An important investment towards a thriving future — Introduction The idea of ‘community energy’ describes groups of citizens getting together and taking collective action to improve their local energy systems and generate wider community benefits. Thriving Communities sees community energy action as a vital part of creating radical community change. Firstly, because addressing current system failures and improving local…

Slovenia and Croatia Sessions Summary In late March 2023 we organised Community Placemaking trainings in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Zagreb (Croatia) as part of the PLACE project and Thriving Communities initiative. About 30 people joined each of these trainings to learn more about how placemaking can help them to create positive change in their community. The…

Thriving Communities is a collective initiative with a mission to help communities to create radical enough change to thrive in the 21st century. This medium publication site provided a hub while we developed a full website. The website is now live over on: www.thriving-communities.org! So check it out. We will keep using this medium publication as a hub for articles and insights, as an extension of our collective learning space.

Thriving Communities is a collective initiative with a mission to help communities create radical enough change to thrive in the 21st century. Given the broad value of public placemaking processes, we encourage all communities to embed effective placemaking into their radical change journeys. …

A key action area for any Thriving Community — Ideally, a regenerative bioeconomy uses renewable organic materials from forests, soils, crops and the sea to create products that displace fossil carbon use and are fully returned to nature in the end — creating a fully circular economic cycle. Bioeconomies are a great area for communities to focus their circularity…

Lessons from studies for Slovenia, Niš and Skopje — Summary Developing an economic case for the radical change a community wants to achieve helps us to see and communicate the scale of investment really needed and the economic value of these investments. We have done initial economic case analysis for the mission of achieving climate-neutrality by 2030 in the cities…

So, your city is pursuing the EU Climate Neutral and Smart Cities mission? Great! Here are some suggestions on what to do next. — Summary Thriving Communities is a collective initiative with a mission to help communities create radical enough change to thrive in the 21st century. We are excited to work with any community in SE Europe to pursue a mission of climate-neutrality by 2030. If you and your community are planning to pursue…

In this article, we share highlights from analysing the economic value-case for decarbonising the city of Niš in Serbia. The highlights are: Niš could double current ambitions and greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2030 (from 48% to 94% of modelled sectors, or 25% to 50% of total emissions) Doubling ambition…

In this article, we share highlights from analysing the economic value-case for decarbonising the city of Skopje in North Macedonia. It is clear from this analysis that deep climate action equates to a much healthier and energy-secure city. The highlights are: An ambitious decarbonisation programme for Skopje could reduce total…