UNaLab, the European project which Espaitec, the Science and Technology Park of the UJI, participates in along with the Castellón City Council, holds its general assembly and workshops during virtual sessions by means of webinars owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. These virtual sessions are held from Tuesday 24 November to 27 November 2020.
The UNaLab project, which aims to move towards greener cities with less pollution, attempts to set up Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in the participating cities. It basically intends to contribute to better, more inclusive and sustainable development in urban communities through change and setting up their NBS. To do so, various proposals are being put into practice by cocreation between
stakeholders and citizens that the leading cities are performing so that follower cities can successfully replicate the model.
This project’s three leading cities are Eindhoven, Tampere and Genoa, which are experimenting by establishing in demonstration areas and Urban Living Labs (ULL) a range of different NBS that deal with urban climate and water challenges. The leading cities actively collaborate and share their experiences with the seven follower cities, namely: Castellón, Stavanger, Prague, Cannes, Başakşehir, Hong Kong and Buenos Aires. Finally, there are two other cities that act as observers: Guangzhou and the Brazilian network of Smart Cities.
The results sought with this project will allow a European reference framework to be created of the benefits of including NBS in cities. They will also permit the profitability, economic feasibility and replicability of the performed actions to be analysed. In short, what UNaLab intends to do is to guide all European cities and from other continents to implement cocreativity in NBS.
