UPDATE: City-zen on the road!

We are about to head into a new year. For most people a time to reflect on the past year and what’s on the road for 2016. The City-zen project started about one and a half year ago and it is time to accelerate.

The consortium partners and the advisory board visited Amsterdam late September for the second field visit of the project, an important moment to align expectations and discuss the progress. In three days, representatives of the 22 partners together with the members of the Advisory Board visited the Waste to Energy Company (AEB Amsterdam), the circular and sustainable city district Buiksloterham and other inspiring locations to debate with, learn from and inspire each other. Although the focus was on the Amsterdam demonstrations, a try-out for the City-zen roadshow and a preview of both games were also on the program.

 Meanwhile in Amsterdam, the call to identify suitable retrofit projects for City-zen is launched. The city dashboard and the two serious games will launch this year and the smart grid is further designed to facilitate the flexible use of car and home batteries. The newsletter’s special attention goes to ‘Waternet’, which found an innovative way to cool bloodbank ‘Sanquin’.

 A 1000 kilometer to the south, Grenoble gets ready to start monitoring the flow of energy before, during and after renovation. Designs are made to retrofit dwellings and to implement a district-heating loop to make houses more comfortable and affordable.

Belfast will be hosting the first City-zen roadshow in January. In the coming year more City-zen innovations will start dissemination, sharing the first lessons with cities throughout Europe.