The R2CITIES implementation site in Genoa is the social housing district of Lavatrici, developed between 1980 and 1990. Located in the west part of the city, the site consists of more than 500 dwellings. It is divided into four main blocks, each of which is composed of three different buildings – a high block, a lower block, and a centre block of apartments. The complex has one common area, ample parking and is served by a public bus line.
The Lindängen neighborhood is located in the southern part of Malmö and has a population of approximately 6 000 inhabitants. The average income in the neighborhood is lower compared to the average income in Malmö, and the average unemployment rate is higher.
Oslo participated in the ZENN project with the renovation works in the Økern nursing home, which was built in 1975 and contains 140 dwellings for senior citizens. The demonstration site is one of four buildings connected to each other, the rest of which were renovated in the period 2000-2010. The retrofitting plan has been completed and the tenants moved in in October 2014.
Lund (Sweden) is a medium-sized university city with a research-intensive industry. The town dates back a thousand years, but the number of inhabitants has grown largely during the last century and a great stock of the buildings from the 1960s and 1970s now needs retrofitting. Almost 90% of the heat demand in the city is supplied by district heating, and the hospital and some office buildings are connected to a district cooling network.
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.
Aarhus is the second biggest city in Denmark with 300 000 inhabitants. With the aim to become carbon neutral by 2030, the city moves forward with its climate and smart city strategy with a number of sustainable actions and projects, amongst which is READY.
The city of Innsbruck in Austria (120 000 inhabitants) defined its 2025 Energy Plan back in 2009. In this context, and as part of the SINFONIA project, the city has selected its eastern district to demonstrate the large-scale implementation of energy-efficient measures, with the objective of achieving on average 40 % to 50 % primary energy savings in the demo sites, and to increase by at least 30 % the share of renewables in the district’s energy mix.
Since 2005, the Italian city of Bolzano (100 000 inhabitants) has developed an ambitious investment plan for large-scale urban refurbishment in collaboration with both public and private stakeholders. The work undertaken in the SINFONIA project is part of this plan, and aims to achieve 40 % to 50 % primary energy savings in the demo sites, and to increase the share of renewables in the district of Bolzano SW (south-west) by 20 %.
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.
The aim of the SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE project was to design, demonstrate, evaluate and communicate shining examples of how to achieve the high-performance building of the future with a focus on school buildings. One of the project’s demonstration sites was the Solitude-Gymnasium, which is located in the north-west of Stuttgart, the capital of the federal state Baden-Württemberg (south-western Germany).
