METU Faculty of Architecture and METU Center for Solar Energy Research (GÜNAM) are among the partners for the “Urban Planning and Design Ready for 2030-UP2030” project, which will last until the end of 2025. In addition to METU, the project includes various prestigious universities such as Delft University, International University of Catalonia, Stuttgart University, and the University of Cambridge.
To support the implementation of the “Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission,” the UP2030 project, carried out under the Horizon Europe research program, aims to realize the social and technical transformations necessary to meet the climate neutrality goals of cities using urban planning and design.
The project, one of the partners of which is the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, will be implemented in a total of 11 cities. The other cities included in the project are Milano, Rotterdam, Zagreb, Thessaloniki, Granollers, Budapest, Lisbon, Muenster, Belfast, and Rio de Janeiro. Within the project, stakeholders and local governments in these cities will be supported in order to integrate climate neutrality into the applicable areas in daily actions and strategic decisions. Since cities consume 65% of the world’s energy and are responsible for approximately 75% of global emissions, measures to be taken in cities are of utmost importance to meet the 2030 and 2050 carbon emission reduction targets of the European Green Deal. In order to achieve these goals, rapid actions are required regarding the Europe 2030 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission, established in line with the Paris Agreement. The aims of this project include transforming 100 cities into climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030, make these cities centers of experience and innovation, and thus create a roadmap that all other European cities can follow by 2050.
The approach taken in the UP2030 includes the following elements:
- Updating the policies, codes, and regulations that need to be abandoned to make room for the new vision.
- Building the capacities of all stakeholder cities that will take action.
- Developing digital and physical solution models in selected neighborhoods.
- Scaling to achieve citywide impact by shaping the facilitating governance arrangements, and matching project portfolios with financial resources.
- Engaging with the Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission and sharing best practices among cities in Europe
UP2030 aims to increase livability in cities by using climate neutrality, as well as urban planning and design, as a tool. The livability principle within the project will link urban planning and design approaches with the provision of multiple social and environmental benefits, foremost at the neighborhood scale.
The studies will strategically focus on neighborhoods, as neighborhoods are points of decision-making for problem-solving, reinvestment, and climate innovation in cities; and the results obtained from these can be adapted on a citywide scale. Moreover, UP2030 aims to reveal true needs and increase communal benefits by providing citizens with the opportunity to take part as actors in the transformation of cities through sustainable behavioral changes.
After the official commencement of the project in Thessaloniki in February 2023, a stakeholder workshop on needs and analyses took place in Turkey, in which Assoc. Prof. İpek Gürsel Dino from METU Faculty of Architecture delivered a speech on the decarbonization of buildings and transportation systems, as well as the integration of photovoltaic systems into Istanbul. In the workshop, after the presentation on case studies in cities with similar problems delivered by Elşen Aydın from METU GÜNAM, solutions for possible difficulties were discussed.
For detailed information regarding the project, the website https://up2030-he.eu/ can be visited.
