The objective of the HERB project (Holistic Energy-efficient Retrofitting of residential Buildings) was to finalize and test new and innovative high-energy-efficiency technologies and solutions to renovate existing buildings. These solutions will be installed and monitored, from the result perspective, in various typical residential buildings in different European countries.

For Italy, the chosen intervention regarded a small public-housing building owned by the City of Bologna at Piazza A. Mickiewicz 5, with a total heated surface of 282 m², six units, and three above-ground storeys.

The final conference of the HERB project, ‘Edilizia sociale ed efficienza energetica’ [Social building and energy efficiency], was held in our spaces on 7 April 2016, promoted under the show Abitare Sociale and organized in collaboration with the Engineers’ Association of Bologna.

The BlueAp project (Bologna Local Urban Environment Adaptation Plan) aimed to develop and define a Local Plan of Adaptation to Climate Change for the city of Bologna.

Our activities included: supporting communication of partners in the project (especially the City of Bologna and the Kyoto Club) through the dissemination of material online and drafting posts published on the Urban Center and PAES (Action Plan for Sustainable Energy) websites; supporting the organization of the final conference on 4 June 2015 at the Auditorium Enzo Biagi in the Salaborsa building; supporting the translation and development of tests for end users.

Through the project BoCaM (Bologna Carbon Market), the City of Bologna offered reliable carbon credits to private purchasers, verified according to standard ISO 14065 and tied to projects that can be verified over time, in order to increase the environmental sustainability of all actors in society.
The companies could insert the purchase of credits within paths of social business responsibility at the end of a course for company improvement.
The City of Bologna therefore tested the creation of a real market in which public administrations could ‘create’ third-party-certified carbon credits generated by their projects and policies which private companies could purchase to neutralize CO₂ emissions.

Our activities in the project included: supporting communication of the project, organization of the final event, and collaboration in developing the printed material aimed at greater diffusion of the project.

The city of Bologna participated in the project ‘Transition Cities’ with the proposal ‘La sostenibilità è il nostro centro’ [Sustainability is our Centre], to transform the former ghetto area of Bologna into a high-energy-efficient neighbourhood through the involvement of retailers in energy savings and sustainability businesses.

Our activities in the project considered: accounting, development of the proposal and creation of the project, communication, and coordination of partners, including CNA Bologna, the Energy Agency of Modena, and the City of Bologna.

In September 2015, the Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana (formerly Urban Center Bologna) was occupied with the PhD Summer School of Climate-KIC organized together with Aster, the University of Bologna, and the City of Bologna. This edition centred on the issue of resilience.

The intensive two-week programme concentrated on adaptation to climate change and the impacts that cities find themselves facing with increasing frequency.
Taking a cue from the city of Bologna, with its particular environmental, climate, and structural characteristics, and analysing projects implemented by the city to counter the effects of climate change on site, the students were called to design innovative solutions through a ‘learning by experience’ approach.
Our activities within the Summer School included: involvement in activities to coordinate, design, and define the scientific programme and guided tours, consultation on the issue of adaptation to climate change, organization of logistics and transport, accounting, communication, and involvement of some local and national stakeholders.

The goal of the project, inspired by the One Tonne Life project (successfully concluded in Gothenburg), was to study and develop a business model to reduce the carbon footprint of a volunteer group of private citizens in three European cities (Uppsala, Berlin, Bologna).
In Bologna, financing regarded the phase to investigate the concrete possibility that the project would be viewed favourably by citizens.
To facilitate the conversion of the group of volunteers to a more sustainable lifestyle compatible with the environment, several local stakeholders were involved (LegaCoop, Caab, Confabitare, ANCE, University of Bologna) to assess their interest in participating in a future, potential implementation of the project.
Our activities in the project consisted of: scientific design, communication, accounting, organization of the kick-off meeting in Bologna, participation at the meeting in Uppsala (Sweden), finding the data necessary to develop the business model, participation in a workshop in Frankfurt on the active involvement of stakeholders in projects to reduce emissions, organization of a focus group to assess the interest of citizens in participating in the project, and publication of a questionnaire on the platform ‘Comunità della Rete Civica Iperbole’ [Iperbole Civil Network Community].

From 10 to 15 July 2016, the second phase of the PhD Summer School della Climate-KIC 2016 ‘Urban Metabolism and Water System Management’, was held in Bologna after an initial week in Amsterdam.
Twenty doctoral students and several PhDs from 10 different countries in Europe, Asia, and America participated in the 2016 programme on the topic ‘Smart solutions for the Urban Metropole’.
The students’ projects were to particularly address urban metabolism and water management in a sustainable and innovative key, starting from concrete cases in the two cities: the Buiksloterham neighbourhood in the northern zone of Amsterdam and the university district around Via Zamboni in the historical centre of Bologna.
This ambitious challenge consisted in rethinking urban metabolism to improve the quality of life and create a sustainable cultural campus based on the principles of the circular economy.
During the week in Bologna, the students followed an intense programme of lessons, meetings with stakeholders, visits in the field, and working groups, up to the final presentation and awards for the projects.

The Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana (formerly Urban Center Bologna), in collaboration with the City of Bologna, organized the Bologna edition of Climathon (27–28 October), the largest worldwide marathon for the climate held simultaneously in major cities around the world.
Participants worked for 24 hours to create a project to contribute to fighting the impacts of climate change in Bologna, with particular focus on community involvement.

From 24 to 28 July 2017, the second phase of the PhD Summer School della Climate-KIC 2017 ‘Urban transitions: reshaping urban districts’, was held in Bologna after an initial week in Amsterdam. Fourteen doctoral students and several PhDs participated in the 2017 programme as fruit of the collaboration between Dutch partners and the University of Bologna, the City of Bologna, and Urban Center Bologna.

During the two weeks of the course, participants worked in groups guided by international experts to study two cases of urban transition addressed by the cities of Amsterdam and Bologna, for which the students had to also find the possible solutions:

• The project for Amsterdam regarded the energy efficiency of some public housing in the multiethnic neighbourhood of Overtoomse Veld with the involvement of residents in adopting virtuous behaviours.
• The project for Bologna regarded the reduction of energy consumption and emissions in the area of Sant’Orsola Hospital and improving the quality of services and the conditions of workers and users.

During the week in Bologna, the students followed an intense programme of lessons, meetings with stakeholders, visits in the field, and working groups, up to the final presentation and awards for the projects.

The project, financed within the programme Europe for Citizens, was inspired by the Pact of Amsterdam for the European Urban Agenda. The main objective was to spread greater civic involvement in urban discussions and decision-making processes, as well as strengthening the ties between public authorities, civil society, local institutions, and social and economic actors.

EUCANET has explored the means through which European citizens, even through urban agencies such as Urban Center, can actively contribute to defining priorities when it comes to developing the cities and communities in which we live, concentrating in particular on the role that processes of territorial planning and government can play.

In addition to the Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana and Urban Center Metropolitano in Turin – project leader – the consortium is composed of the city of with the Faculty of Architecture of SS Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Euromediterranée, Cluj Urban Center, the Biennale di ArchitetturaIABR, the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York, ICLEI, and Eurocities WG Urban Agenda.

The Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana (formerly Urban Center Bologna), in collaboration with the City of Bologna, MEEO s.r.l., the University of Bologna, DedaGroup, CMCC Climate, Studiomapp, and sponsored by Climate-KIC and Copernicus EU, organized the Bologna edition of Climathon (27–28 October), the largest worldwide marathon for the climate held simultaneously in major cities around the world.
Participants were requested to develop ideas for innovative products and services to develop green and blue networks in the urban area of Bologna, concentrating on one or more of the proposed areas of the city characterized by different density and presence of green and open space.

The ROCK project (Regeneration and Optimization of Cultural Heritage in Creative and Knowledge Cities) aims to use new environmental, social, economic, and sustainable processes to regenerate the university zone around Via Zamboni.

The project won first place in the European call Horizon 2020 in the Climate – Greening the Economy axis in response to the call ‘Cultural heritage as a driver for Sustainable Growth’, with total financing of €10 million, €2 million of which are destined for Bologna. The project, with 32 European partners, is led by the City of Bologna, which worked to draft the project proposal together with the University of Bologna.

The project aims to show how historical centres in European cities can be considered extraordinary living laboratories where new models of urban regeneration guided by the cultural heritage (tangible and intangible) can be tested and where mechanisms of innovative and unconventional financing can be initiated in a vision of the circular economy.

The project in Bologna is concentrated on the university district around Via Zamboni, which includes 8 university buildings, 6 museums, 3 libraries, and the city’s main theatre, extending the area of interest to Piazza Maggiore. In line with the two guiding concepts of the creative city (recognizing creativity as a strategic factor in sustainable development, as defined by UNESCO) and the knowledge city (i.e. characterized by a knowledge-based economy as a primary point of reference and an engine for socioeconomic and technological dynamics), the objective of ROCK is to test new formulas of regeneration and new means of access to cultural goods. This includes promoting a new perception of collective property as common, shared heritage and thereby supporting social cohesion, testing solutions to attract residents, students, tourists, activities, events, and cultural operators, transforming them into an engine for the economic, social, cultural, and environmental quality of the city.

The ROCK project covers three years of activity and two years of monitoring.

Seven model cities — Lyon, Turin, Liverpool, Vilnius, Cluj, Athens, Eindhoven — with their different profiles, have offered a range of examples and solutions to be transferred to three cities for replication — Bologna, Lisbon, Skopje — thereby defining a specific agenda of regeneration in a process in which the key elements of the cultural heritage (buildings, monuments, open spaces, roads, cultural spaces) become the supporting column and also the motor to permanently regenerate specific areas. In this way, the goal is to create true collaborative protocols between model cities and replication cities to trigger the process of support, the transferability of activities, and dissemination of the results through the network of stakeholders in the project.

On the local level, a network of public and private representatives has already begun to collaborate to carry out the activities.

Under the ROCK project, the Fondazione per l'Innovazione Urbana has implemented U-Lab as the main action.

Timeline: 5 years, 3 of activities and 2 for monitoring
Economic resources: €10,000,000 – overall project; €2,000,000 – project for Bologna
Actions carried out in Bologna under the ROCK project have been described as case studies in two dossiers by Eurocities, a partner in the ROCK project.

On 25 and 26 October 2018, the Fondazione per l'innovazione Urbana, in collaboration with the City of Bologna, organized the third edition of Climathon in Bologna, the worldwide 24-hour marathon promoted annually by Climate-Kic to develop innovative proposals to combat the impacts of climate change in urban contexts.

The challenge posed in this edition — 24 participants, including developers, communications experts, geographers, students, and enthusiasts with various training — was to design the interactive section of a mobile app dedicated to air quality in Bologna, which had already been partially developed under the Laboratorio Aria.

The goal of the AELCLIC project (Adaptation of European Landscapes to Climate Change) is to define and test models to create networks of regional/local stakeholders with the social, financial, administrative, and technical capacity to co-define a plan to adapt the landscape to climate change.

This plan is intended to be an integrated, systemic solution (i.e. non-sectoral) and an informational document to support territorial and sector planning, as well as a reference for public or private initiatives in matters of adapting to and mitigating climate change. It includes policies, strategies, pilot actions, and regional/local initiatives aimed at promoting adaptation to climate change and is defined in a process based on the joint involvement of various local and regional interest holders.

AELCLIC has breathed life into different regional/local stakeholder networks, constituting a set of European pilot landscapes selected strategically in order to cover a range of climate, socioeconomic, cultural, and biogeographical strata in Europe, and to produce highly transferrable, scalable models.

On the local scale for the pilot landscape of Bologna, the project has entailed a diagnosis of the impacts of climate change on the local economy and the life, environment, cultural heritage, and well-being of inhabitants. The diagnosis is based on all interest holders identifying the impacts together, relying on existing studies and reports on the national and regional/local levels; and a co-defined document containing the issues and main content in a future plan for adaptation to climate change of the landscape of the area.

Project Leader: Juanjo Galan (Aalto University, Finland)
Coordinator for implementation in the pilot area of south-eastern Europe: University of Bologna
Additional partners in the pilot area of Bologna: City of Bologna, Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana.

After signing the Pact of Amsterdam in June 2016, which instituted the Urban Agenda for the European Union and fixed the areas and timelines, 12 partnerships began for collaboration to address as many priorities.

The City of Bologna, together with the Polish Ministry for Economic Development, were chosen to coordinate the working group on sustainable land use and nature-based solutions.

One of the objectives of the partnership is to clarify and simplify the language with which the importance of nature-based solutions (NBS) is communicated. In fact, the use of a simple, correct language is fundamental since the concept of NBS is still not universally clear or applied uniformly in all countries, including the relationship with concepts such as ‘green infrastructure’, ‘ecosystem services’, and ‘green corridors’. This leads to the existence of a civil society that is little informed and has limited access and involvement in initiatives to apply NBS and the positive effects that may be obtained.

In addition, citizens might show a low level of appreciation and acceptance for measures that promote sustainable urban development (e.g. green spaces converted into wells to collect rainwater rather than car parks) since the benefits are not always explained or communicated properly.

This is why the Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana, the University of Bologna, and the City of Bologna have come together to draft a glossary, a tool regarding NBS and their application in urban centres that is easy to use and understand.

The glossary is therefore aimed at:

• simplifying the language and providing recommendations to different stakeholders through the creation of a standardized vocabulary conforming to the one used in European projects focused on NBS, thereby providing institutions and citizens with a complete set of clear terms that are simple to use.
• facilitating joint work to create and standardize a vocabulary regarding NBS for use by the scientific and institutional communities, experts in communication, and experts in the sector.

The NBS glossary was created by the Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana, the City of Bologna, and the University of Bologna with the support of the European Commission.

The project Just Transformation in Emilia-Romagna 2020 for Europe’s Heavy Industrial and Coal Regions is coordinated by ART-ER with the participation of the Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana and IIPP (Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose) at University College London.

The itinerary falls under the EIT Climate-KIC Deep Demonstrations initiative. Just Transformation in Emilia-Romagna is a partnership with the regional government (problem owner) to develop a package of innovative initiatives to accelerate the equitable, sustainable transition of the regional territory through the involvement of all interested public/private subjects and in service of numerous existing initiatives, such as the permanent regional climate change forum.

One fundamental aspect is the direct connection with communities and citizens, and with the most vulnerable bands in particular, whose applications should be incorporated in processes of transition through listening and co-design activities.

The objective is to facilitate the conversion of Emilia-Romagna into a region with low CO₂ emissions and good air quality. By virtue of its consolidated experience in terms of stakeholder participation and involvement, the Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana works within the consortium on activities related to studying and mapping territorial players, analysing needs, and studying methods of engagement and involvement. In defining the activities, particular focus falls on the Foundation’s commitment to involve the most fragile swaths of the population and study solutions that consider the post-COVID situation.

Project leader: Art-ER
Budget: €44,000 EIT + €11,000 co-financing (20%).

The MICROBE project (Minimizing the influence of coronavirus in a built environment) aims to enrich university education with modules designed to respond to the concrete needs of the labour market and companies, with a particular focus on demands and needs arising from the COVID crisis.

The project also makes use of innovative technologies such as video neuroanalytics and Web-based opinion analytics to develop methods of protection against COVID-19 and to reduce the impact of the economic depression starting with the built environment and with the assistance of 3 new personalized MOOC modules. Finally, MICROBE sets the long-term objective of reinforcing the relationship between universities and the scientific and educational world on the European level.

The Fondazione per l'Innovazione Urbana is a partner in the project.

Project leader: Vilniaus Gediminas Technical University
Budget: €70,870.00
Timeline: Starting 1 September 2020. Total duration: 36 months. End: 31 August 2023

Web site: microbe-erasmus.com