The confirmed need to expand and accelerate strategies for sustainable urban renovation places a weight of expectation and demand for concrete CITyFiED solutions. It is an expectation we are honoured to fulfil and our recent project meetings February 27 and 28 plus city study tour and meetings March 1 showed we have several valuable fundamental resources in the pipeline in addition to a lively professional community.
In terms of the need, CITyFiED is a confirmed community of 3 demonstration sites, 11 replication ‘cluster’ cities and 41 members of a community of interest. This is a remarkable pool of cities, regions, municipalities and agencies ready and willing to meet and surpass new energy efficiency obligations and benefits to people’s daily lives. Nineteen of them joined us in the latest study tour in Laguna de Duero to share insights from our non-technical barriers investigations, network, debate and more. By committing to be part of CITyFiED, each of them is showing a hunger to understand, define and execute a more sustainable approach to urban renovation.
In terms of strategy, we are working to develop and share an incredibly rich approach based on detailed real-life experience and replication modelling. Our methodology is already defining the necessary decision making actions and a framework for success. This is in part being co-created and validated with our city community. An interactive workshop explored the seven phases of ‘understand – diagnose – define – prioritize – strategize – execute – monitor and impact’. Members of the CITyFiED community enrich the project by challenging the methodology and sharing their own perspectives, challenges and achievements. These exchanges are essential to strike a balance between understanding the highly complex urban environment and ensuring a pragmatic and highly applicable set of solutions.
In terms of concrete resources to inspire confidence and build capacity, CITyFiED is genuinely on course to deliver a rich set of resources. Internally, we have passed the tipping point in maturity of thought. This is now beginning to take the form of shareable, high-value resources. We have held webinars on district heating, business models and will continue to hold them on key topics. A series of ‘info packs’ to unlock project resources by theme will begin in November 2017 and of course, the detailed articles and interviews exploring multiple points of view continue to be a key part of our communications efforts. Finally, a handbook for municipalities and other stakeholders on using CITyFiED tools is in production. These resources are animated by our online and in person interactions, from the immediacy of a lively twitter feed, LinkedIn updates and journalism to in-depth study tours and workshops for project members. Our next meet up is November 2017 in Ludwigshafen, who have an enormous amount of city and regional initiatives to inspire us all into further measures at an ever bigger scale.
Thank you for your interest, support and challenging questions that support our work. Enjoy this edition of the newsletter and contributing to such a lively CITyFiED adventure!
Dr. Ali Vasallo
CITyFiED Coordinator