Transnational urban circularity, green transition and innovative city development projects, funded through the JPI Urban Europe and DUT partnership instruments

The applied research for the development of the quality of urban life around Europe has been and continues to be a priority funding area of the European Commission. JPI Urban Europe is one of the instruments through which financial support has been granted in urban innovation, in order to ensure the green transition of city components from polluting elements to ecological ones, respectively from linear models of consumption, exploitation and operation to circular urban systems. A particularity of this programme is the transnational approach to the projects, which is reflected both in the diversity of the location of the study cases, the types of partners involved (private, institutional, non-governmental) but also in the way in which the funding is granted, through common budgets of the national development funding agencies, which are sometimes doubled by non-reimbursable monetary assistance from the European Union. The article chronologically summarizes the JPI Urban Europe calls, from the first competition (2012) upto 2023, namely the launch of a new and successor funding formula, integrated in Horizon Europe – the DUT Partnership (Driving Urban Transitions) and the relevant funded projects. The winning applications covered the topics imposed by the programme, from circularity and urban transition, to climate neutrality, energy-positive neighborhoods, sustainable urban accessibility and sustainable cities in general, examples of how cities face current challenges such as increasing the density of housing in the urban environment, increasing costs of execution and operation of infrastructure, including construction, mitigating the effects of climate change, migration, etc. Among the conclusions and innovations resulting from the implemented projects, the following are standing out: the increase in the understanding and capacity of citizens to support the transition to a more resilient and efficient urban environment in terms of consumption, in participatory, innovative ways and through transnational communities, but also the synergies between specialists, urban users, administration and investors. All these have led to new concepts such as the 15-minute cities or novel solutions for circular urban economies.