Imagine living in a building that once leaked heat in the winter and baked in the summer, now retrofitted to be a haven of comfort and efficiency.

With its engagement in an energy community and its environmental commitment, Lars von Trier’s production company Zentropa is just the tip of the iceberg.

It began with Angela Merkel. When the former German chancellor opened the borders to refugees in 2015, hundreds of thousands of Syrians and others entered. Many are now settled all over the country.

It’s all about connection. This is the key to making a city “smart”, say the smart people working on the subject. And by “connection”, they mean not only the technological kind but especially the human one.

Put forty people in a room, all with a smartphone in their hand. Ask them to scan a QR code, redirecting to a set of questions like: “How much meat and eggs do you eat?” and “How often do you fly?” They will first start giggling, and speaking to each other to find their answers.

"Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on the eve of the recent COP15 in Montreal . "It's time to forge a peace pact with nature and stop this orgy of destruction".

When Hans was a kid, he used to spend his afternoons in his grandmother’s shop, watching the fish swimming in the big tanks where she kept them, waiting for the clients to choose the best ones for dinner.

17 th November 2022 - The city of Dresden – the second most populated city in Germany – has an important historical significance in the country.

“Wood may be present in people’s life more than we think”, says Mariana Hassegawa, a researcher at the European Forest Institute . She is one of the authors of a case study on new wood-based products by the BioMonitor EU project.

The ongoing energy crisis, which started in summer 2021 due to low natural gas supply and which further deteriorated with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has highlighted the urgent need for a more independent European energy policy .

The world of online digital media marches forward relentlessly, but many of us still prefer the feel and enjoyment of a good book in our hands, or a newspaper to while away a quiet moment.

In the city, the famous Cabanyal district which had been home to a local fishing community for a long time, has recently been transformed into a testing ground for numerous energy efficiency techniques.

Maguy Soldevila is a former art teacher. Some years ago, she quit the frenzy and the pollution of the French city of Lyon to move into a typical house of the 1960s, in the small village of Sail-sous-Couzan.

Even though people increasingly recognise the plastic pollution threat, we have used more plastic since the covid-19 pandemic began .

Ana, 32, loves going to the movies, is keen on theatre and takes regular yoga lessons. However, during the Covid pandemic she quit the frenzy of Madrid to settle in a remote village in Extremadura , a large Spanish rural area, bordering Portugal.

Federica Gasbarro was a 22-year-old biology student in Rome when she felt compelled to become an environmental activist.

Cities, with their concentration of services, economic opportunity, mobility and social interaction, have proved endlessly attractive to humans.

Francesco is an Italian lawyer. He lives in Rome and is now about to move into a new apartment. “It’s a way to get closer to my office,” he says. “I don’t have a car, I just ride bicycle.

Buildings stand at the epicentre of the climate change and sustainability debate, as discussions at the recent COP26 conference demonstrated.

My need to understanding the world has always been linked to my passion for nature. I grew up close to the Wadden Sea in Germany. It was therefore very natural for me to dig up worms from the mud flats during my biology degree.