GreenInCities project

Urban regeneration and climate mitigation, bridging wealth gaps with nature and technology for greener, inclusive cities

GreenInCities represents a response to the evolving landscape of urban planning in recent decades. While urban regeneration, smart city technologies, and sustainability initiatives have transformed urban areas, their application has primarily favored wealthier regions for tourism and economic gains.

However, the need to extend these strategies to deprived areas facing various urban challenges, including pollution and inadequate infrastructure, is increasingly evident. Moreover, as climate change adaptation gains importance, GreenInCities places a unique focus on Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) that recognise nature as a key stakeholder. Additionally, emerging technologies like AI, machine learning, and immersive realities offer promising avenues to enhance information delivery and community engagement.

The mission of GreenInCities is to develop tools and methodologies for collaborative urban planning for climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as community-led greening solutions for deprived urban areas. The project addresses critical challenges such as raising societal awareness, advancing greening efforts, and harnessing technology for maximum urban regeneration impact.

ABUD’s role encompasses active participation in 27 project tasks and offering support to our Hungarian demo partner in Pécs. As a Work Package and Task Leader, we hold responsibilities for:

• Operationalizing nature-based solution design requirements for urban regeneration
• Developing AI-powered toolset to quantify experiences, safety, and wellbeing in urban space
• Graph analysis of urban habitat networks
• Facilitating nature-building communities for long-term collaborative NbS maintenance
• Bringing all innovations together in a small-scale pilot

In Pécs, we will pilot solutions to regenerate and bring life to spaces between buildings of a derelict housing estate. These spaces are small, fragmented, in poor condition, without any functionality. We will demonstrate how these leftover spaces can be turned into vivid, biodiverse stages of shaping communities and improving their resilience.

This project has received funding from the European Union under the Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON).