Railway stations for green and socially inclusive cities

ended

Railway stations hold a unique position in the urban landscape: they not only act as complex nodes of mobility and transport, but also as public places that can be seen as integral elements of the city. Consequently, stations have a decisive impact on their urban surroundings as places of everyday life, affecting all stakeholders including citizens and the environment. The central ambition of RAIL4CITIES is to develop a new operational, readily available and highly applicable model of stations (SCP model), combined with a common European methodology and tool for its effective implementation. The project takes inter-dependent impediments (profit-orientated business model, complex web of agents and stakeholders, policy gaps) into account and provides decision makers with the tools to transform stations into promoters of sustainable cities. The model will be applied to 5 living labs addressing the stations’ transformation into hubs of green and active mobility (FR), energy hubs (IT), towards Transit Oriented Development (DE), into a socially-inclusive services hub with using Nature Based Solutions (PL) and services hubs enabling the 15-minute city and circular economy (BE). This will be enhanced by 3 case-studies from the high-speed rail line from Lisbon to Oporto (PT) to study the resilience of infrastructures for both adaptation of spaces to new future uses, and adaptation to climate-change issues and health crises. With 14 partners from 7 European countries, further supported by 9 institutions through letters of support, the RAIL4CITIES consortium and ecosystem integrates the relevant stakeholders from universities, industry, government and the public, and is therefore in the position to design, evaluate and publish a EU-wide model for transforming existing stations or designing new ones into socio-technical systems operating as city’s greening engines for the surrounding environment, and new urban hubs aggregating multiple services for the users and its citizens