Asst. Prof. Nuri Cihan Kayaçetin from the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design has acquired a grant from the Driving Urban Transitions Partnership (DUT) 2023 Call.
Dr. Kayaçetin is the coordinator and the main applicant for the Co-creating Urban Living Labs for the Circular Regenerative Neighbourhoods (Urban-CoLLaR) project, and Prof. Dr. Yasemin Afacan is contributing as the senior researcher in the consortium. The Urban-CoLLaR project is the first project in the DUT call series that is coordinated by a Turkish institution.
The Urban-CoLLaR project will be supported for 36 months with an approximate budget of € 1.8 million. Bilkent University will coordinate the project in collaboration with a consortium from six different countries, including 12 partners. The main partners are Muğla Municipality, Çankaya Municipality, KU Leuven Gent Campus, Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences, The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Scoala Nationala de Studii Politice si Administrative, Politecnico di Milano and PlusValue; cooperation partners are Stad Leuven, Stad Brugge and Comune di Rho.
The project aims to improve the decision-making capacity of municipalities and developers on circular applications for urban renewal and development in a wide geography.
A decision-support instrument will be developed for local authorities. By identifying the environmental and socio-economic resources and indicators at the neighbourhood level, a common understanding of circularity principles and solutions will be developed. Scenarios for different user profiles will be generated and the environmental and socio-economic benefits of circular solutions will be measured. The project seeks to develop replicable circular solutions for resource-efficient urban transitions in the EU region and beyond.