Driving the sociotechnical transitions needed for net zero
The race against climate change has put cities at the front line.
Catalina Díaz, UP2030 deputy project coordinator
Cities will play a fundamental role in achieving the ambitious goal of climate neutrality by 2050 set out in the European Green Deal. While many individual urban decarbonisation projects are promising, a holistic approach will propel Europe’s initiatives and ensure higher overall impacts – a whole greater than the sum of its parts. In the UP2030 project, researchers are taking a strategy-based approach to urban resilience, linking projects for sustainable urban transformation with supportive policy development and aims to bring the impact of local action to a national and global scale. “The race against climate change has put cities at the front line when it comes to taking action to meet climate neutrality,” explains Catalina Díaz, urban strategist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering in Stuttgart, Germany, and deputy project coordinator of the UP2030 project. “The ambitions are clear but the pathways to meet these climate targets are not yet laid out.”
A fivefold path to the future
The project will use a ‘5UPs methodology’: updating processes, policies and planning codes that hinder effective urban transformations; upskilling urban planning and design transformation pathways for partner cities; upgrading through a series of prototype urban enhancements; upscaling these solutions; and uptaking, in which the UP2030 team will offer the services developed in the project to the EU Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities. The project will run pilots in 10 cities across Europe, while in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro will apply the methodology in an emerging economy. UP2030 pilots will go through an intensive co-creation process involving many parts of society, including citizens. “We hope that by 2030 these cities will be experts in how to drive sociotechnical transitions, how to cope with climate change, and how to be efficient with the use of resources and the infrastructure that keeps cities moving,” says Díaz.
Keywords
UP2030, EU missions, cities mission, adaptation mission, climate change, projects info pack, research, innovation, resilience, sustainable, urban, climate-neutral, smart mobility, clean energy