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Scientists and Citizens Hand in Hand in Search for Healthier Cities – The euPOLIS project

Scientists and Citizens Hand in Hand in Search for Healthier Cities – The euPOLIS project

European Regional Centre for Ecohydrology of the Polish Academy of Sciences is a partner in international euPOLIS project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. The euPOLIS project, an innovative urban planning methodology, developed through nature-based solutions to enhance the health and wellbeing of citizens in 4 European cities kicked off in September 2020. The euPolis project is coordinated by the National Technical University of Athens. The project will integrate the knowledge and experience of 28 entities from around the world, including four European cities: Piraeus, Belgrade, Łódź and Gladsaxe.

The world is changing dramatically, and European cities face major urban development, social, geopolitical, economic and climate challenges that affect the quality of our lives. It has become evident that we can no longer base our urban planning solely on profit-based criteria. The conventional approach oversees the interactions of social aspects and concepts. The needs of the local communities are in some cases neglected, which causes the costly investments not being embraced, lack of sustainability and a gap of distrust among citizens and city authorities is created. These imbalanced relations accumulate all kinds of social distortion which trigger stress, dissatisfaction and lower the quality of life, all affection public health and well-being.

To address these challenges, euPOLIS NBS-based, Urban Planning methodology offers the synergy of people/health-centered approach with significant environmental and economic benefits of Nature Based Blue Green Solutions.

The euPOLIS project aims to replace or combine the traditional costly engineering systems built to protect the environment with natural systems to create resilient urban ecosystems at lower Life-Cycle Costs and simultaneously enhance public health and wellbeing. The project addresses critical challenges such as low environmental quality, fragmentation and low biodiversity in public spaces and water-stressed resources by introducing a structured approach to activate the hidden resources and services of existing Natural and Engineered urban systems and regenerate and rehabilitate urban ecosystems.

The euPOLIS’ detailed objectives are to improve urban resilience through interventions of proper urban planning matrices and co-create livable, inclusive urban spaces. A process based on systematically implementing innovative participatory tools with particular attention to gender, age and disability perspectives. The experts of the euPOLIS team will map the critical challenges that the demo cities encounter, provide holistic solutions and measure their positive impact on the quality of the lives of the citizens: their overall wellbeing, physical, mental, and emotional health.

Coordinated by the NTUA, the euPOLIS team consists of: University of Warsaw - Institute for Social Studies (Poland), University of Belgrade - Faculty of Civil Engineering (Serbia), Amphi International ApS (Denmark), European Regional Centre for Ecohydrology of the Polish Academy of Science, Vertical Farming Institute (Austria), Geosystems Hellas S.A. (Greece), Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine (United Kingdom), Biopolus (Hungary), RISA Sicherheitsanalysen (Germany), Resilience Guard (Switzerland), CDP Worldwide Gmbh (Germany), EnPlus (Serbia), BioAssist (Greece), Sentio Labs Monoprosopi (Greece), Byspektrum (Denmark), Mikser Association (Serbia), Plegma Labs (Greece), Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), City of Belgrade (Serbia), City of Łódź (Poland), City of Piraeus (Greece), Gladsaxe Municipality (Denmark), City of Palermo (Italy), City of Limassol (Cypress), City of Trebinje (Republika Srpska), City of Bogota (Colombia), Fengxi New City (China).

The intentions of the project are reflected in its title “euPOLIS”, redefining the meaning of a city (POLIS) by a prefix “eu” which stands for “good”, “well”, “happily” in Greek (pronounced “evPolis”, and as the symbol of the European Union values.

For more information, please visit: www.eupolis-project.eu

euPOLIS has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program H2020-EU.3.5.2., under grant agreement No 869448