Introducing the CRUNCH urban living labs

Six cities were partners in the CRUNCH project, each hosting an Urban Living Lab (ULL) – a location within the city to use as a test bed for piloting climate-resilient strategies, taking advantage of the Food-Water-Energy (FWE) nexus. One of the key aims for CRUNCH was to co-define context-specific challenges for each of the ULLs in the participating cities. In the section which follows, each of the six urban sites is described, outlining the specific climate challenges faced by that particular location and the strategies implemented to mitigate against them.

The six sites not only vary in their geographic location but also in their size, their scope, and ultimately their success. The data collected from each site was vital for constructing the CRUNCH Integrated Decision Support system, which we hope will allow urban planners and other interested parties to model the potential for making similar interventions in their own cities. More than this, however, we hope that the practical lessons learnt from our shared experience of implementing six different ULLs in a very short (and volatile) period will help others who wish to experiment and improve the urban resilience of their own communities.