Strong DUT Presence at the Smart City Expo

If I were to describe my first time at the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) in Barcelona in three words, I would go with “a little overwhelming”. The conference brought together 27 000 attendees from 143 countries including cities, researchers, private sector, regions and others. The sheer size of the conference makes it an important occasion to talk about urban innovation for us at DUT as well as for various entities in the field that would otherwise not necessarily meet. As in previous years, DUT was part of the European Commission’s (EC) booth on the theme of “EU for resilient and green cities”, where over 25 European initiatives came together to highlight ongoing efforts, forge new partnerships, and connect to actors from around the world. 

A first conference highlight for DUT was the session European Initiatives Advancing Mobility Systems – What do they actually do and what is in it for you? The session was organised as a cooperation between DUT, CIVITAS, Smart Cities Marketplace and EIT Urban Mobility. During the session, Maximilian Jäger, coordinator of the DUT 15-minute City (15mC) Transition Pathway outlined how DUT projects help to translate the 15mC concept into practice: “Projects funded in DUT help us find out what indicators to measure the success of urban mobility policies, of inclusivity and other co-benefits are. They also investigate how we can support the communication of policy making and make it easier to implement mobility strategies which we know often is where the true barriers are.” 

For Jäger a wide range of sustainability challenges exist that DUT research projects are currently tackling: “The projects we fund stretch from sustainable logistics to active mobility and the needs of different target groups, from youth and young people to the elderly, and from holistic approaches to digital twinning.” Looking ahead Jäger explained: 

“Our first project cohort finishes in 2026. We hope that their results will help us around how we can move from theory to practice in relation to the 15mC concept.” 

Transferring knowledge from projects was also an essential question in the session “Beyond Pilots: Future of Smart Cities Replication”. During the session,Christoph Gollner, Coordinator of the DUT Positive Energy Districts (PED) Transition Pathway at DUT, argued for being creative in bringing new actors onboard: “There is clearly a need for additional funding opportunities. However, it is not only about funding but also engaging the private sector and creating new formats that show evidence to cities around why they should take on a specific solution.” 

Gollner explained that DUT tries to support continuity from the very onset of projects: “One of our basic features in DUT is that cities are a mandatory part of each research project. This makes it much more likely that strategies and solutions developed in a project, are taken up and continued beyond the project cycle.” For Gollner, moving from pilots to mainstreaming raises important questions: “If we look at the example of PEDs, we are in a phase where more than a hundred pilots have been gathered over the last years. The big question is how will the mainstreaming happen, and will we need to adapt the concept for it?”

DUT also ran its own booth session on the theme of “From Pilot to Practice: How R&I Helps Cities Transform”. The session was an opportunity to discuss ongoing cooperation on a European level with NetZeroCities Director Thomas Osdoba. Further, as part of the session, two researchers demonstrated the impact of DUT projects to the audience. As a first speaker Ghazal Etminan, from the Austrian Institute of Technology presented the DUT Making PEDs project, which is “about decision making support in PEDs. It’s not only about how we implement a PED, but also how to support digital transformation in different cities and communities. We are 11 partners and four living labs following this approach.”

Etminan outlined the benefits of the project: “For example, in Linz we are creating a digital platform that decision makers can use to see different scenarios before implementing a certain strategy. Through the platform we enable more efficient energy policies.” The project members hope to repeat the current successes: 

“Linz was the first city, but this is also happening elsewhere. We are through digital twinning investigating how we can reuse the platform also beyond PEDs.”

A second speaker was Anastasia Zisakou from the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona. Zisakou presented the DUT Circular Grassroots project: “Our project examines how grassroots circular initiatives contribute to sustainable and inclusive urban transitions across four cities. We explore diverse urban challenges, from housing cooperatives and food-waste prevention to repair, reuse, and informal recycling networks, to understand how citizens reshape everyday material practices toward collaboration, care, and environmental responsibility.” 

For Zisakou one emerging take-away is that “these initiatives show that circularity can emerge from below, through community action and shared resources, helping citizens reduce waste, strengthen social ties, and build community in the face of the eco-social crisis, inspiring transformative pathways toward post-consumerist urban futures. Through a transdisciplinary and participatory approach, the project connects academic research, local governments, and civil society to co-produce applied knowledge and inclusive policy recommendations tailored to local needs.” 

After three intense conference days, 26 partner sessions in the EC booth, six conference sessions, and numerous exchanges across Europe and beyond, Georg Houben, from DG Energy at the European Commission closed the booth and invited partners to share their reflections. One sentence that stuck with me was Houben’s remark: “Whatever we do we need to involve cities in our climate work. Cities are at the frontline of climate change.”