Cities face more complex challenges, from climate change and changing ways people get around to making better use of data and digital tools. While more digital solutions are available than ever, the real challenge is matching the right technologies to each city’s needs, priorities, data, stakeholders, and practical realities.
URBAN-FLOW is working to help with this. The project is creating a way to bring all these parts together. This helps cities move from understanding their situation and exploring possible futures to choosing, testing, and linking digital solutions.
URBAN-FLOW has finished its initial set-up and early work with partners. Now, the project is bringing its different parts together. The team is connecting city needs, future scenarios, digital tools, technical plans, pilot projects, and Living Labs.
This progress was clear during the project’s latest consortium-wide review in July 2026. The review let the team reflect on what has been done so far and helped strengthen the connections between different activities in the project implementation. In this approach, participating cities’ needs and goals guide technical solutions, pilot activities, and Living Labs.
What Challenge Is URBAN-FLOW Addressing?
For many cities, making digital and climate changes means working with different departments, technologies, data, stakeholders, and decision-makers. This can make it hard to move from separate projects and tools to more coordinated action.
URBAN-FLOW is addressing this gap. URBAN-FLOW is working to bridge the gaps between city needs, data, technology, and implementation through a common process. First, cities start from their own challenges and priorities and explore how these may evolve. Then, they connect this understanding with digital tools, technical solutions, and practical pilot activities.
The goal is not to use technology for its own sake. URBAN-FLOW wants to find solutions that fit local conditions. People and organisations shaping each city’s future are involved in exploring and testing these solutions.
From City Needs to Future Scenarios
A big part of this phase is understanding each participating city’s current situation. The team is also creating scenarios for how these cities might change.
These assessments lay the groundwork for what comes next. By looking at both the present and the future, URBAN-FLOW can better match its technology and pilot projects to each city’s challenges and goals.
This work also gives the whole consortium a shared starting point. As teams develop their activities, the aim is to make sure new tools and ideas fit the real places where they will be tested.
In this way, future scenarios are not separate from developing technology. They help the team ask what cities might need in the future and which solutions could help from the URBAN-FLOW Local Digital Twin
At the same time, URBAN-FLOW is setting up the technical foundations for its Local Digital Twin.
This includes the platform’s technical details and reference design. It also covers a list of tools that could help cities with digital and climate change.
These parts are important building blocks for the next phase of the project. The team is still working on and improving them. The Local Digital Twin is not finished yet, but is an evolving technical base.
Right now, the team is focused on setting up the design, details, and tools needed to support future activities in the participating cities.
Overall, the goal is to connect the information cities have, the tools they can use, and the decisions they need to make.
Connecting Tools with Pilots and Living Labs
A key next step is to decide which tools and technical solutions each city will use. It’s just as important to figure out how these will connect with the planned pilots and Living Labs. Earlier, the focus was on understanding needs, exploring scenarios, and co-creating possible approaches. Now, however, the work is shifting towards practical questions about implementing and testing these ideas.
The focus is now more on how the different parts of URBAN-FLOW can work together in real life. This includes technical solutions, digital tools, and pilot projects that cities will try out in real situations.
Living Labs will also play a key role in this process. They will offer spaces for ongoing collaboration, testing, and learning with important stakeholders.
This creates a feedback loop between city needs, technology, and implementation. Cities can shape solutions around local priorities, test them in real life, and improve them based on what they learn.
Keeping Cities and Stakeholders at the Centre
The team is still mapping stakeholders and working with the cities leading the project as URBAN-FLOW moves into this more integrated phase.
Broad and diverse participation is still important for the project. Different stakeholders bring different views on local needs, priorities, challenges, and opportunities. This helps make sure the solutions stay relevant to the places where they will be used.
This engagement will also help with co-creating and testing city-level solutions as the project moves forward. The connection between technical development and stakeholder involvement is becoming more important as URBAN-FLOW gets closer to implementation.
Technology by itself cannot solve complex urban challenges. That’s why the project continues to connect technical development with the knowledge and experience of local people and organisations.
UTA’s Role in URBAN-FLOW
Urban Technology Alliance is a partner in URBAN-FLOW, supporting the project’s engagement, sharing results, and encouraging others to use its work.
As the project moves towards city-level implementation, UTA links URBAN-FLOW with a wider community of cities, technology providers, and innovators. It does this by using its membership network and international cooperation activities, such as the EU-Japan exchange.
In practice, this means sharing project results with cities outside the consortium. It also means helping pilot and replication cities find solutions and providers. Finally, UTA creates opportunities for URBAN-FLOW to connect with other initiatives working on similar challenges.
At its core, URBAN-FLOW asks how cities moAt its heart, URBAN-FLOW is about how cities move from using individual tools and projects to working in a more coordinated way. This is also a key question in much of UTA’s work.
Implementation Path
This is a major step in bringing together URBAN-FLOW’s different activities.
City assessments and future scenarios are helping guide the development of technical solutions. The technical design and tool list are laying the foundation for the Local Digital Twin. Pilot projects and Living Labs are creating opportunities for cities to test and put these ideas into practice. At the same time, working with stakeholders keeps these activities connected to the people and organisations shaping the project. The work is still evolving, and the team is still developing some parts. The main focus now is to strengthen these connections and prepare for the next stage.
For URBAN-FLOW, this means moving from separate project parts to a more integrated approach. The project connects co-creation, technology, and city implementation to help close the gap between what cities need and how they use digital solutions.
Ultimately, URBAN-FLOW aims to support urban change in a more connected way. This approach starts with local challenges and uses technology where it helps most. Most importantly, it involves cities and stakeholders in developing and testing solutions.