Co-designing climate-neutral & livable urban spaces: addressing urban redesign challenges

European cities are facing increasing pressure to balance competing demands over limited urban space, driven by mobility, logistics, energy transition and liveability goals. Addressing these challenges requires moving beyond fragmented interventions and going towards integrated co-developed urban redesign approaches.

This interactive session brings together a Cluster of newly launched Horizon Europe projects (HORIZON-MISS-2024-CIT-01-01), Urban-Flow, CORESpaces and NEXTLOGIC, all focused on rethinking urban spaces, with CIVITAS Forum participants.

The session follows a design thinking approach to address urban space redesign challenges, combining insights from the above projects with participatory, user-centred methods. Participants will engage in a hands-on co-creation exercise, working in groups on real-world urban redesign scenarios. Through role-based assignments, they will identify stakeholders, stakeholders’ needs, conflicts and acceptable trade-offs.

The session reflects a shared understanding across the Cluster: urban space challenges are not only technical, but also require structured dialogue, coordination and new governance models.