CORESpaces – COdesign urban REalm & dynamic Spaces management for cognitive & socially connected cities – is a new project funded under Horizon Europe. It officially started on 1 January 2026 and marked the beginning of its activities with a kick-off meeting held from 2 to 4 February 2026 in Thessaloniki, Greece, hosted by the project coordinator and ERTICO partner Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH).
Bringing together 45 partner organisations from across Europe – including cities, research institutions, industry and public authorities – the project sets out to help European cities rethink how urban space is designed, managed and governed in the transition towards climate neutrality. ERTICO is part of the consortium and leads the work on communication and dissemination, EU cross-fertilisation, replication, exploitation and policy recommendations, ensuring impact amplification and upscaling across Europe and beyond.
Addressing growing urban pressures
Across Europe, cities face mounting challenges: reducing emissions, improving quality of life, and responding to increasing mobility and energy demands within limited and contested urban environments. CORESpaces supports cities in addressing these pressures and accelerates their transition to climate-neutrality via innovative urban space planning, use and management tools and best practices. Through AI-driven planning, digital twins and participatory citizen-centric approaches, CORESpaces helps cities translate European climate strategies into practical and deployable solutions across mobility, energy and urban space systems. The project contributes directly to the objectives of the European Green Deal and the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, which aims to support 100 European cities in achieving climate neutrality by 2030.
COREInnovations: from vision to deployment
At the heart of the project lies a portfolio of transferable solutions known as COREInnovations, focusing on the imagination, design, planning and management of urban spaces at the intersection of mobility and energy. These include:
- Dynamic urban space and curbside allocation
- Parking and traffic management
- Prioritisation of public transport and active and shared mobility
- Smart and bidirectional EV charging
- Renewable energy systems
- Federated digital twins and data-space platforms
- AI-based urban planning
- Citizen engagement and VR-based co-imagination and co-creation tools
- Integrated data analytics and visualisation environments
Together, these tools enable cities to manage space more efficiently, optimise infrastructure use and support data-driven and inclusive decision-making.
9 Living Labs across Europe
Cities are central to the CORESpaces innovation ecosystem. Through a network of 9 Living Labs, solutions will be deployed, tested and refined in real urban environments. Leading Living Labs in London (United Kingdom), Thessaloniki (Greece), Tartu (Estonia), and Eindhoven and Helmond (Netherlands) will focus on large-scale deployment, integration and demonstration. Follower Living Labs in Limassol (Cyprus), Verona (Italy), the Cluj-Napoca Metropolitan Area (Romania), Fribourg (Switzerland) and Ungheni (Moldova) will build on these experiences to replicate and adapt solutions through structured knowledge transfer, peer learning and capacity-building activities. This structured approach ensures that COREInnovations are not only tested locally but designed for scalability and replication across Europe and beyond.
Enabling systemic change
A strong emphasis on replicability and scalability underpins the project. CORESpaces will develop practical blueprints, governance models, financial mechanisms and policy guidelines to support other cities in adopting and adapting successful solutions. As Dr Georgia Aifantopoulou, Project Coordinator from CERTH, highlights: “The project embarks on a four-year innovation journey to transform urban spaces into places where city functions coexist and citizens actively shape the environments in which they live.”
Dr Emmanouil (Manos) Chaniotakis, Scientific and Technical Manager of CORESpaces from UCL Energy Institute, emphasises: “CORESpaces combines cutting-edge science, urban design and imagination-driven co-creation processes to generate actionable scientific and technical outcomes that advance climate neutrality, fairness and quality of life in European cities.”
With its strong cross-sectoral consortium and real-world demonstrations, CORESpaces positions itself as a catalyst for systemic, data-enabled and human-centric urban transformation, helping cities design the climate-neutral spaces of tomorrow.
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