Book of Abstracts from the Urban Europe Research Alliance (UERA) Conference 2025
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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Editors
Keywords
Climate-neutral cities, Urban sustainability, Social justice, Urban planning, Energy transition
Synopsis
This Book of Abstracts presents the contributions of the Urban Europe Research Alliance (UERA) Conference 2025, held in Rome at the National Research Council, Italy, under the theme Sustainable and Climate-Neutral Cities for Inclusive and Equitable Urban Futures. The conference addresses systemic and urgent issues in urban research and brings together scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to explore questions at the intersection of sustainability, climate action, and social justice.
The 2025 conference features 45 abstracts and full paper presentations, organised across five thematic sections. The contributions examine the implications and interdependencies of urban sustainability in light of global and interlinked crises, including climate change, biodiversity loss, energy and resource scarcity, public health risks, growing inequalities, and geopolitical instability. The conference also recognises the planetary dimension of urbanisation, where local dynamics are intertwined with global processes.
The volume reflects interdisciplinary perspectives and diverse methodologies, including comparative cases and applied research. It highlights sustainable and climate-neutral urban development, community building, and transformative planning practices, while addressing challenges related to inclusivity, equity, and social justice. It also focuses on governance and planning mechanisms, socio-spatial dynamics between core and peripheral areas, and the role of technology in sustainability transitions.
The complete proceedings are currently under preparation and will be published by Springer in 2026. The DOI for the Springer publication will be shared on this page once it is available.
Author Biographies
Enza Lissandrello is an Associate Professor at Aalborg University with a background in urban planning and public policy, human geography and socio-technical transition studies. Her work examines urban and regional planning under contemporary trends of reflexive modernization, participation, deliberation, conflicts and issues of representation. She has taught and published on the roles of the planners and policy actors in planning with sustainable aims and though deliberative forms. She has led various empirical projects on cross-border governance in Italy, France and Switzerland (the Mont-Blanc area), the planning of sustainable transitions in The Netherlands (Amsterdam and Waterdunen) and on the role of planners as catalysts of change in Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway and Sweden). She has also engaged in research on gamification as a mediation strategy between citizens and policy managers in several EU cities (Amsterdam, Ghent, Helsinki, Fundao, Palermo, Barcelona) for the transformation of urban mobility values. Her main research interests are on the practice and the theory of planning, urban governance and participation, deliberation and power, performative studies, sustainable transitions, interpretive methods of policy analysis and planning, critical approaches to smart citizenships.
Carmelina Cosmi (M.Sc. in Physics, Ph.D.) has a strong background in energy systems analysis and modelling, sustainability, smart governance and support to local authorities on sustainable strategies for resource efficiency, climate change mitigation, and policy evaluation. She has been thematic leader and scientific expert in many international research projects (e.g. Interreg MED PrioritEE, Interreg IVC Project RENERGY, SEE ORIENTGATE, IEE RES2020, FP7 REACCESS, FP6 NEEDS) and contributed to JP Smart Cities and JPI Urban Europe. Her scientific activities have given rise to numerous papers appeared in international Journals and Conferences.