Smart and energy-efficient cities are an essential lever and central starting point for achieving Austria's climate and energy targets and improving coexistence in our cities. The Climate and Energy Fund therefore launched the Smart Cities Initiative back in 2010, which initially focused on the development of technical solutions that enable cities and their residents to make the transition to an energy-efficient and climate-friendly way of life. Increasingly, however, the focus is now shifting to the human factor.
Through the intelligent use and combination of technical AND social innovations, the quality of life of future generations is to be preserved and optimized. Today, our Smart Cities demo tenders are therefore primarily concerned with the development and realization of holistic strategies that have the potential to improve satisfaction and the energy balance in an urban area today, tomorrow, but also the day after tomorrow. This can also be demonstrated with innovative low-tech solutions in the urban testbed. Eco-social housing and the "affordable housing" factor play very decisive roles in this, but so do many other areas such as a sustainable mix of uses.
As the example of "Mixture: Possible!" in the Nordbahnhof urban development area in Vienna shows, a combination of these factors is both exciting and promising: Only if the users are integrated into the project and placed at the center of the solutions and approaches will they also support the project as desired and actually use it for themselves. In the "Mix: Possible!" project, this has been achieved in an exemplary manner. With this booklet, the great results are now also vividly presented and made accessible to the interested public - one of the goals of the Smart Cities Initiative of the Climate and Energy Fund. We would be pleased if interested parties could also use the successful components of this showcase project for their own initiatives and urban projects.