CLIMABOROUGH

About the project

CLIMABOROUGH, coordinated by ANCI Toscana and counting on 27 other partners, works to fight the many bottlenecks in the transition from prototyping to testing of innovation and from successful testing to market deployment. 

The key point for the project is that it is as important to adopt “circular technology principles” – thus reuse and combine existing solution prototypes for climate neutrality in Cities – as to innovate urban and strategic planning practices as a framework in which actions and initiatives for achieving that goal should converge. This means going beyond real life experimentation and collective strategic learning to achieve “a systemic transformation (…), supported by customised climate services, accompanied by a more strategic, holistic and long-term climate investment approach, together with a new city governance for climate action.”.

This is why, in the opinion of CLIMABOROUGH, a siloed urban innovation approach and a non-synergistic structure of operations cannot be climate effective and this must be reflected also in the practice of spatial planning and management, which all too often seems to follow its rituals rather than making own views and provisions more open to fighting the challenges of climate neutrality and mitigation. Today, an increasing number of start-ups and established companies proposing climate neutral products and services in cities, but struggling to find spaces and favourable legal and administrative environments for their innovations to be experimented, implemented, and ultimately scaled above the pilot dimension. Moreover, what is often lacking is a shared perception of the consequences for climate of alternative options for spatial planning that rarely go beyond generic recommendations without efficacy. This is probably also due to the difficulty of data gathering, measuring and visualisation of the implications of certain, apparently innocent, decisions.

CLIMABOROUGH calls such impasse “siloed urban innovation” and asks  whether and to which extent urban planning can and should be transformed in its current approach to spatial design and spreading of human activities, in order to break the silos that impede or slow down the transition of European Cities towards a new ecological and digital order. 

Learn more about CLIMABOROUGH's vision here.