GRAD BEOGRAD

Their core work

Grad Beograd (City of Belgrade) is the municipal government of Serbia's capital, participating in EU research as a real-world urban testbed for nature-based solutions. The city contributes its urban planning authority, infrastructure, and citizen engagement capacity to projects that integrate blue-green interventions — such as urban green corridors, water management features, and regenerative landscapes — into city districts. Their role is to provide the regulatory environment, local data, and demonstration sites where researchers can test and validate how nature-based urban design affects public health and wellbeing at city scale.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Belgrade's H2020 involvement started in 2018 with CLEVER Cities, a broad urban nature-based solutions project focused on social inclusion and co-design. By 2020-2021, the city's focus sharpened considerably toward measuring health outcomes of blue-green interventions, incorporating digital tools like AI monitoring, serious games, and augmented reality into urban planning. The trajectory shows a clear shift from general urban greening toward evidence-based, health-centered, and digitally-enhanced urban planning.

Belgrade is moving toward data-driven urban health planning, combining nature-based solutions with AI monitoring and citizen science — making them a strong partner for smart city health projects.

How they like to work

Belgrade operates exclusively as a participant, never as a coordinator — typical for a city government providing demonstration sites and policy context rather than leading research. With 73 unique partners across 19 countries from just 3 projects, they work in very large consortia (averaging 24+ partners), indicating comfort with complex multi-national collaborations. Their repeated engagement in thematically similar projects suggests they are a reliable urban living lab partner that research consortia seek out for real-world validation.

Despite only 3 projects, Belgrade has built a network of 73 partners across 19 countries, reflecting the large-scale nature of urban innovation consortia. Their network spans most of the EU with likely strong connections to other European capital cities involved in similar nature-based solution demonstration projects.

What sets them apart

As a Southeastern European capital city, Belgrade offers consortium builders a demonstration site outside the typical Western European urban lab circuit, adding geographic diversity that EU evaluators value. The city brings real municipal decision-making power — not just research capacity — meaning interventions tested in Belgrade can be directly embedded into actual urban policy. Their progression across three closely related NBS projects means they have accumulated practical experience in deploying and monitoring blue-green infrastructure at city scale.

Highlights from their portfolio

• EuPOLIS
  Largest funding (EUR 840K) and most technically ambitious, combining urban planning methodology with citizens observatories, serious games, and augmented reality for health-focused NBS deployment.
• HEART
  Most recent project incorporating AI-based monitoring and behavioural change assessment, representing the city's evolving digital capability in urban health research.
• CLEVER Cities
  Belgrade's entry point into H2020, a flagship EU nature-based solutions project focused on co-designing inclusive ecological solutions across multiple European cities.