Vasileios Milias

Across Europe, schools are among the most accessible public facilities, yet their potential as community spaces remains largely untapped. Schoolyards are often inaccessible outside school hours, while surrounding streets can be dominated by traffic and fragmented planning approaches. The new ROUTES project (Reimagining Open Schoolyards and Urban Streets as Equitable Spaces) aims to address this challenge by exploring how integrated transformations of schoolyards and school streets can create safer, healthier, and more inclusive neighbourhoods.

While digitalisation holds great promise, it has not yet brought about a full transformation towards sustainability. Across Europe, many smart city initiatives are already using technology to reduce environmental impacts. However, governance systems often struggle to keep pace with rapid technological change, leaving a gap between innovation and implementation. GOLIA seeks to close this gap by developing truly transformative approaches that harness digital tools to advance sustainability in mobility.

Urban multimodal transportation systems integrate different modes and services to provide seamless transportation to travelers. Mobility hubs are a transformative solution to address challenges related to the efficiency and connectivity of multimodal transportation systems, as they expand the role of public transport hubs by serving as pivotal nodes of a multimodal network. The puzzle project aspires to revolutionize planning and operations of urban multimodal transportation systems by developing an integrated framework and innovative tools for planning and evaluating core aspects of mobility hubs. The project envisages introducing a novel approach for identifying prominent mobility hubs, setting up their operations, and assessing their performance.

By 2050, the urban population is expected to account for 82% of the world’s population, posing major challenges for sustainable urban mobility. A shift from private cars to public and shared transport is essential to address problems such as air pollution, congestion and energy consumption. The EU co-funded Seamless Shared Urban Mobility (SUM) project aims to transform existing transport networks by introducing New and Shared Mobility (NSM) integrated with public transport (PT).

Play Accessible Communities (PAC) İzmir aims to transform micro-mobility hubs into inclusive, healthy public spaces. Developed under the EIT Urban Mobility Co-Create New European Bauhaus (NEB) programme, the project brings together Play the City, İzmir Planning Agency, and Transform Transport. PAC promotes accessible neighborhoods by linking mobility with social engagement.