The goals of MAKING-CITY are established around two main pillars: the Positive Energy District (PED) and the Energy Transition, which is currently a pillar for fighting against climate change. So our main objective is to demonstrate the PED concept and develop new integrated strategies to address the urban energy system transformation towards low carbon cities, with this PED approach as the core of the urban energy transition pathway.

As a large-scale demonstration project, MAKING-CITY will implement in its Lighthouses cities, Groningen in Netherlands and Oulu in Finland, 3 real scale demo PEDs and replicate the PED concept in its Follower cities: León (Spain), Bassano del Grappa (Italy), Kadıköy (Turkey), Trenčín (Slovakia), Vidin (Bulgaria) and Lublin (Poland).

Apart from the PED development in the Lighthouse cities and the PED execution project in the Follower ones, the advanced urban planning will be the focus for all cities involved in the project, which will address the development of an overall transformation process with horizon set up on 2050. In MAKING-CITY, a change at organizational level will be promoted by the creation of a City Planning Office that will be supported with the appropriate tools to address a new and really innovative urban planning approach. After this and a strong training process, the project will address a very innovative and ambitious roadmap to the cities with a long-term horizon, 2050.

Since PED is a relative recent concept, MAKING-CITY has adopted the following definition: “A Positive Energy District is an urban area with clear boundaries, consisting on buildings of different typologies that actively manage the energy flow between them and the larger energy system to reach an annual positive energy balance”. Therefore, one of the most important aspects to be considered is the Annual Energy Balance calculation procedure.

Although in principle a PED approach seems a solid and ambitious strategy, this should be completed with long term urban planning to ensure upscaling and fostering higher impacts. Currently city energy plans are starting to be designed with a 2030 horizon, according to the standard city commitments, as for instance those reflected in SECAPs and other more specific city plans (e.g. SUMPs, Digital Agendas…). The project will face a huge challenge, consisting on developing not only a 2030 approach but a longer term 2050 City Vision that guarantees a seamless city transformation from planning to implementation and further upscaling.

MAKING-CITY will address procedures and methodologies to support cities in their long term urban planning towards an adequate energy transition, paving the way of the planning, implementation and up-scaling process. This procedure will be approached by a 3-layers planning process: long term planning 2050 will be the high level approach, medium term approach (SEAP/SECAPs) towards 2030 and short term (execution plan) with a time horizon of about 5 years.