Living Lab Infrastructure & Strategic Capabilities

**About Denizli Metropolitan Municipality (DMM)

**DMM serves a growing population of over 1.06 million in Southwestern Türkiye, governing a diverse urban-rural landscape of 12,134 km². Recognized for its proactive climate policy (CDP Score A- in 2025), DMM possesses strong institutional capacity, a dedicated Projects Department, and an established track record in EU-funded programs. DMM offers high-value testing grounds, robust data infrastructure, and strong municipal leadership across all three DUT 2026 tracks:

• 15-Minute City (15minC): In Denizli, the 15-Minute City model is designed as a decentralized, human-centric accessibility framework. Grounded in our 2025–2040 Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan vision, the goal is to ensure that residents across all 19 districts can access daily essential services—education, healthcare, public transport hubs, commercial zones, and green spaces—within a 15-minute walk, micro-mobility ride, or short public transit trip.

• Circular Urban Economies (CUE): Facing Mediterranean climate vulnerabilities, DMM prioritizes zero-waste circularity and organic waste diversion. DMM offers a dedicated pilot environment focusing on source-separated organic waste recovery across municipal service buildings and municipal enterprise facilities. Coupled with our social circularity model repurposed over 26,000 items in 2025 and planned construction waste recovery facilities, DMM provides a real-world living lab to rethink urban production, closed-loop organic waste systems, and resilient material flows.

• Positive Energy Districts (PED): Benefiting from high annual sunshine (7.5+ hours/day) and rich geothermal resources, Denizli is an ideal pilot site for clean energy integration. DMM has implemented municipal solar PV installations and aims to retrofit municipal building stocks, integrating renewable generation, micro-grids, and energy flexibility into existing urban structures.

Our Expected Role & Contributions:

• Serving as a Demo / Pilot City and Living Lab host.

• Co-designing and deploying urban interventions with citizen engagement.

• Providing rich baseline urban data, policy testing environments, and monitoring support.

• Facilitating local stakeholder management and scaling/replication frameworks.

What We Are Looking For:

We are seeking project coordinators, research institutions, tech providers, and European cities leading proposals under the DUT 2026 Call to include DMM as a committed pilot city partner.