COMUNE DI FIRENZE

Their core work

The Municipality of Florence is a major Italian city government that serves as a real-world testing ground for urban innovation — particularly in sustainable transport, smart city infrastructure, and public safety. In H2020 projects, Florence contributes its urban environment as a living lab, providing regulatory context, city-level data, and deployment sites for technologies like EV charging networks, emission monitoring systems, and citizen-facing digital platforms. Their value lies in being a large, historically significant European city willing to pilot and validate urban solutions at scale before wider replication.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Florence's early H2020 involvement (2015-2018) was broad, spanning urban transport resilience (RESOLUTE), disaster risk management (CARISMAND), community policing (CITYCoP), and even e-waste recycling (EWIT) — reflecting a municipality exploring multiple innovation fronts. From 2016 onward, the focus sharpened dramatically toward sustainable urban mobility: electromobility, EV charging infrastructure, emission monitoring, and smart grid integration became dominant themes. By 2020, Florence had clearly positioned itself as a European pilot city for clean transport and air quality improvement.

Florence is doubling down on becoming a reference city for EV charging infrastructure and urban emission-free zones, making them an ideal partner for future clean mobility and smart city projects.

How they like to work

Florence participates exclusively as a partner, never as coordinator — consistent with a public authority that offers its city as a deployment site rather than leading research. With 148 unique partners across 26 countries in just 7 projects, they work in large, diverse consortia typical of smart city demonstration projects. This means they are experienced in multi-partner coordination and comfortable working with universities, SMEs, and technology providers across Europe.

Florence has built a broad European network of 148 unique partners across 26 countries through 7 projects, reflecting the large consortium sizes typical of smart city and urban transport demonstrations. Their network spans Western and Southern Europe most densely, with connections to research institutions, technology companies, and fellow municipalities.

What sets them apart

Florence is one of Europe's most iconic and visited cities, which makes it a high-visibility pilot site — innovations tested here get attention. Unlike smaller pilot cities, Florence offers the complexity of a major historic urban center with tourism pressures, narrow streets, and air quality challenges that make transport solutions tested here genuinely transferable to other European cities. Their track record across REPLICATE, USER-CHI, and NEMO shows they can sustain multi-year deployments and provide meaningful real-world validation data.

Highlights from their portfolio

• REPLICATE
  By far their largest project (EUR 4.6M funding), positioning Florence as one of three European lighthouse smart cities for integrated energy, mobility, and ICT solutions.
• USER-CHI
  Focused specifically on user-centric EV charging infrastructure along TEN-T corridors, addressing interoperability and business models — directly relevant to EU Green Deal transport goals.
• NEMO
  Tackles the increasingly urgent issue of real driving emissions and noise in urban low emission zones, with practical monitoring and mitigation tools.