Dear readers,

Welcome to the second Newsletter of POCITYF.  One year ago in the beautiful Portuguese city of Évora, we set the POCITYF project in motion. During these first 12 months, the partners have been busy laying the foundations for designing and rolling out a city transformation process in its Lighthouse cities (LH) – Alkmaar and Évora – and its Fellow cities (FC) – Bari, Celje, Granada, Hvidovre, Ioannina and Ujpest. 

In the first year much has happened.
Among the activities, our team has identified, for each city, stakeholders and rated their level of power and interest  towards the road for a more sustainable and smart urban environment. The local and European regulatory landscapes have been mapped out so that we can keep ahead of any changes along the way.

The project’s key performance indicators (KPIs) and monitoring methods are now set out. In this respect, we’ve published a scientific paper on how to establish project-specific KPIs using the experience-based approach that we’ve developed as part of the project.

The cities have worked hard to set up the teams working on the project and to prepare the demo sites where the pioneering measures will be demonstrated.

We organised events, some of them in partnership with other EU-funded initiatives, like the workshop on P2P energy platforms with the SPARCS project and the session “How cultural heritage contributes to the EU Green Deal”  in cooperation with Europa Nostra during the European Week of Regions and Cities.

We are also setting up a working group on ‘Smart Connected Communities for Positive Energy Blocks in Cultural Heritage Areas’ to gather expertise on the topics of smart cities and communities and Positive Energy Blocks in cultural heritage areas. Join us here!

We’ve just entered the second year of POCITYF and many more news and progress are expected. We hope you will enjoy the reading of our newsletter!
 

José Miguel Costa

POCITYF coordinator

EDP Labelec