Work Program 2022-2023

For ten years now, several Fraunhofer Institutes have been working with partners from municipalities and industry in the Morgenstadt initiative to develop system innovations for the city of tomorrow. Based on the conviction that the key to the major challenges of our time lies in the climate-neutral and digital transformation of our cities, the declared goal is to identify solutions and transformation paths for CO2-neutral, liveable, and resilient cities and to implement them in an exemplary manner with the help of social, technological and organizational innovations and to disseminate them widely. For this reason, the new work program for 2022 and 2023 has the guiding vision of "the sustainable smart city." In this way, the Morgenstadt initiative addresses the intertwining of the two topics of digitization and sustainability, i.e. the interface between technology development and sustainable urban development in terms of their social, ecological and economic impact.

The initiative always places population-centric implementation at the heart of its transformation measures and activities. This does not only mean that citizens must be involved and that their needs - especially those of vulnerable groups - should be incorporated into the design of the sustainable smart city. It also means that the social compatibility of the climate-neutral transformation of our cities forms the central evaluation criterion for the selection and design of projects.

Triad of market design, research and international knowledge transfer

The Morgenstadt initiative takes a holistic and integrative approach that reflects the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. Accordingly, sustainable solutions are committed to the common good, should be affordable for municipalities regardless of their size and economic situation, and enable a more liveable city for all. Accordingly, activities are aimed at scaling up solutions that have already been tried and tested and at sharing the relevant expertise, including through collaborative projects for municipalities of all sizes in Germany and throughout Europe. At the same time, the development of further research projects is being driven forward to optimize existing solutions and identify new approaches. This triad is reflected in the structure of the work program in the form of three major pillars:

·       Market Design

·       Collaborative research and development (R&D), and

·       Global scaling and international knowledge and technology transfer