One step closer to making sustainable and smart cities
The third edition of the 2019 Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions Conference (SSPCR2019) took place from the 9th to the 13th of December 2019 at the NOI Techpark in Bolzano (Italy). The event was organised by Eurac Research, partner of the EU-funded project STARDUST. The conference aimed to support the ‘transposition’ of research into practice and visionary strategies into planning policies and tools in relation to the challenges posed by the smart city/region approach. A total amount of 210 participants from 38 countries attended the event, for a total amount of 143 presentations and 19 posters. STARDUST played a major role during the event, as it was one of the SSPCR2019 partner projects and was presented in two conference sessions. The first session was the side event How to support local governments in Italy and across Europe? on December 10. Adriano Bisello and Daniele Vettorato (Senior Researcher and Research Group Leader at the Eurac Institute for Renewable Energy, respectively) gave a general presentation of the project, of the cities involved (the Lighthouse cities of Pamplona, Tampere and Trento, and the Follower cities of Cluj-Napoca, Derry, Kozani and Litomerice) and of some of the STARDUST smart urban interventions to be implemented in Trento in the Building, Mobility and ICT sectors. The presenters highlighted the environmental, economic and social benefits of initiatives such as STARDUST as well, ranging from better air quality to higher employment and building values. The second presentation was given by Dr Bisello on December 12 during the session Energy master planning in Smart and sustainable cities - Towards Positive Energy Districts. The intervention focused on the current status of the STARDUST activities happening in Trento. New retrofitting techniques and energy-efficient systems that rely heavily on ICT are being applied to different buildings in Trento: two years after the project launch, the preliminary studies on logistics and soil are being finalized and the design of the interventions on buildings is complete. “It is a crucial moment for the STARDUST partners involved in the local activities in Trento,” says Dr Bisello. “The design phase is going to be finalised soon and it is now time to pass from visionary ideas to the implementation of detailed solutions in the real world. Our tailor-made interventions will greatly improve the city, one example being the refurbishment of Madonna Bianca District.”
Keywords
smart urban intervention, smart cities, planning policies, retrofitting techniques, ICT sectors, sustainable city, positive energy district