Search results

Five hard questions and the need for capacity building

To help the cities realise their positive energy districts, the Atelier project includes a capacity building programme, in which professionals in the partner cities can learn from each other and experts how to make their ambitions come true. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences is one of the partners to design the training, learning, and coaching activities. Here are five hard questions to give an impression on what kind of knowledge and expertise is needed.

Balancing exploration and exploitation in sustainable urban innovation

The potential of technological innovation to address urban sustainability has been widely acknowledged over the last decade. Across cities globally, local governments have engaged in partnership arrangements with the private sector to initiate pilot projects for urban innovation, typically co-funded by innovation subsidies. A recurring challenge however is how to scale up successful projects and generate more impact. Drawing on the business and management literature, we introduce the concept of organizational ambidexterity to provide a novel theoretical perspective on sustainable urban innovations. We examine how to align exploration (i.e., test and experiment with digital technologies, products, platforms, and services) with exploitation (i.e., reaping the financial benefits from digital technologies by bringing products, platforms, and services to the market), rooted in the literature on smart cities. We conclude that the concept of ambidexterity, as elaborated in the business and management literature and practiced by firms, can be translated to the city policy domain, provided that upscaling or exploitation in a smart city context also includes the translation of insights from urban experiments, successful or not, into new routines, regulations, protocols, and stakeholder/citizen engagement methods.

Urban Innovation Systems

Introduction: There are good reasons to study urban innovation from a systemic perspective. A key finding in innovation research is that organizations rarely innovate in isolation, but in interaction with clients, competitors, suppliers, and other organizations. A system perspective is useful in understanding and analyzing these interactions. Cities and urban regions are increasingly recognized as key milieus in which these interactions occur. The urban innovation system approach conceptualizes the city or urban region as a context in which innovations emerge from complex interactions between urban actors—firms, citizens, governments, knowledge institutes— in a particular institutional setting. The systemic view of innovation departs from traditional linear models that depict innovation as a staged process that starts with (basic) scientific research and ends with commercialization by companies. Innovation processes are much more complex and diverse, influenced by multiple actors that interact in networks with feedback loops, and involving many types of knowledge beyond scientific knowledge. Urban innovation systems are nested in innovation systems on other spatial levels—regional, national, international. Studies on urban innovation systems seek to explain how innovations emerge in an urban context, why urban regions differ in their innovative performance, and also address questions on the governance and management of such systems. Studies in this field draw from a variety of disciplines including economic geography, urban and regional economics, political sciences, innovation studies, social sciences, and urban planning.

Creative Districts and Creative Tourism: Greg Richards in conversation with Jorge Piqué.

Assessing the performance of Positive Energy Districts: The need for innovative methods

Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) are potential high-impact climate change mitigation actions towards low carbon or even climate neutral cities. This implies that the energy performance and greenhouse gas emissions of PEDs need to be assessed. To this end, an accounting methodology, metrics, supporting (accounting) tools, and reporting are necessary that capture the full energy and climate impact of PEDs. The European Commission's Building Energy Specification Table (BEST) provides a methodological approach for calculating the energy balance of PEDs. The BEST is a formal requirement of the European Commission's proposal process, with respect to the Horizon 2020 funding program. An improved methodology for calculating the annual energy balance of a of PED, based on the international standard ISO52000, was developed by the Making City project in 2020. In this paper, we evaluate and compare accounting methods for assessing the energy performance of PEDs and conclude on their use and shortcomings. The hypothesis to be explored is that current accounting practices are based on accounting at a building level and alternative methodologies are needed to capture the full impacts at a district level. To this end, we apply the current approaches on the ATELIER project's PED pilot in Buiksloterham, Amsterdam, which will serve as a case study to illustrate the differences in outcomes and in the use of the results in evaluation and policy making. Consequently, we reflect and recommend on improved approaches and methodologies.

Towards Energy Citizenship for a Just and Inclusive Transition: Lessons Learned on Collaborative Approach of Positive Energy Districts from the EU Horizon2020 Smart Cities and Communities Projects

To achieve the “well below 2 degrees” targets, a new ecosystem needs to be defined where citizens become more active, co-managing with relevant stakeholders, the government, and third parties. This means moving from the traditional concept of citizens-as-consumers towards energy citizenship. Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) will be the test-bed area where this transformation will take place through social, technological, and governance innovation. This paper focuses on benefits and barriers towards energy citizenships and gathers a diverse set of experiences for the definition of PEDs and Local Energy Markets from the Horizon2020 Smart Cities and Communities projects: Making City, Pocityf, and Atelier.