The increasing complexity of urban growth strongly impacts both on the quality of urban environment and on the effectiveness of models for development, requiring innovative approaches to face the related challenges. The proposed position paper reports the methodological approach outlined within a trans-European research project. It aims at defining a systemic urban vision based on resource loops vision in a clustered perspective, overcoming the conventional separation between urban and periurban areas. The main scope is to drive a transition from a linear ("take-make-use-dispose") to a circular approach, considering the whole city realm and aiming to close resource loops (in line with EU COM 614/2015, Closing the loop, EU COM 33/2017, Implementation of the Circular Economy Action Plan and Urban Agenda Draft Action Plan on Circular Economy 09.02.2018) while generating new market opportunities and jobs, reducing resources import, decreasing impacts on environment and climate change. The methodology includes the following steps: increasing context understanding, identifying resource flows, using economic potential of existing resources, engaging communities in loops of proximity, facilitating entrepreneur and stakeholders in co-creation of circular economy processes. This paper explains the positioning of the research within the state of the art; it describes the applied methodology and related expected outcomes, defines the main related initiatives and implementation models. This study identifies regenerative corridors (RC) as potential effective drivers to overcome the conventional separation between urban, peri-urban and rural areas in the EU context, investigating their relations and identifying driving factors for a circular equalized development among these different urban zones. This paper also reports on the impact indicators and the replication potential of the proposed systemic approach.

Renewable energy has a crucial role in facing climate change. One promising strategy is the creation of energy communities that require active involvement from a bottom-up perspective. Their implementation is difficult, as they currently rely on local policies, community readiness, and technological availability. The objective of this paper is to provide a qualitative overview of energy community concepts and strategies at the European level. The aim is to identify common approaches that are framing the development of energy communities, and to understand the most successful steps leading to their creation and growth. To achieve this objective, a threefold methodology is provided: (1) an updated review on policies dealing with energy communities at the European and Italian level; (2) a qualitative overview of European-funded projects under the Horizon 2020 work program; and (3) a qualitative overview of some of the most successful existing energy communities in Europe. The results outline a series of considerations and lessons learned that are useful for implementing this transition pathway in a real case, which is also presented in the paper. The conclusions will identify some future directions of this research, particularly in relation to the results coming from the implementation of actions in the real case.

Urban regeneration is a key topic in Europe as cities are asked to propose efficient actions for the transition toward a more liveable system. The singularities and specificities of each city urges for a flexible and multi-scale approach able to face and combine a mix of cultural heritage, social and economic constraints, climatic and architectural specificities. In order to work toward the definition of site-specific and flexible methods, the ROCK project investigates how to move towards a Circular Urban System Model to be applied to historic centres. The paper presents the concept and the pilot actions undertaken in Bologna to build a site-specific approach enabling local stakeholders to collaborate toward the definition of action plans for the transition into sustainable systems of places. The project adopts a multilevel methodology to create links among key areas, resources, stakeholders and tools in order to re-circulate local values for their valorisation and enhancement. The paper describes the elaboration and the research-action-research initiatives as results of Bologna's University area experimentations, deepening the relation among public spaces, local stakeholders and social exchanges. In particular, it presents the first experimentations of the project into this area: The Living Lab approach and co-design experiences.

The challenge of making cities more sustainable is one of the major constraints that has to be addressed at all political levels. Many innovative planning solutions are now underway in various European cities of any scale. One way of making the transition to low-carbon cities happen is the approach of replicating successful demonstration projects. During several years of participatory observation in European projects and municipal consultancy as well as through qualitative interviews with municipal technical staff working on climate change, we observed that replication is seen by the European Commission as well as national governments as a major solution for speeding up the transition EU wide. The research includes an evaluation of already funded EU projects using a replication approach. It is commonplace that replication is not likely to happen 1:1, because each city has its own challenges. Nonetheless, the process behind replication attempts leads to considerable learning effects. We found out that learning from good examples serves several purposes for managing the transition, e.g. inspiration and motivation of technical staff, mobilisation of stakeholders or political commitment. The paper concludes with an analysis of success factors and barriers for replication drawing on real life examples. The findings recommend making supporting schemes more effective by evolving the concept of unstructured replication towards a mentoring approach based on scientific steering.

Analyzing data from the Energy Poverty Observatory in Europe, it emerges that more than 50 million households in the EU live in energy poverty (people that cannot heat their homes during winter; cannot make their homes comfortable during the summer; pay their energy bills late). Research studies realized in the last 20 years highlight that making energy demand efficient and effective is the more significant and socially important the more it is able to involve users who are unable to sustain energy demand. The evolution of the research sees a narrowing of the field of investigation by focusing on the user dimension of energy poverty, stressing the role of citizens not only as consumer but also as producers of solutions to tackle energy poverty, real energy communities of agents. The paper aims to provide a systematic literature review highlighting the major findings of the topic, investigating the relationship between spatial and social issues, and looking at the state of energy poverty by addressing the profiling of users and consequently of services useful to overcome their current vulnerable condition. The paper is structured in two core sections. The first one gives the results of a systematic literature review on the energy/fuel poverty topic, the second one deepens the role of communities and individuals need, crucial in defining new design approaches for supportive solutions to tackle energy poverty.