Status:
✅ Finalized
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Grenoble-Alpes Métropole is currently undergoing a large-scale urban transformation through the GRANDALPE programme, covering the municipalities of Grenoble, Échirolles and Eybens. This metropolitan area, shaped by dense development and car-oriented planning from the 1960s–1970s, is now being redeveloped as a demonstrator of ecological transition, low-carbon mobility and improved urban liveability.
Within this transformation context, urban heat has emerged as a critical issue affecting thermal comfort, public health and the quality of public space, especially in dense and highly mineralised areas undergoing redevelopment. Grenoble-Alpes Métropole is increasingly exposed to Urban Heat Island effects, intensified by dense urban form, limited vegetation in certain districts, and more frequent and intense heatwaves.
Grenoble-Alpes Métropole does not currently have integrated, operational means to assess and anticipate how construction, greening and redevelopment projects affect Urban Heat Islands, daytime thermal comfort and related ecosystem services.
While numerous urban development projects are underway across the metropolitan area, the city lacks the capacity to systematically model and compare the climatic impacts of different design choices, land-use configurations and greening strategies before they are implemented. As a result, decisions on new buildings, public space transformations and redevelopment projects are often taken without a clear, shared and evidence-based understanding of their cumulative effects on local microclimates, heat exposure and long-term climate resilience.
Currently urban planning and redevelopment projects in Grenoble-Alpes Métropole are assessed through fragmented indicators, static analyses and sector-specific datasets. These approaches do not allow the city to connect land use, materials, vegetation, urban form and climate variables into a coherent understanding of urban heat impacts.
This results in limited capacity to compare alternative design or greening scenarios before implementation, to assess trade-offs between development, thermal comfort and climate resilience, and to communicate the environmental impacts of projects to citizens and private stakeholders in a transparent and accessible manner.
Grenoble-Alpes Métropole seeks to obtain an operational digital decision-support tool enabling the assessment and comparison of construction, redevelopment and greening projects regarding their impacts on urban heat-related indicators prior to implementation.
Desired solution
The expected outcome is the delivery of a usable digital tool producing clear and interpretable outputs, such as indicators and visual representations, that can be used by metropolitan services to inform planning and redevelopment decisions.
Functional expectations
In addition, the city expects the tool to support communication and engagement with non-technical stakeholders. By making information on urban heat-related impacts accessible and understandable, the tool should facilitate public participation processes and informed dialogue with private developers and citizens around urban development and climate adaptation choices.
Expected impact
Urban heat islands pose increasing risks for Grenoble-Alpes Métropole, affecting public health, social equity, energy demand and the usability of urban spaces. Heat stress particularly impacts vulnerable groups and reduces the quality and accessibility of public spaces during summer periods.
For the Metropole, this challenge is directly linked to long-term territorial objectives, including the ecological transition, climate adaptation and the transformation of dense urban areas. In the context of large-scale programmes such as GRANDALPE, urban development choices made today will shape local microclimates for decades. The ability to anticipate and mitigate urban heat is therefore essential to ensure that long-term redevelopment projects contribute to a resilient, low-carbon and liveable metropolitan area.
Beyond Grenoble, urban heat has become a shared challenge for cities across Europe and other regions facing climate change and urban densification, making this issue relevant well beyond a single local context.
Available experimentation space (districts, programmes, redevelopment areas, etc.)
The GRANDALPE area offers a real-life experimentation space, covering approximately 30 km², 30000 inhabitants, and 40000 jobs.
Scale of experimentation (neighbourhood / district / metropolitan)
Solutions can be tested at the neighbourhood and district scale, in the context of active redevelopment, public space transformation, and greening projects.
Available data, digital tools, technical support, city engagement, etc.
The city is open to piloting approaches that combine data, modelling, visualisation, and stakeholder engagement to better address urban heat challenges.
Existing experience with pilots or tests
Although grounded in the Grenoble-Alpes Metropole context, this challenge reflects a broader issue faced by many European cities undergoing densification and climate adaptation. Solutions developed and tested in Grenoble are expected to have high potential for replication in other metropolitan and mixed urban–peri-urban contexts.
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