-environmental benefits, foremost at a neighbourhood scale. Prototyping is strategically focused on neighbourhoods, as they offer a critical scale for problem-solving, reinvestment, and climate innovation in cities. Testing at this scale will provide valuable lessons for city-wide upscale.

To drive city-wide impact, cities will need to go well beyond technical designs and piloting; UP2030 will empower local authorities to shape their innovation-enabling city environment through: a relevant policy framework, deliberate inclusive participation, shifts to sustainable behaviours, capacity building in city departments, new governance arrangements and financial facilitation. To this end, UP2030 will guide cities (stakeholders and local authorities) to deliver across the values of equity, resilience, neutrality, and sustainability.

5UP Approach

To accelerate the implementation pace in many cities, upscale solutions and respond to the climate emergency, UP2030 proposes the 5UP-approach for activating cities and stakeholders through 5 interlinked phases. While there is an obvious sequential order in the five components, their outcomes are reinforced by feedbacks between them. As such, the method differentiates itself from more conventional methodological approaches which focus on testing a particular innovation (e.g. a digital solution) to bring about incremental change. Contrary, the 5UP approach puts the city at its centre, rather than a proposed solution, offering an integrated strategy for multilevel action on identified leverage points. The 5UP approach permeates the project design and structure of the working packages, so that all case studies converge towards fostering Urban Prosperity – thus not treating resilience nor justice as separate tasks.

Solutions

Adaptation

Mitigation

Circularity

Spatial justice and participation

Cross-cutting tools for integrated solutions

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. This project has received funding from the Horizon Innovation Actions under the grant agreement n° 101096405.