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Responses to the current energy crisis and to action against climate change have produced a wide variety of experimentations. Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) and Energy Communities (EC) are spreading as aggregators of enabling technologies, but the knowledge and skills required to plan, implement and monitor them still need to be developed. Technology alone is not enough to facilitate knowledge sharing and the experimentation and co-creation of solutions. The paper focuses on methods and tools that allow to support the creation of “energy citizens” through considerations developed in project H2020 GRETA (Green Energy Transition Actions) and in COST Action ‘PED-EU-NET’.

The Green Deal places at the centre of its policies the need to act in order to achieve climate neutrality goals by 2050. In this context, the role of cities and, in particular, of already existing buildings is relevant. Although they are responsible for 40% of energy consumption, only 1% are involved in major restructuring processes. In the context of smart city strategies and to improve their performances, Europe proposes various approaches such as Positive Energy Districts and Industry 4.0. This paper analyses case studies and innovative European projects with the aim of identifying the most relevant strategic actions. Eventually, it presents a real case in the city of Bologna as a basepoint for the reflection proposed.

The current search of a more cities sustainable transition requires that multiple public and private actors find collaboration paths, aligning their own agendas and being aware that collaborating often means starting a complex process needing discussions, maybe task forces and probably compromises. The experience of the ROCK projects taught cities, institutions and citizens a lot about how to create collaborations and about the potential benefits coming from them. The project, in fact, worked a lot on this regard, as a way to manage urban complexity and to achieve objectives. Indeed, dealing with existing urban areas, framed by the presence of tangible and intangible cultural heritage means having the necessity to align multiple drivers.

The contribution is an extensive introduction to the book CULTURAL HERITAGE LEADING URBAN FUTURES Actions and Innovations from ROCK PROJECT. The H2020 ROCK project sees historic city centres as laboratories to demonstrate how Cultural Heritage can be an engine of regeneration, sustainable development and economic growth. The book comes at the end of the project and intends to provide final reflections and an overview of the activities carried out over the years. The chapter introduces the main topics included in the books and anticipates the contents of the main sections: theoretical and scientific premises of the research, shared results, best practices and lessons learnt from interdisciplinary research, innovative actions, dissemination of knowledge and creation of new synergies at the European level.

Climate change and its challenges have long been incorporated into the policy-making process. Advocacy actions urge to strengthen the socio-ecological resilience through engagement with stakeholders, feedback recollection, and testing of solutions. Several initiatives have been born to boost cities’ actions toward climate change mitigation and adaptation. Institutional coordinated actions such as transnational municipal networks (TMNs) and non-institutional, grassroots movements for climate action, are among them. The study focuses on four TMNs and two grassroots movements, which have an impact on the European and/or worldwide contexts. They are investigated qualitatively, reflecting on the roles and contributions to climate change that they provide both alone and together. The research questions focus on the instruments/elements/factors that they put in place to support the transition, the key messages, and how these are conferred to their key targets. The initiatives have been investigated in both the grey and scientific literature. The main results show that grassroots movements for climate action and TMNs have the potential to better support cities in their climate transition. However, local governments are urged to take advantage of both initiatives’ ability to develop networks of support, innovation and a sense of belonging. In conclusion, the research states that the two initiatives should be effectively connected and integrated with a complementary role concerning planning actions.

Il Green Deal pone al centro delle politiche la necessità di agire per raggiungere gli obiettivi di neutralità climatica entro il 2050. In questo contesto il ruolo del patrimonio edilizio esistente è rilevante. Nonostante esso sia responsabile del 40% dei consumi energetici, solo l’1% viene coinvolto in interventi di ristrutturazione profonda. Sulla scia delle strategie Smart City e al fine di migliorare queste prestazioni, l’Europa propone sperimentazioni come i Positive Energy Districts e le strategie Industria 4.0. Il contributo analizza casi studio e progetti innovativi con l’obiettivo di identificare le azioni strategiche più rilevanti e utilizza un caso reale, nella città di Bologna, come contesto base da cui sviluppare una riflessione. The Green Deal places at the centre of its policies the need to act in order to achieve climate neutrality goals by 2050. In this context, the role of cities and, in particular, of already existing buildings is relevant. Although they are responsible for 40% of energy consumption, only 1% are involved in major restructuring processes. In the context of smart city strategies and to improve their performances, Europe proposes various approaches such as Positive Energy Districts and Industry 4.0. This paper analyses case studies and innovative European projects with the aim of identifying the most relevant strategic actions. Eventually, it presents a real case in the city of Bologna as a basepoint for the reflection proposed.

Analyzing data from the Energy Poverty Observatory in Europe, it emerges that more than 50 million households in the EU live in energy poverty (people that cannot heat their homes during winter; cannot make their homes comfortable during the summer; pay their energy bills late). Research studies realized in the last 20 years highlight that making energy demand efficient and effective is the more significant and socially important the more it is able to involve users who are unable to sustain energy demand. The evolution of the research sees a narrowing of the field of investigation by focusing on the user dimension of energy poverty, stressing the role of citizens not only as consumer but also as producers of solutions to tackle energy poverty, real energy communities of agents. The paper aims to provide a systematic literature review highlighting the major findings of the topic, investigating the relationship between spatial and social issues, and looking at the state of energy poverty by addressing the profiling of users and consequently of services useful to overcome their current vulnerable condition. The paper is structured in two core sections. The first one gives the results of a systematic literature review on the energy/fuel poverty topic, the second one deepens the role of communities and individuals need, crucial in defining new design approaches for supportive solutions to tackle energy poverty.

The increasing application of digital technologies to cultural heritage (CH) is wide and well documented, including a variety of tools such as digital archives, online guides, HBIM repositories. Several vocabularies and ontologies were designed to order heritage data and make CH more accessible and exploitable. However, these tools have often focused on a particular dimension of CH producing high value in separate sectors (e.g. access to conservation of historic buildings, data valorisation for restoration of heritage assets) but lacking ways for adapting or replicating the model to urban complex systems. Moreover, many studies and tools show large effort in cataloguing and archiving, but less in providing tools for designing and managing. The ROCK platform, developed within the Horizon 2020 (H2020) funded project ROCK (GA 730280), addresses the need for a management and intervention-oriented interoperable tool, aimed at storing, visualizing, elaborating and linking data on cultural heritage. The use of already existing ontologies was not sufficient for developing a tool to deal with the complexity of urban systems and heterogeneous data sources. Instead, a participative methodology was set in place for the development of a context-based semantic framework to define the needs and requirements of heritage-led regeneration actions.

Urban regeneration is a key topic in Europe as cities are asked to propose efficient actions for the transition toward a more liveable system. The singularities and specificities of each city urges for a flexible and multi-scale approach able to face and combine a mix of cultural heritage, social and economic constraints, climatic and architectural specificities. In order to work toward the definition of site-specific and flexible methods, the ROCK project investigates how to move towards a Circular Urban System Model to be applied to historic centres. The paper presents the concept and the pilot actions undertaken in Bologna to build a site-specific approach enabling local stakeholders to collaborate toward the definition of action plans for the transition into sustainable systems of places. The project adopts a multi- level methodology to create links among key areas, resources, stakeholders and tools in order to re-circulate local values for their valorisation and enhancement. The paper describes the elaboration and the research-action-research initiatives as results of Bologna’s University area experimentations, deepening the relation among public spaces, local stakeholders and social exchanges. In particular, it presents the first experimentations of the project into this area: The Living Lab approach and co-design experiences.

Today digital technologies offer great opportunities in the field of Cultural Heritage (CH). After a general overview of the European policy documents on CH digitisation, the paper aims to reflect on tools, procedures and methodologies in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as a new way of visualization, application and data collection towards accessing, understanding and safeguarding our historic built environment. The focus will be on two ongoing H2020 projects, INCEPTION and ROCK, selected to address the problem of CH digitisation and the access to the corresponding digitized resources in relation to historic buildings and urban districts. Therefore, they are presented as inspiring good practices for tackling this issue considering its impacts both at the architectural and urban scale. Stressing the potentials of enabling technologies, such as 3D laser surveys, environment and climate sensors, large crowd monitoring tools and CH analytic, they are also able to orient future research beyond 2020.

The rapidly growing use of digital technologies in urban contexts is generating a huge and increasing amount of data, providing real-time information about the urban environment and its inhabitants. The unprecedented availability of data allows us to not only improve advanced knowledge and gain a deeper understanding of urban dynamics, but also enact data evidence-based transformative processes and actions in the direction of smarter, more sustainable, resilient, and socially equitable cities. In this context, the literature on smart cities has recently expressed the need to more deeply involve urban visions and communities in the process of regeneration. This paper aims to analyze how big data can be useful in understanding the effectiveness of small pilot actions of regeneration and reactivation in valuable cultural heritage (CH) urban environments. Pilot actions were developed in the context of the European Union funded project &ldquo, ROCK&mdash, Regeneration and Optimization of cultural heritage in Creative and Knowledge cities&rdquo, (GA730280). The paper analyses data collected by the ROCK City People Flow tool, in different use and time conditions, in two central squares of Bologna (Italy), in order to rate event successes, spatial transformation effects, and regeneration tactics responses. Data confirm the complexity of interpreting phenomena in such contexts but also provide useful indications for future planning.

The challenge of making cities more sustainable is one of the major constraints that has to be addressed at all political levels. Many innovative planning solutions are now underway in various European cities of any scale. One way of making the transition to low-carbon cities happen is the approach of replicat- ing successful demonstration projects. During several years of participatory observation in European projects and municipal consultancy as well as through qualitative interviews with municipal technical staff working on climate change, we observed that replication is seen by the European Commission as well as national governments as a major solution for speeding up the transition EU wide. The research includes an evaluation of already funded EU projects using a replication approach. It is commonplace that replication is not likely to happen 1:1, because each city has its own challenges. Nonetheless, the process behind replication attempts leads to considerable learning effects. We found out that learning from good examples serves several purposes for managing the transition, e.g. inspiration and motivation of technical staff, mobilization of stakeholders or political commitment. The paper concludes with an analysis of success factors and barriers for replication drawing on real life examples. The findings recommend making supporting schemes more effective by evolving the concept of unstructured replication towards a mentoring approach based on scientific steering.

The increasing complexity of urban growth strongly impacts both on the quality of urban environment and on the effectiveness of models for development, requiring innovative approaches to face the related challenges. The proposed position paper reports the methodological approach outlined within a trans-European research project. It aims at defining a systemic urban vision based on resource loops vision in a clustered perspective, overcoming the conventional separation between urban and peri-urban areas. The main scope is to drive a transition from a linear (“take-make-use-dispose”) to a circular approach, considering the whole city realm and aiming to close resource loops (in line with EU COM 614/2015, Closing the loop; EU COM 33/2017, Implementation of the Circular Economy Action Plan and Urban Agenda Draft Action Plan on Circular Economy 09.02.2018) while generating new market opportunities and jobs, reducing resources import, decreasing impacts on environment and climate change. The methodology includes the following steps: increasing context understanding, identifying resource flows, using economic potential of existing resources, engaging communities in loops of proximity, facilitating entrepreneur and stakeholders in co-creation of circular economy processes. This paper explains the positioning of the research within the state of the art; it describes the applied methodology and related expected outcomes, defines the main related initiatives and implementation models. This study identifies Regenerative Corridors (RC) as potential effective drivers to overcome the conventional separation between urban, peri-urban and rural areas in the EU context, investigating their relations and identifying driving factors for a circular equalized development among these different urban zones. This paper reports also the impact indicators and the replication potential of the proposed systemic approach.

More than 70% of the European population live in cities, which are affected by several critical issues, such as the depletion of energy and material resources, decreasing of food security, increasing of greenhouse gas emissions levels with relevant environmental impacts and management issues (e.g. waste treatment). Urban areas emit about 80% of the global CO2 emissions and they are responsible for about 80% of global energy consumption. Therefore, cities offer a possible action field for decisive local initiatives to address sustainability challenges, especially in terms of policy and societal actions, inspiring specific projects, which could be translated into more systematic programs at higher levels of governance. In order to mitigate climate change effects, the European energy policy is focused on buildings’ energy efficiency due to its substantial savings’ potential. This paper describes the integrated design approach developed by the Research Unit of the Department of Architecture of the University of Bologna, (RU) with the aim to identify scenarios of resilient actions for renovating existing buildings and districts, as well as for framing effective refurbishment design criteria at district level. This integrated approach combines energy efficient solutions and technologies, which have positive and sustainable impact on the environment with customer oriented strategies in order to ensure gains and customers’ expectations and requirements at the same time. The paper highlights: the link between mitigation strategies and the built environment; the application of the proposed Integrated Design Approach (IDA) inside the real context of Bolognina neighbourhood (Bologna, IT); the link between life cycle assessment (LCA), mitigation measures and IDA; analysis of results, impacts and potentialities of replication.

In the last decade, the Smart City model has emerged as a reference concept in shaping the city of the future, mainly by strengthening the connections between grids, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), governance and people. In this framework, architecture and the building scale seem to be left in the background, as a residual aspect compared to the role that grids and ICT are expected to play. However, the integrated design at building and district scale is an ineluctable backbone of the implementation process, allowing further actions to achieve effective and innovative paths toward a smarter city. The paper aims to point out the interrelations between the Smart City concept and the key parameters needed to manage complex urban environment in real conditions. An on-going research activity lead in the city of Bologna is summarized, in which the cooperation between the Municipality, the Department of Architecture, local stakeholders and companies is aimed at combining hardware and software more effectively. The goal is to bridge the gap between physical and virtual components, by setting methods and tools to couple technical aspects with socio-economic issues that usually feed the renovation processes. It means creating a tool able to provide and manage information concerning the interactions between the buildings within the district and the urban fabric at city level. The tool must perform the integration between ICT and conventional building components, by collecting data, mapping relations and identifying both conflicts and synergies. A layered structure is defined in order to cover the most influencing parameters as well as key crosscutting issue that may influence the smart city development and effectiveness. The expected benefits mainly concern public administration and policy makers, to which the tool may provide a support in maximizing the impacts and the exploitation potential of the innovations at city level.

Is it possible to rethink the phenomenon of city and the policies that concern it according to the guidelines that the Rock project has attempted without also questioning the conceptual frameworks, or rather the practices and forms of habitual thought that have focused on it? The adequate answer, as far as the conceptual dimension and the reference framework of the theoretical-practical tools are concerned, seemed to be that of accompanying the research with a reflection and a redefinition of the categories through which it was interpreted, both in the sense of understanding and performing. In other words, it was necessary to shift the point of view, setting aside an ideational dimension placed before acknowledging reality and making the findings of the research feedback on its own modalities of detection, thus activating a self-reflective and recursive procedure, as Tim Ingold recently recommended in his reflection on making. Reflecting this methodology, here we chose to take up two notions that we have tried to formulate or redefine over the course of the research, those of "potential city" and "concrete utopia". In both cases we are dealing with a conception of effectuality that recalls what continues to act and to renew itself without exhausting itself because it exists only in the form of a process, only insofar as it is effective, it produces effects in time and in the world as opposed to the passive acceptance of empirical reality, the superficial level of events.

ROCK considers cultural heritage as an engine for sustainable growth in European cities. The approach proposed by the project implies dismantling the specialist idea of cultural heritage understood exclusively in terms of conservation. Cultural heritage - especially in its public and unused or underused spaces - is seen, instead, as an incremental and ever-changing repository of value that can drive both spatial and behavioral change. This change occurs in ROCK through incremental experiments based on a continuous exchange between local practices, administrative action and cognitive reflection, giving shape to a research-action-research methodology.