The “Future Cities of Southeast Europe” project is financially backed by the “Climate-KIC” organization, a community of the European Institute of Innovation & Technology, and is being implemented in 5 pilot cities which, according to assessments, have the capacities for a systemic transformation of the cities: Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Skopje (North Macedonia), Križevci (Croatia), Maribor (Slovenia), and Niš (Serbia).
The project is supposed to provide qucker and easier systematic changes through innovations, in order to achieve a better quality of life for citizens and the necessary decarbonization in the activities which critically affect the emission of greenhouse gasses. Since technological innovations by themselves will not achieve structural changes necessary for progressive growth over time, the project will combine different innovative methods in the fields of finances, business models, legislative frameworks, behavior perception and social norms, education and skills, new and existing technologies, citizen participation, market structure, etc.
The “Future Cities of Southeast Europe” should help the City of Niš, as well as other partner cities, to deal with these challenges and, as a response to them, conduct the process of transformation. Progress, quality of life, and climate resistances form the vision – which is possible to achieve by using natural and human resources with the right combination of ambitions, innovations, and other resources.
The agreed common mission is that the partner cities of the project become some of the best possible places in Europe for living, working, and staying in by 2025. Within the mission, the following radical goals were set:
- To bring the quality of air in our cities within the levels recommended by the World Health Organization by 2023.
- To achieve circular economy with zero emissions by 2030.
- To ensure that, by 2025, all members of our community have equal access to basic human goods: proper living conditions, healt insurance, education, mobility, food, water, green public spaces, security, and productive work possibilities.
- To be reducing the influence of warming on floods in our communities year by year.
- This wide approach lead by the set mission requires a mass reshaping of thinking and the manner of work, because of which the City of Niš is working on creating a program package of actions and innovations, facing the existing challenges and using its possibilities in the largest possible number of certain key fields where quick and high-quality urban changes are needed.
