Austria City - District Community Development

Objectives

The aim of the project is to support the Climate-KIC flagship initiative "Smart Sustainable Districts" and their launch in cities in Austria (mostly) and support Climate KIC in CEE. By integrating the expertise of AIT into the Climate KIC community, the objective is to support cities achieving transformational change.
The idea is to build a community of interested stakeholders (an ecosystem of cities) who will jointly work together in the topic of smart and sustainable districts to foster urban transformation. The community will specifically target, (but will not be limited to) small and medium sized cities between approx. 20,000 to 200,000 inhabitants in Austria and stakeholders like policy makers, city authorities, real estate developer, non-profit housing associations etc.

Approach

The project aims to identify needs of interested Austrian cities together with the Climate KIC Flagship Initiative "Smart Sustainable Districts" and motivate local stakeholders (city authorities, urban planners) to support the new community of cities.

Climate change mitigation and adaptation issues will be tackled indirectly by setting up an ecosystem of cities that are keen to transform into sustainable and resilient communities. Dealing with specific local needs will lead to the implementation of local measures and therefore reduce GHG emissions and the vulnerability to climate change in different sectors. Another aim is to provide framework conditions for long-term collaboration between RTO´s like AIT and cities in order to support projects from early phases up to implementation and monitoring phases. The long-term cooperation will also facilitate knowledge transfer and replication between cities.

In order to tackle the various challenges in Austrian cities, we will follow an integrated and holistic approach in analysing urban systems, assessing opportunities for smart and sustainable projects and achieving multiple direct Impact Goals.