Research Stories: Both a technological and a societal challenge

Description

To create energy-neutral cities, we need to fundamentally change how we live in our cities. The City-zen Roadshow helps to understand that it is necessary to look at sustainability from both a technological and a societal perspective. The tenth Roadshow, organised in Amersfoort, once again shows how the project creates awareness by connecting citizens, legislators, and market players with students and experts.

City-zen is a major international project, funded by the EU as part of the Seventh Framework Programme. Over the past five years, the project has intended to create innovations that result in a reduction of CO2 emissions of 59.000 tonnes per year and future-proof infrastructure. The Roadshow element of City-zen has been developed at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of TU Delft. This collaboration with local authorities, citizens and market players opens up the hearts and minds of people to the necessary innovations proposed by City-zen. “Sustainability is a huge word. How do you get people to open up to new ideas on lifestyle and their city, their daily life? That is what the Roadshow is designed to do. We created a methodology to gain trust from people we do not yet know, but who are the ones who are using the city that our design team visits,” explains research leader Craig Martin.