8 Projects

The City of Manchester is one of 10 local authorities that make up the Greater Manchester conurbation.  Manchester has a population of over 500,000 with one of the largest economies in the UK. The innovation district, ’Oxford Road Corridor Manchester’, has been the focus of Triangulum’s activities in the city – a 2 km long spine that contains two of the UK’s largest universities and one of the largest medical research campuses in Western Europe, it makes up 20% of the city’s economic output. It employs 71,700, with an estimated 7,000 new jobs by 2025. There also are 80,000 students in the Oxford Road Corridor.

The Manchester Triangulum consortium is led by the City Council and includes Siemens PLC, Pixel Mill, University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University.

Manchester’s approach is based upon an understanding that cities function as systems, involving a complex interaction between individuals, markets, infrastructure networks and public services. Every intervention has been chosen because it demonstrates the benefits of integration in different ways.

Triangulum has enabled the partners to build on the work already undertaken to establish a smarter, more independent infrastructure whereby energy generation, its supply, storage and use is managed in a more demand responsive manner.

The new investments in renewable energy generation, supply and demand management have been connected through a new ICT infrastructure managed by Siemens.  The project has also created a data platform - a Manchester-i.  This aims to allow enable greater analysis and better informed decision making at both a strategic and operational level.   In addition, the city’s programme to remove cars on Oxford Road, in the Corridor area supported a mobility component focused on electric vehicles and eCargo bikes.

More liveable space for more residents

The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany, with its 1.8 million inhabitants in the city adding up to 5 million inhabitants in its metropolitan region. Hamburg is a city as well as one of the 16 federal German states. Economically and culturally, Hamburg is the centre of Northern Germany and one of Europe’s most liveable and economically strongest cities. This is why Hamburg is undertaking great efforts to put its Smart City approach into reality by using smart technologies and implementing numerous interdisciplinary pilot projects.

And Hamburg is still facing a growth trend… Especially younger people are attracted be the city’s dynamic economy and the large number of jobs, by the variety of educational institutions and the large range of leisure facilities and cultural opportunities. The aim of the current town planning is to find spaces within the existing areas as well as opening up new development opportunities. The city wants to create additional, high-quality urban spaces by the water, offering homes, jobs, leisure and recreation.

The mySMARTLife demonstration area, the borough of Bergedorf, is Hamburg´s biggest district, located in the East of the city. The district is diverse, with a historic centre with numerous heritage-listed houses as well as residential buildings. All are subject of an integrated strategy targeting the quality of life, citizen involvement, technical and social infrastructures, public buildings and spaces.

There are three zones of interventions, where the 59 mySMARTLife actions in Hamburg will be implemented:

• Zone 1 comprises the new construction area “Schleusengraben”, where more than 1,400 new residential units will be built. They will be above national energy efficiency standards, with smart controls and connection to an innovative low-energy district heating mainly based on renewable energy sources. Also, new smart adaptive lighting for bicycle routes will be implemented.
• Zone 2 “Bergedorf-Süd” is the name of an ambitious retrofitting area, where an innovative concept of independent Smart Heating Islands will become reality, again mainly based on renewable energy sources. Also, a humble lamppost initiative is foreseen to replace the existing street lamps.
• Although the mobility interventions affect the whole City of Hamburg, they are a focused activity in Zone 3, comprising the entire borough of Bergedorf. Here, electric buses, e-cars, e-bikes and the “Cityskater” (a small last mile e-scooter)  for public and private fleets are implemented as well as e-bus charging stations at the bus depot, several fast charging stations and a set of private and public stations for e-cars, all supplied with energy stemming to 100% from renewable energy sources. A multi-modal mobility concept and innovative approaches like a car sharing e-community and parcel delivery system in car trunks complement the actions in Zone 3.

Within IRIS, Utrecht combines solar energy, affordable social housing and broad access to electric mobility. These solutions are developed together with citizens and built on open data to accelerate change.

Home to 350.000 inhabitants, Utrecht is the fourth largest municipality in the Netherlands and the fastest growing city in the country with a predicted 400.000 inhabitants in 2025. Utrecht's core ambition is to be a climate neutral city by 2030.

The city has shown consistency and commitment to sustainable energy policy with ambitious Strategic Energy Action Plans and membership of the Covenant of Mayors among many other initiatives. Although Utrecht is very densely populated, the city has the highest rate of PV-systems installed in the Netherlands (2015: 10 MWp, 4000 installations) and aims to have 10,000 by 2020.

The city is also a recognised pioneer in electric vehicles (EVs) and vehicle to grid (V2G) charging technology. In 2018 a Smart Solar Charging station launched with 200 solar panels and a 1MWh battery, generating enough power to charge twenty full electric cars simultaneously with stored solar energy. Even when the sun doesn’t shine.

A cyclist’s paradise with 43% of journeys under 7.5km taken by bike, Utrecht boasts over 250km of bike paths and the world’s biggest bike parking garage with space for 12,500 cycles.

The city of Amsterdam has over 850,000 residents from 180 different countries, who own more than 600,000 bicycles. The wider Amsterdam Metropolitan Area has close to 2.5 million inhabitants. The city has a strong commitment to encourage green research, development and investment in sustainable initiatives. As a result, the area is enjoying a rapid uptake of electric transportation and a growing number of companies are developing sustainable products that influence global business. Amsterdam is exceptionally well connected, both physically and digitally.

The city has acted in line with the EU’s 20-20-20 climate targets and has the ambitious goal to reduce CO2 with 40 % compared to 1990 by the year 2025. The City-zen project was one of the major projects in which the city worked with its partners to scale up innovative energy solutions and open networks.

The demonstration objectives of City-zen in Amsterdam were focused on retrofitting existing housing, making the e-grid smarter, and improving and expanding the heat grid.

Lessons Learned:

In 5 years of City-zen, the 20 projects yielded many lessons learned.

Top 3 lessons learned overall:

1. Connect

Although it is far from easy, it is also highly advisable to organize peer meetings and exchange ideas between teams from different cities as the meetings will lead to deeper levels of understanding

2. Plan time

Even when fully involved in the implementation of solutions it is important to devote time for experience sharing and dissemination

3. Empower citizens

Involve citizens/inhabitants and truly put them at the heart of the solutions' implementation

More overall learnings can be found in this document: http://www.cityzen-smartcity.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/interactive_final-deliverable-book.pdf

Learnings per project (for example, smart grid projects, retrofitting projects, etc) can be found in the project reports on this page: http://www.cityzen-smartcity.eu/home/reporting/deliverables/