Research

OBSERVISTA is a European COST Action (2025–2029) that explores innovative strategies for repurposing terrain vague, underused, vacant and neglected urban spaces, towards more regenerative, healthy and inclusive cities.

The main aim is to unlock the social, ecological and climate resilience potential of overlooked urban environments, by combining participatory approaches, spatial analysis and cross-sector collaboration. Through a pan-European network of researchers, practitioners, policymakers and community organisations, the project develops common terminology, case studies, policy frameworks and practical tools to support the transformation of urban vacant spaces.

Partners:

Pan-European COST Action network involving universities, research institutions, local authorities, NGOs and SMEs from more than 10 European countries.

GRID is funded by the European Urban Initiative – Innovative Actions (EUI-IA) (01/10/2025 – 30/09/2028) and aims to address urban heat risk and climate vulnerability through the integration of smart green infrastructure and advanced digital technologies.

Focusing on the municipalities of Kallithea and Moschato–Tavros, the project combines real-time IoT data, AI-driven analysis, AR/VR tools and participatory planning approaches to co-design climate-resilient urban environments. Through the development of green routes networks, digital planning platforms and pilot interventions, GRID seeks to reduce urban heat, improve thermal comfort, strengthen urban resilience and promote sustainable urban connectivity.

SURF’s role: Lead partner for the Cyprus transfer pilot, supporting the adaptation and transferability of GRID’s methodology and tools to the Cypriot context.

CareFabric is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme, within the New European Bauhaus call HORIZON-NEB-2025-01, (2026–2030).

The project explores how cultural participation can foster collective care for cities and support Europe’s green and just transition. Grounded in the New European Bauhaus principles of sustainability, inclusion, and beauty, it positions care as a transformative method for strengthening belonging, generating knowledge, and driving climate, social, and spatial change. Through co-creation, adaptive reuse, citizen science, participatory mapping, and storytelling, CareFabric empowers communities to shape more resilient and inclusive neighbourhoods across the pilot cities of Umeå, Bologna, Limassol, and Grenoble.

STREAM – Sustainable sTRategies for Empowering Active Mobility is a European project that aims to empower young people aged 15–24 and higher education students to actively contribute to the development of safer, more inclusive and sustainable urban mobility solutions. The project combines youth participation, spatial analysis and challenge-based learning, enabling young people to explore how data, spatial evidence and everyday experiences can inform active mobility planning.

Through participatory mapping, co-design workshops, spatial analysis and youth-led pilot activities, STREAM will strengthen green, digital and civic competences while promoting greater youth involvement in urban mobility decision-making. The project will also develop practical and transferable resources, including a Youth Mobility Co-Design Toolkit, educational modules, micro-credentials, a WebGIS platform and open-access digital tools.

Active Rooftops South Europe (aRTes) is a European research and innovation project aiming to transform underutilized urban rooftops into multifunctional, accessible, and climate-resilient spaces. With a strong focus on cities in Southern Europe, aRTes combines physical solutions, such as modular raised floors, photovoltaic pergolas, and inclusive rooftop access, with digital tools for co-design and stakeholder engagement. The SURF Lab at the University of Cyprus contributes to the project’s participatory design methodology, rooftop transformation scenarios, and stakeholder engagement strategies. Through real-world pilot sites and community-based co-creation processes, aRTes seeks to unlock the untapped potential of rooftops as infrastructures for sustainability, social inclusion, and urban regeneration.

This project examines how migration is governed and contested across the island’s urban spaces. It traces the asylum process as written in law alongside lived experiences, exposing gaps between formal procedures and everyday realities. The study maps the infrastructures of the reception system—camp spaces, bureaucratic pathways, policing and surveillance, and NGO support—together with the counter-spaces and practices of resistance that emerge. Methods combine ethnography, participatory action research, policy review, and spatial observation with collaboration among migrants, NGOs, first-line practitioners, academics, and host-society groups. Analytically, it mobilizes border epistemologies, assemblage thinking, urban morphology, and spatial justice to examine how agency is territorialized and deterritorialized through everyday urban practices.

Responsible Researcher: Ana Maria Ricchiardi Hernandez

Funded by the European Union, U-CARE is an innovative Erasmus+ project dedicated to studying and transforming urban ecosystems to enhance health across European cities with diverse climates.

Our mission is to integrate urban health research, neighbourhood diagnostics, and participatory decision making into higher education, preparing the next generation of urban planners and public health professionals to address the impacts of climate change on urban areas. It is a collaboration among European universities, SMEs, and research start-ups, including Building Health Lab, Technische Universität Berlin, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Chalmers Tekniska Högskola, the University of Cyprus, and RESET.

PS-U-GO stands for Participatory Skills for Sustainable Urban Governance. We’re on a mission to create Urban Living Labs (ULLs) where students, local residents, urban planners and policymakers collaborate to address urban challenges and co-create vibrant, sustainable communities.

PS-U-GO will implement Urban Living Labs (ULLs) as educational spaces involving stakeholders from the quadruple helix to experiment and test ideas and solutions to urban challenges. The ambition of the project is to enable place-based civic participation to address issues of public concern in respect to common values. The aim is to equip students with advanced participatory and soft skills for sustainable urban governance through innovative education, set in real-life environments.

Co-creating knowledge on forward-looking transdisciplinary planning perspectives addressing climate change and urban life in the post-pandemic city. InPlaLabs aims to form a multi-level, multi-stakeholder network of knowledge nodes on integrated planning to exchange, co-create and share knowledge on transdisciplinary planning perspectives. This novel approach is based upon the necessity to cover the inadequate synergy and lack of systemic collaboration in planning-related higher education with their surrounding knowledge ecosystems of practice and policy actors to co-create the crucial knowledge on forward-looking transdisciplinary planning perspectives and the required green, digital, and intercultural skills to address climate change and urban life in the post-pandemic city.