Envisaging the Cities of Tomorrow across the Slopes of Trentino
The Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige has invested a great deal in building the smart cities of tomorrow. One of these initiatives is the EU-funded project STARDUST, which aims at re-vitalising the city of Trento with innovative and replicable interventions. STARDUST’s story was highlighted in this year’s Klimahouse “Smart Cities” conference – an event organised by CasaClima Agency in Bolzano from the 22nd to the 25th of January 2019. The conference was the occasion for a discussion with local experts and politicians on what smart cities projects like STARDUST can offer to its inhabitants Daniele Vettorato from the EURAC Research, one of the partners in the STARDUST project, presented the project as a whole and laid out the plans they wish to implement within the city of Trento. To name a few are the installation of electric and hybrid vehicles and the refurbishment of the social housing edifices in some of Trento’s districts. A round table discussion took place afterwards alongside with the politicians. Chiara Maule from the Municipality of Trento later on explained to them how valuable the project is for the city, saying: “Besides reducing energy consumption of the buildings, we are committed into finding new solutions for parking, in particular those for loading or unloading and for disabled people.” Another European Smart Cities project active in the region is SINFONIA, which has been deploying large-scale, integrated and scalable energy solutions in the cities of Bolzano and Innsbruck. Despite SINFONIA ending real soon, the story of reconstructing the region’s cities does not end there as STARDUST will help Trento be one of the forefront smart cities in Europe.
Keywords
energy efficiency, retrofitting, smart city