GENeCITY

Acronym: GENeCITY
Title: Generative Agentic AI and Explainable Digital Twins for Climate-Neutral Cities

European cities are under pressure to become climate neutral. What is the GENeCITY project, and how will it help cities make this transition?
Dr. Carina Veeckman - GENeCITY is a Horizon Europe project that helps cities move towards climate neutrality by combining AI, digital twins, and participatory governance. The idea is to give cities, such as their urban planners, policymakers, and residents, tools to explore "what-if" scenarios around concrete urban challenges like heat stress, air pollution, and mobility. The project co-designs and evaluates these tools with the cities themselves. Five pilot cities across Europe are involved, including Athens (Greece), Riga (Latvia), Amersfoort (The Netherlands), Murcia (Spain), and Skellefteå (Sweden). 

GENeCITY will use new digital tools to help cities understand and plan for challenges. In everyday terms, what will these tools allow cities ─ and their citizens ─ to do differently?
Laura Temmerman - The core idea is that cities and their citizens will be able to explore different possible futures before committing to decisions. Through the GENeCITY platform, users can visualise what happens if a city plants more trees, expands cycling infrastructure, or changes traffic flows: how does that affect air quality, heat, or emissions? Citizens also play a role in generating the data that feeds these tools. Through participatory mobile apps and low-cost sensors, residents can contribute real-time observations on air quality, heat, and comfort in their neighbourhoods.

The project brings together many partners from different countries. What role will the VUB team play, and why is this expertise important for the project’s success?
Dr. Carina Veeckman -  SMIT leads two work packages in GENeCITY. At the start of the project, we lead WP4, which is about making sure the tools being developed actually respond to real needs. That means reviewing existing urban policies across the pilot cities, mapping stakeholders, and running participatory workshops to understand what city partners and residents need from the system — and how much they trust AI in the first place.

Towards the end of the project, we lead WP14, which focuses on ensuring that what works in the five pilot cities can travel further. This involves the development of a GENeCITY toolkit, which is a practical resource that other cities can use to adopt the project's methods and tools beyond the project's lifetime.

What broader societal impact will GENeCITY have?
Laura Temmerman: GENeCITY aims to to make AI-driven tools transparent, explainable, and genuinely accessible, including to groups that are typically left out of these conversations, such as the older adults, youth, and socio-economically disadvantaged communities.
There is also a broader question of trust. As AI becomes more embedded in public decision-making, citizens have legitimate reasons to ask how these systems work and whether they serve everyone fairly. Through our participatory approach, we aim to build in explainability and accountability from the start.