The City of Leuven is looking for four Partner Cities, interested in discovering and learning from their experience as part of VARCITIES’ City-to-City Exchange! Located in the Flemish Region of Belgium, Leuven is developing five Visionary Solutions with the support of VARCITIES:

• Visionary Solution 1: Mobile urban living room for cultural activities
• Visionary Solution 2: IoT infrastructure for smart lighting and noise measurements
• Visionary Solution 3: Sensors for water quality measurements
• Visionary Solution 4: Mobility sensors to measure pedestrian and bike flows
• Visionary Solution 5: Climate stations to measure local climatic conditions (air quality, air humidity, temperature, rainfall)

Specifically, Leuven has identified three challenges that VARCITIES is addressing:

• Sustainable, climate-proof and circular city: Leuven want to become a climate neutral city, which will also remain livable for our children and grandchildren.
• Attractive city: Leuven want to further improve public infrastructure focusing on sustainability, adapted mobility, more water and green public places, and culture.
• Accessible and traffic-safe city: everyone in Leuven must be able to move safely, smoothly and sustainably.

The three Visionary Solutions are the key solutions that VARCITIES will support to address these challenges.

Discover more about Leuven’s pilot on their Pilot Page: https://varcities.eu/pilot-cities/leuven-belgium/

Leuven’s Partner Cities should share similar challenges and conditions (non-cumulative criteria) and be located in the EU, or in a country associated to Horizon Europe (such as the UK):

• Leuven is characterized by an oceanic climate with cloudy and lack of dry season, and cool but not cold winters and warm summers.
• Leuven’s pilot area is facing challenges related to densely populated and narrow streets, noise disturbance, and traffic consumption.

Are you interested in discovering Leuven’s experience in VARCITIES? Is your city facing similar challenges? Do you also want to better track health related data in your city using new IT technologies?

The selection process for the four Partner Cities of the City of Leuven is currently on-going. The City-to-City Exchange is expected to start in the first months 2024.

For any enquiries, contact us at contact@varcities.eu

About VARCITIES City-to-City Exchange

To support the replication of VARCITIES approach, each of the seven Pilot Cities engages with four other Partner Cities in City-to-City Exchange to promote and upscale their Visionary Solutions, exchange on common challenges, barriers and experiences. Notably, the City-to-City Exchange aims to cover issues linked with stakeholder engagement, governance, replication, IT solutions and inclusivity. Through cross-learning, the 4 Partner Cities will participate in an online knowledge exchange with one of the Pilot Cities, supported by VARCITIES’ team, which may also be complemented by site visits. Partner Cities will be invited to join the Healthy Cities Helix, and future collaboration supported by European funding programmes will be explored.