Advisory board

To offer an outside-in perspective on our individual projects and City-zen as a whole, a special City-zen Advisory Board gathers once a year to advise and help us move forward. The Advisory Board members bring in their extensive and relevant knowledge and experience to support us. For example in answering questions such as “How to have more exposure within European networks?”, “How to increase the impact of our demonstrations or games in our cities? Or “Who should we contact to see whether there are deployment opportunities elsewhere?” Here is a brief re-introduction of its members.

   

Francisco Rodriguez Perez-Curiel is a Spanish architect and researcher, working at Tecnalia, with a focus on smart and sustainable buildings and districts. He can both relate to the technical and to the organisational challenges of transforming cities. Francisco has been involved in FP7 projects such as ZenN, and coordinates H2020 projects SmartEnCity and, FosterREG.

   

Marco Corradi is an Italian social housing and energy expert. He leads ACER, the public housing company in Reggio Emilia and is a member of the board of directors of Housing Europe. Marco advocates that energy efficiency is a prerequisite for affordable housing.

     

Jorgen Abildgaard is the Executive Climate Director leading the Copenhagen Carbon Neutral 2025 program and the Copenhagen Climate plan. Besides that, he is active in WWF Denmark. Jorgen has an extensive international network. Green growth is one of his key targets.

   

Laurens Tait is a Belgian civil engineer and associate director of engineering firm ARUP. Complex large scale designs and master plans for infrastructure and sustainable cities are his main expertise. One of those masterplans is the redevelopment of the area around the Atomium in Brussels.

 

Dave Coleman is a British social entrepreneur. He co-founded Cooler Projects and is co-founder and managing director the Carbon Literacy Project. Founded in Manchester, and now spreading across the UK and Europe, the project aims to make everyone living, working, and studying, Carbon Literate through a day’s certified climate-change learning. Dave would like to support City-Zen partners in developing genuine engagement with their citizens, customers and stakeholders, by using the tools of effective climate change communication.

 

Wouter Florizoone is a Belgian mobility and climate expert. At this moment he is project & product development manager at Transport & Mobility Leuven, a KU Leuven spin-off. Before this job he coordinated the environmental department at the province of Flemish Brabant. Founding mobimix.be and being involved in different IEE projects (Momo Car-Sharing, ECODRIVEN and BEAST) Wouter used his extensive public and private network to help the region of Flemish-Brabant and the city of Leuven to become climate neutral by 2040. Wouter would like to help the City-zen partners to achieve local public interest by citizen participation and political support in connection with the Covenant of Mayors and Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAP). So contact him if you have questions about policy issues, (media)-dissemination, local roadmaps, networking and conference strategies.

     

Florent Hebert is a French architect and urbanist. He leads the Planning and Land Use department of the Ile-de-France government. Previously he has been steering the French Eco-Cité approach, focussing on climate neutral and attractive cities. Florent suggests well designed urban spaces and buildings will be most sustainable.

 

  • The Project

    A city operating entirely on clean energy. In theory, it's possible. But in real life? How to integrate new solutions in existing buildings, systems and people's lives? What are the technical, economic or social barriers? And how to overcome these? That's what we've learned by doing in 20 projects in Grenoble and Amsterdam.

  • Our Activities

  • Achieved Impacts

    • 20 innovations in Grenoble & Amsterdam
    • 35,000 tonnes CO2 saved per year
    • 76,000 m² renovated residential buildings
    • 10,000 dwellings connected to a Smart Grid