Transitioning existing urban neighbourhoods to Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) requires integrated planning to address complex energy, cost, and lifecycle carbon emission challenges. Existing integrated methodologies optimize buildings individually and overlook local energy systems potentials like shared renewables and battery storage. Moreover, existing studies on optimization of on-site renewable energy sources and building retrofitting often rely on simplified typical-day representations, falling short in capturing critical operational dynamics over tim0e. This paper introduces and applies an integrated urban building energy modelling and bi-objective mixed-integer linear programming framework. The framework co-optimizes building retrofits and heating systems, PhotoVoltaic (PV) systems, and Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) capacities over a 10-year horizon with hourly resolution, targeting minimal lifecycle costs and total carbon emissions (operational and embodied). Applied to a 1950s neighbourhood in Gothenburg, Sweden, the analysis demonstrated that achieving full PED status (net-zero energy import, net-zero carbon, and energy surplus) with the evaluated interventions is highly challenging. While optimized solutions reduced the grid dependency (to similar to 63 % with PV and BESS under volatile prices) and overall carbon emissions (by similar to 13% compared to baseline), neither complete net-zero energy import, full carbon neutrality including embodied impacts, nor an energy surplus were realized. The study quantitatively identified critical trade-offs between investment costs, embodied carbon, operational performance, and resilience. Optimal solutions were sensitive to local conditions, notably low-carbon district heating and electricity price volatility. The proposed framework provides a decision-support tool for strategic PED planning in existing urban areas, enabling an exploration of complex techno-economic and environmental trade-offs.

This review focuses on technological infrastructure to support small-scale groups immersed in the development of local post-growth systems. It is inspired by two premises: first, that such countercultures - from ecovillages to maker collectives - are uniquely positioned to pioneer systemic change; and second, that the tools available to these groups have been upgraded since the onset of networked computers. Therefore, this article scopes literature on network-enabled innovations associated with three post-growth terms to distinguish digital tools that can operationally strengthen countercultures. The findings reveal a tentative toolbox corresponding to four functions of supporting technological infrastructure: collaborative Commons, assisted Administration, peer Production, and egalitarian Economy (CAPE), and five impact areas: Value, Autonomy, Collaboration, Trust, and Self-organization (VACTS). The analysis frames a conscious selection of technology as infrastructure that can strengthen countercultures both as entities and as a movement - transcending local marginalization and supporting locally rooted as well as globally connected alternative futures.

Although social sustainability is widely recognised as a vague concept, it has become an important aspect of urban planning. However, there is limited knowledge of how urban planners and designers (practitioners) interpret and operationalise it in practice. This paper explores how the concept of urban social sustainability (USS), formulated in planning policy, is conceptualised and translated into practice through operationalisation. The inherent vagueness of USS can allow misalignments between goals and outcomes, questioning the legitimacy of the planning process. The results of 15 interviews with practitioners from Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark reveal that strategies for conceptualising and operationalising USS are interdependent and include an intermediate process of re-conceptualisation. For conceptualisation, practitioners use six strategies, and for operationalisation, they rely on tools like municipal policies, public participation and digital resources. The results show that the translation of USS from conceptualisation to operationalisation is shaped by dimensions of time and scale to re-conceptualise USS. By adopting a semiotic perspective of translation, the study highlights the interpretive agency of practitioners in shaping the meaning of USS, contributing to a deeper understanding of how USS is made actionable in practice and offers insights for policy and tool development in socially sustainable urban planning.

The compact city is an ideal model for sustainability, transferred between cities as ‘best practices’. This article investigates how context-adaptive transfer of compact city ideals can take place, using Barcelona, Rotterdam and Gothenburg as examples. The objectives are to 1) summarize urban qualities discussed by stakeholders in the three cities; 2) uncover dominant urban challenges and strategies among Barcelona, Rotterdam and Gothenburg stakeholders; and 3) present how Barcelona/Rotterdam ‘best practices’ are translated and transformed by Gothenburg stakeholders into situated ‘good practices’. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 82 stakeholders in Barcelona and Rotterdam and a workshop with 17 stakeholders in Gothenburg. The article shows that any meaningful and consequential mobility of knowledge through best practices requires stakeholder-enabled translation involving social learning and co-production of locally relevant knowledge. This means that a wide range of stakeholders needs to be engaged, including affected citizens, to secure representation and transparency. To succeed, best practices need embellishment with sufficient contextual information in formats possible to understand and process by these stakeholders. Strengthened involvement of stakeholders in transfer, translation and transformation of ‘best practices’ into ‘good practices’ requires improved models for stakeholder engagement, moving away from prevalent top-down attitudes of many city governments.

Urban living labs (ULLs) are experimental governance mechanisms accelerating sustainability transitions in the built environment, yet their governance implications and systemic impact are often under-examined. A comparative analysis of six ULLs is presented with a focus on positive energy districts (PEDs) and energy communities (ECs) in Austria, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. Stakeholder configurations, governance models and value creation processes are analysed using structured case documentation and a multitheoretical lens combining the multi-level perspective (MLP), ULL frameworks, innovation ecosystem theory and the Cambridge Value Mapping Tool (CVMT). Substantial variation is revealed in governance, ranging from centralised, municipality-led models to distributed, cooperative or academic leadership. Mapping stakeholder networks across MLP levels uncovers critical tensions between regime incumbents and niche actors. CVMT analysis demonstrates that value creation is multidimensional (economic, environmental, social) but often uneven, with missed or destroyed value linked to governance misalignment or limited stakeholder engagement. It is argued that ULLs function as infrastructures for transition governance, not merely technical testbeds. Their success relies on their capacity to align multi-actor systems, mediate institutional frictions and co-produce shared value. Findings offer actionable insights for designing ULLs that are technically effective and socially embedded for just and sustainable urban energy transitions.

Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) have emerged as a key urban innovation to accelerate the transition toward climate neutrality and sustainability in cities. This study explores the integration of backcasting methodologies and Digital Twin (DT) strategies to advance the development of PEDs. A two-step approach was employed: participatory backcasting workshops to co-create long-term visions and actionable strategies, and DT technology applications tailored to three Urban Living Labs (ULLs) in Vienna (Austria), Gothenburg (Sweden), and Sakarya (Türkiye). The backcasting process facilitated the identification of pathways to energy efficiency, renewable energy integration, and decarbonization, creating a structured yet adaptable roadmap for PED development. DT functionalities—including Digitize, Visualize, Simulate, Predict, and Orchestrate—transformed these plans into operational tools, enabling real-time monitoring, predictive modeling, and adaptive energy management. The study underscores the critical role of stakeholder collaboration in aligning local priorities with sustainability goals and demonstrates the capacity of DT frameworks and PEDs to enhance energy efficiency in diverse urban contexts. However, challenges such as scalability, resource intensity, and sustaining long-term engagement persist. This dual approach highlights the potential of integrating participatory planning with advanced digital tools to bridge the gap between visionary energy goals and practical implementation, offering a replicable framework for urban energy transitions and decarbonization.

The sharing economy (SE) could promote environmental sustainability, though its outcomes often depend on the SE's ability to reduce product consumption and transportation impacts. In this study, we develop a methodological framework to identify where the implementation of sharing can contribute to sustainability by reducing both aspects. The framework involves neighborhood-level extrapolation of consumption and user attitudes, as well as spatial analyses of existing sharing initiatives. Through these steps, we can compare supply and demand of 6 sharing activities (i.e., reparation, buying and selling second-hand, loaning to and from private individuals, and renting) and 7 product groups (clothes, tools, furniture, electronics, and children-, hobby- and kitchen equipment), and evaluate the level of pedestrian accessibility and centrality in different neighborhoods. The viability of the methodological framework is demonstrated by using the case city of Gothenburg, Sweden, focusing on mediated and locally accessible sharing. Based on a non-comprehensive data sample, the results show consistent spatial patterns in product consumption; more distinct patterns regarding attitudes and the presence of initiatives; and unfulfilled sharing demands for tools, furniture, and various types of equipment. Additionally, product-based unfulfilled demands were more prevalent in the outer city neighborhoods, whereas sharing activity-based unfulfilled demands increased toward the inner city. Opportunities for sustainable sharing were identified for locations with medium-high levels of centrality. Future research implies improving the results for Gothenburg with representative data, and the development of the method to accommodate other types of sustainable sharing.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions while adapting cities to the consequences of climate change is one of the major challenges in the current energy transition towards a nearly carbon-free built environment. A pressing concern regards the rising of global and urban temperatures, which are expected to increase demand for building cooling and hinder the achievement of decarbonisation goals also in continental climate zones. However, available studies and assessment methods still largely overlook the environmental impacts of cooling measures in future climate conditions. This study investigates the efficiency of implementing passive cooling measures (insulation, triple glazing, solar shading, solar reflectivity of fa & ccedil;ade and natural ventilation) during the renovation of a Swedish multi-family residential building. Novel indicators and an integrated assessment method are developed by combining a climate and energy model with a carbon footprint assessment to evaluate the carbon efficiency of the measures. The results comparison between a baseline case and applied passive measures for Representative Concentration Pathways RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 in 2018, 2030 and 2050 indicates that natural ventilation, triple glazing and solar shading ensure cooling demand reduction between 13% and 56% and have the lowest carbon footprint among the assessed passive strategies. Implementing a combination of all assessed measures has the largest cooling demand reduction potential but poses a trade-off in terms of carbon footprint.

The compact city is an ideal model for sustainability, transferred between cities as 'best practices'. This article investigates how context-adaptive transfer of compact city ideals can take place, using Barcelona, Rotterdam and Gothenburg as examples. The objectives are to 1) summarize urban qualities discussed by stakeholders in the three cities; 2) uncover dominant urban challenges and strategies among Barcelona, Rotterdam and Gothenburg stakeholders; and 3) present how Barcelona/Rotterdam 'best practices' are translated and transformed by Gothenburg stakeholders into situated 'good practices'. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 82 stakeholders in Barcelona and Rotterdam and workshop with 17 stakeholders in Gothenburg. The article shows that any meaningful and consequential mobility of knowledge through best practices requires stakeholder-enabled translation involving social learning and co-production of locally relevant knowledge. This means that a wide range of stakeholders needs to be engaged, including affected citizens, to secure representation and transparency. To succeed, best practices need embellishment with sufficient contextual information in formats possible to understand and process by these stakeholders. Strengthened involvement of stakeholders in transfer, translation and transformation of 'best practices' into 'good practices' requires improved models for stakeholder engagement, moving away from prevalent top-down attitudes of many city governments.

City Digital Twins have emerged as pivotal tools for representing and modelling urban systems. While existing literature emphasizes technological and framework development, limited attention has been given to the practical usability of digital twins in urban planning and decision-making processes. This paper addresses this gap by presenting a participatory approach for a city digital twin (CDTE) development, specifically tailored for supporting stakeholder communication and decision-making in the urban energy transition domain. The study, conducted in three phases, utilizes participatory methods, involving local stakeholders in the development process. The focus is on the Swedish city of Gothenburg, which is actively pursuing climate-neutral goals by 2030. The research integrates quantitative energy modelling and the creation of a web-based interface for the CDTE. The scenarios, grounded in local needs and challenges, explore the impacts of urban development models, climate warming and renovation measures on the building stock. The CDTE, developed and tested through workshops with diverse stakeholders, proves to be effective for the visualization and the discussion of various decarbonization scenarios. Key findings from users’ assessments underscore the significance of clarity and readability in scenario content and user interface for fostering interactions among different administrative spheres. This research contributes to the broader discourse on leveraging City Digital Twins for informed decision-making in urban contexts, providing insights into the practical application of digital twins in addressing the complex challenges of urban energy transition.

Abstract This research develops a multi-criteria framework and Quality Assurance checklist (QA) for Positive-Energy-Districts (PEDs). PEDs have a large potential to contribute to reach urban climate goals but require also changes of planning, development, and transformation processes of neighborhoods. Our understanding of PEDs has been broadened to include aspects of circularity and economic viability, ensuring that PED concepts not only contribute to environmental sustainability but are also economically feasible. In this enhanced perspective, Digital Twins serving as essential carriers of information and facilitators of communication, effectively bridging the gap between different dimensions of sustainable development and practical implementation and monitoring. This study is part of an ongoing European project, Digital Twin for PEDs (DT4PEDs), with Living Labs in three countries: Austria, Sweden, and Turkey. The presented study addresses the central research question, “In what phases can specific requirements be linked to the process to ensure PED development throughout the entire process using a Digital Twin?” within the context of the DT4PEDs project. Based on a participatory workshop with stakeholders from partner countries and a parallel literature review, the study encompasses three key areas. First, it seeks to consolidate property development practices across Austria, Sweden, and Turkey, including both new construction and retrofitting, into a unified framework. Second, it formulates a PED multi-criteria framework, complemented by a Quality Assurance (QA) checklist. Finally, the recommendations for digital twin are proposed to support energy related information flows and stakeholder dialogue.

Sustainable urban transformation requires comprehensive knowledge about the built environment, including people's perceptions, use of sites, and wishes. Qualitative interviews are conducted to understand better people's opinions about a specific topic or location. This study explores the automatization of the interview coding process by investigating how state-of-the-art natural language processing techniques classify sentiment and semantic orientation from interviews transcribed in Swedish. For the sentiment analysis, the Swedish bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) model KB-BERT was used to perform a multi-class classification task on a text sentence level into three different classes: positive, negative, and neutral. Named entity recognition (NER) and string search were used for the semantic analysis to perform multi-label classification to match domain-related topics to the sentence. The models were trained and evaluated on partially annotated datasets. The results demonstrate that the implemented deep learning techniques are a possible and promising solution to achieve the stated goal.

To accomplish the sustainability potential of the sharing economy (SE), there is a need for proactive governance of the SE. In this paper, we aim to generate knowledge on household product consumption and sharing to support SE governance in Gothenburg City (Sweden). Data from two independent cross-sectional questionnaire surveys were statistically analyzed, which generated insights within 7 product groups covering household durables; and within 20 demographic categories regarding gender, age, dwelling type, education level, family composition, and income. Results were in accordance with the well-known attitude-behavior gaps regarding sustainable practices, though variance was seen for these gaps depending on the product and demographic group considered. The study suggests that, for 2021, clothes were consumed in high amounts (units/year) but there was relatively low interest and participation in sharing them, while the opposite was seen for tools and leisure items. As for demographic groups, men were less likely than women to reduce their consumption through participating in sharing, contrary to respondents with higher education. Governance reflections are included for the highlighted cases, such as investigating the reasons why men are less interested in the SE and in reducing their consumption; and exploring hinders to achieving a critical mass of users and providers in clothes sharing.

A synthetic population is a distribution of synthetic agents that replicates the demographic distribution of a real-world population based on census records. This paper presents an end-to-end model to generate a synthetic population of residents in Gothenburg, Sweden, along with activity schedules and mobility patterns for present and past populations. Using a stochastic modelling approach, we describe the model and present its corresponding dataset. The model is designed for applications in neighbourhood planning and includes detailed replicas of people in different neighbourhoods of Gothenburg organised as persons, households, houses, buildings, and daily activity chains. While the persons, households, and houses are synthetic replicas, they are connected to existing buildings. The model considers the allocation of primary and secondary locations based on a gravity model, realistic routing for active, public, and private motorised modes of transportation and allows users to introduce new buildings and amenities if needed. The model aims to impute national-level mobility patterns from a household travel survey and apply them locally to capture the nuances of a neighbourhood's built environment and demographic composition.

To bridge the gap between the conceptualisation and implementation of circular value propositions, recent research efforts have focused on linking design-driven approaches with circular-oriented innovation. Such approaches can facilitate iterative processes that emphasise co-creation, prototyping, and real-life experimentation, ultimately promoting practical implementation. Still, there is a lack of understanding how companies go through the process of circular-oriented innovation, and how prototyping and co-creation support this process. This article presents a longitudinal case study of a four-year research project in which two academic teams, from Sweden and the Netherlands, collaborated with industrial partners to explore the potential of circular economy principles within the kitchen industry and develop a market-ready circular kitchen. The results indicate that prototyping plays a supportive role in the circular-oriented innovation process by making the concept of a circular economy tangible for stakeholders, facilitating knowledge exchange, and supporting overall developments towards collaborative circular supply chains. However, prototyping too early in the process linked to project deliverables carries a risk for 'prototype fixation', fragmented solutions, and missed opportunities for shared value creation. Co-creation was found particularly impactful during the early stages of circular-oriented innovation where it helped guide the project, enabled shared learning, built confidence and commitment amongst stakeholders, and supported the development of solutions tailored to demands of parties involved. The case study provides deeper insights on the role of prototyping and co-creation through diverse stages of the circular-oriented innovation process and extracts several lessons that might aid researchers and practitioners to navigate future circular-oriented innovation endeavours.

Abstract The article presents the first prototype of a web-based City Digital Twin (CDT) viewer developed for the city of Gothenburg to promote the understanding of the interrelation between the spatial, energy and climate change domain related to building stocks and to support stakeholders’ collaboration. The focus is on the development process of the viewer and decisions taken to target the users. 3d spatial data about the current city combined with building energy demand modelling following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios provide the basis that potentially allows local actors to take informed decisions about decarbonization measures in a long-term perspective. First, future climate conditions are modelled for Gothenburg following the IPCC pathways 2.6, 4.5, and 8.5 for the year 2050. Second, a Building Stock Model is employed to simulate the energy use of buildings by using the climate scenarios as climate boundary conditions. Finally, results are visualized in the CDT viewer showing that future climate conditions contribute to an overall decrease in final energy demand up to 18% in spring and autumn months and an increase up to 1.5% in summer months.

The transition to a carbon neutral society requires actions on all levels of society. Hereby, renewable energy - especially considering the current European energy crisis – such as solar energy will play an increasing role. To promote a more extensive use of solar energy and thus contributing to a faster energy transition, it is valuable to engage all citizens, not least children. How can real-time visualization of solar energy production in learning environments contribute to increased understanding of energy production and consumption? Educational environments can be a powerful platform to cultivate an interest in more environmentally and sustainable behaviour at an early age. However, energy is intangible, abstract, and difficult to grasp for non-experts. Digital tools incorporating energy visualization may be able to facilitate an increased understanding of energy units and measurements. The City of Gothenburg, Sweden, has the ambition to place photovoltaics on all roofs of schools and kindergartens, a process that is already in progress. The solar energy production is measured in real-time and only used for building operation management. This paper presents a study that develops a concept for a digital and educational visualization tool for school children aged 9 to 12, with the goal to engage, facilitate a lasting learning outcome, and awaken curiosity in solar energy. A prototype of a real-time visualization tool was developed, which in a playful way visualises the solar electricity production of the school property and compares it to the energy consumption of everyday activities, displayed on a centrally placed screen in the school. It was installed in four pilot schools and evaluated with 233 pupils. Results indicate several potentials of the visualization: to communicate local solar energy production to pupils, triggering thoughts, ideas, and a will to continue to learn more about solar energy production.

In order to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals, cities need to develop robust energy transition strategies relying both on the local capacity of combining social, economic and environmental perspectives in the decision-making process and on the collaboration between different actors to achieve knowledge and data integration. Scenarios are well-established methodological instruments to guide decisions in energy and spatial planning and have been employed to compare possible future pathways and envision the consequences of implementing decarbonization measures. However, qualitative and quantitative scenarios approaches are often disconnected. With the primary goal of supporting the implementation of the energy plan, this study develops for the City of Gothenburg a participatory method to support the alignment of qualitative and quantitative scenarios approaches. Decarbonization actions and drivers of change were discussed and prioritized in workshop sessions with representatives from the energy supplier(s), municipal administrations (city planners, environmental department), and researchers to develop relevant qualitative scenarios descriptions. Based on this, a list of requirements for quantitative scenarios analysis is developed to be, in a next step, translated and integrated into urban building energy models. Findings indicate the importance of early knowledge integration from different fields and highlight the lines of advancement in urban energy modelling to facilitate decision-making towards successful implementation of decarbonization targets.