This research is driven by the overarching goal of making successful green and net-zero transition focused Urban Pilots sustainable. Cities are rapidly growing in population, size and energy consumption, which addresses the need for more efficient and effective but also sustainable governance. Climate change actions across the European Union (EU) in general are aiming for carbon neutrality and cities have a pivotal role in achieving these goals. From the bottom-up approach, the local governance level is essential for at least two reasons. First, in a general mindset of ‘local elaboration’ of sustainable development, cities are the logical loci for action because they do not only concentrate (future) consumption and production and are hence at the origin of unsustainability ‘symptoms’, they are simultaneously the operational units in which concrete actions can be envisaged, designed, (politically) facilitated and effectively rolled out. Second, local level governance is closest to the citizens and residents – seen as enablers of innovation, users of products and services who in the end are the key actors to implement the transition to net-zero. Most ambitious are the cities that have joined the EU Cities Mission aiming to become climate neutral by 2030, but also the regions and cities that have joined the EU Mission on Adaption to Climate Change to become climate resilient by 2030.
Regardless of the high ambition, too often, we see great examples of small- and large-scale city experimentations “dying” when the project ends. How to overcome these challenges and make exceptional transition focused Urban Pilots sustainable? For solving a part of this research gap, this work in progress is focused on two main areas. We are interested in how to upscale university-born and transition focused Urban Pilots to new contexts and how Transition Teams in municipalities, their roles and capacities could benefit this process. For the first, we will utilize the experience gathered from the Smart City Challenge Innovation Program managed by the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities, an international research and development centre under Tallinn University of Technology driven by the passion to enhance the quality of life in urban areas. For the second, we will use the experience and knowledge collected from the NetZeroCities project where the FinEst Centre is a partner.
The aim of the first research area is to identify the main challenges of transferring and adapting university-born Urban Digital Technologies (UDTs) to new contexts (cities in the same country and in other countries) through linking the technology transfer and sustainability transitions literature and testing the generated hypotheses in three real-life pilot cases. The following research questions are addressed in this article: 1) What are the challenges of transferring people-empowering and green transition focused UDTs to other contexts (city-to-city technology transfer)? E.g., developing and implementing these in different contexts than they were initially developed; 2) What contextual preconditions are necessary for the successful application of technologies in a specific context (university-to-city technology transfer) and its further transfer to new contexts (city-to-city technology transfer)? Through the Smart City Challenge Innovation Program, we have access to qualitative and quantitative data related to small- and large-scale city level pilots in different areas (energy, mobility, building management, health, well-being, etc.) and cities (6 pilots finished, 3 starting in the end of 2024 and 4 more in 2025). We have not yet started to gather data, but we have selected some potential cases to study from the Smart City Challenge Innovation Program: 1) Renovation Strategy Tool (RESTO): Innovative digital platform for municipal decision-makers that would allow them to optimise required investments into their building stock (Võru City). 2) Microgrids and Energy Storage: Enable the utilisation of energy storage and control systems instead of relying solely on the power grid (Lääne-Harju Parish in Paldiski, city of Tartu). 3) DigiAudit: Optimising building’s energy performance and indoor climate with real-time monitoring and analysis (pilot buildings in Tartu and TalTech campus).
The aim of the second research area is to examine how the transition governance tasks and capacities match with the reality of what is expected and happening in real-life transition teams, what functions they perform and what they are missing for managing transitions in cities. The aim of the article is to examine how the transition governance tasks and capacities match with the reality of what is expected in transition teams, what functions they perform and what are they missing. Empirically we study the cases of a selected number of cities from the NetZeroCity project. The following research questions are asked in this article: 1) What functions should transition teams in municipalities perform for managing sustainability/green transitions? (Theory & Expectations); 2) According to these functions, what capacities and capabilities should these teams have? (Theory & Expectations); 3) What is the reality in terms of the needed capacities and capabilities? What do they have and what are they missing? (Practice & Reality). Empirically, we look at how the tasks and capacities of governance conceptualized in the studies of sustainability transition governance (expectations) match with the reality of what is expected and ongoing in transition teams of municipalities (reality). We will study a selection of cases of cities that have a transition team in place from the NetZeroCities project.
The articles will deploy a comparative case study approach. We will analyse project reports, websites and other secondary data, conduct in-depth interviews with different stakeholders to triangulate the secondary data and to understand the challenges from the perspective of these different stakeholders (researchers, tech developers, city representatives, people as users). For the first article, we will study the outputs from the NetZeroCities activities, e.g., Pilot Cities, bootcamp sessions aimed at understanding missing competencies and learning needs. Additionally, we will analyse the materials of sensemaking sessions that in the first round partially focused on implementation challenges. For the second article, we aim to examine different pilot projects, the technologies developed, the processes related to the piloting phase, and the transition into the market.
Both of the articles build on the Multi-Level Perspective of Sustainability Transitions (Figure 1) that is supplemented with research on Transition Challenges, Transition Tasks and Capacities for Governments, the logic of effective Transition Projects, Transition Teams, and up scaling transition focused technologies.
Figure 1. The Multi-Level Perspective of Sustainability Transitions
