Intelligent Cities / Smart Cities
Evolving Intelligent Environments
A new book by Nicos Komninos, published by Routledge in the Advances in Regional Science, Economics, and Policy series. Evolving Intelligent Environments: Smart Ecosystems and Transformative Innovations in the 21st Century offers an interdisciplinary exploration of innovation through intelligent environments. The framework proposed is applicable to any urban or regional ecosystem [...]
Read moreDigital and Green Transition Intelligent Cities / Smart Cities
URENIO Research on Climate-Neutral Smart Cities Receives Best Paper Award at HCII 2026
The conference publication “Interactive Optimization for Urban Carbon Neutrality Through Renewable Energy and Nature-Based Solutions,” authored by Júlia Sánchez-Martínez, Nicos Komninos, Elisavet Gkitsa, and Anastasia Panori, received the Best Paper Award at the 14th International Conference on Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions. The conference was part of the Human–Computer Interaction [...]
Read moreTerritorial Innovation Systems
Revisiting Innovation District Theory: Can We Predict the Innovation Performance of City Districts?
A recent paper published in Technovation marks an important step in the evolution of research on innovation districts by introducing new AI-based methods for predicting the innovation performance of city neighbourhoods. The study builds on a long tradition of research on the geography of innovation,
Read moreDigital and Green Transition
Design and Applications of Positive Energy Districts: eBook
A special issue at DESIGNS is published as an ebook, edited by Tony Castillo-Calzadilla and Carlos Quesada-Granja. This collection of articles explores the forefront of sustainable urbanism, where city districts generate more renewable energy than they consume, and presents a blueprint for positive energy districts (PEDs), core building blocks of [...]
Read moreInnovation ecosystems
SmartGreenEcos: Call for Participation
SmartGreenEcos is a European project that aims to create a Mediterranean smart ecosystem of 100 food industry businesses, fostering collective innovation, digital and green transition, and improved business competitiveness. SmartGreenEcos brings together companies from Greece, Cyprus, Tunisia, and Jordan, in collaboration with universities and research organisations from the Aristotle University [...]
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Smart Green Ecosystems: Turning industry sectors into ecosystems
Smart Green Ecosystems is a new project co-designed by URENIO Research and approved by Interreg NEXT MED in the framework of Smarter Mediterranean. It aims to establish an ecosystem of 100 SMEs from four Mediterranean countries (Greece, Cyprus, Tunisia, and Jordan) to foster collaboration and support digital and green transitions. [...]
Read moreInnovative Cities & Regions
A conceptual synthesis of 25 years of regional development research: Core thematic communities and emerging frontiers
This URENIO Research Working Paper, authored by Anastasia Panori, presents a comprehensive framework for understanding the intellectual landscape of regional development. It provides valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to navigate this complex and evolving field.
Read moreDigital and Green Transition
Blending Nature with Technology: Integrating NBSs with RESs to Foster Carbon-Neutral Cities
As cities seek to achieve carbon neutrality, the integration of nature-based solutions (NBSs) with renewable energy sources (RESs) presents both an opportunity and a challenge, requiring an interdisciplinary approach and an innovative planning strategy. This paper published in Designs 2025, 9(3), 60, Special Issue on Positive Energy Districts, aims to explore potential [...]
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Smart carbon–neutral development: Complexity, multi-level governance, convolution
A new open-access paper on carbon-neutral smart cities published in World Development. The paper delves into the current EU policy and strategy for advancing smart carbon–neutral development across Europe, as outlined by the EU Cities Mission, which aims to boost climate neutrality across 112 cities by 2030. Primary objective of [...]
Read moreCities
Land, Best Paper Award
The Land Best Paper Award Committee selected the research paper “Net Zero Energy Districts: Connected Intelligence for Carbon-Neutral Cities” as the Second prize of the Land 2022 Best Paper Award. The committee determined the award based on an overall evaluation of the papers’ originality and significance, considering citations and downloads. Six [...]
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