Politecnico stands for the future of European Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities
On May 17th, Politecnico hosted in its historical venue, Castello del Valentino, the Unite!Widening project’s “Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities European EU Mission” workshop. The initiative was conceived in the framework of the “Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities” Horizon EU Mission”, which aims to reach 100 climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030 aimed at leading all European cities to become climate neutral by 2050.
Being Turing among the first 100 selected cities, the debate raised a focus on its current main challenges, namely being the improvement of air quality and the fight to climate change by reaching climate neutrality. Thanks to the cooperation with the other 8 selected Italian cities, Turin will develop new and concrete actions in order to represent a leading hub for the future of smart and climate-neutral cities. Politecnico, and more precisely its Energy Center, are already involved as key actors. Many other local actors are also committed via multiple agreements addressing the macro-areas of action: energy, transport, waste management and land usage. To reduce energy consumption starting from CO2, some concrete actions include the requalification of public buildings, the improvement of public transportation and pedestrian routes and many natural-based solutions’ implementation (e.g., planting trees).
All the speakers stressed how the “CitiesMission” can only be reached thanks to a well-structured and multi-level cooperation between cities, Universities, institutions, networks, research hubs and projects. Peer learning processes and user engagement were also raised as key actions, considering the will to build more just, equal and transformative urban spaces and to reduce energy consumption by overcoming the expected institutional, socioeconomic, technical, educational, communicational barriers.
“Cities are the engine of future” was the shared claim of the workshop, demonstrating the concrete will to engage, collaborate and combine research, strategies and policy making. The closing phase then resulted in a rich Q&A session, opening a thrilling debate among experts, researchers and institutional representatives on concrete actions, strategies and collaborative opportunities.
“The Unite! partners have shown today to be very active in the multi-disciplinary arena of the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission and, indeed, 7 out of the 9 Unite! cities where they are located are among the 100 selected cities – commented Roberto Zanino, professor at the Department of Energy-DENERG and PoliTO Key Liaison Officer for Unite! – Unite! could therefore eventually provide a very natural framework for sharing the experiences of the different cities, as their contribution to the Mission proceeds and evolves. Continuing on a line of collaboration with the Municipalities, which was inaugurated at the Torino Dialogue in 2022, we have now proposed to the Unite! Steering Committee the idea of planning an event on the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission at the first 2025 Dialogue in Barcelona”.