GRAD ZAGREB

Their core work

The City of Zagreb is Croatia's capital and largest municipality, acting as a public authority that brings urban governance and real-world implementation capacity to EU research projects. Their H2020 involvement centers on sustainable urban development — green infrastructure, energy planning, and inclusive transport. They serve as a living laboratory and policy testbed, providing city-scale data, regulatory insight, and pilot deployment sites for solutions that need validation in a real urban environment. Their largest commitment by far was proGIreg, a nature-based solutions project for post-industrial urban regeneration.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Zagreb's early H2020 participation (2015–2017) focused broadly on smart city metrics, urban energy governance, and social transport — testing the waters across multiple urban innovation themes. From 2018 onward, a clear shift occurred toward nature-based urban solutions and participatory design, with proGIreg dominating their portfolio and TRIPS introducing co-design and inclusive mobility methods. The keyword data confirms this pivot: recent terms like "productive green infrastructure," "urban commons," "co-production," and "soil regeneration" replace the earlier, more generic smart-city framing.

Zagreb is moving toward participatory, nature-based urban regeneration — future partners should expect strong interest in green infrastructure pilots, citizen co-design, and post-industrial land reuse.

How they like to work

Zagreb has exclusively participated as a partner, never as a coordinator, which is typical for a city government contributing implementation sites and policy context rather than driving research agendas. With 98 unique partners across 24 countries in just 5 projects, they operate in large, diverse consortia — proGIreg alone likely accounts for the majority of this network. This makes them an accessible partner: experienced in large EU consortia, comfortable with international collaboration, and positioned as a deployment and validation site rather than a research lead.

Despite only 5 projects, Zagreb has built a wide network of 98 partners across 24 countries, primarily through large consortia like proGIreg. Their reach is firmly pan-European with no obvious geographic clustering beyond an Eastern European perspective they bring to Western-led projects.

What sets them apart

Zagreb offers something few partners can: a major European capital (population 800,000+) with post-industrial zones ready for green regeneration pilots and a municipal government willing to embed research outcomes into real policy. Their Eastern European perspective is valuable in projects that need geographic diversity and evidence that solutions work beyond Western European contexts. For consortium builders, they bring political mandate, urban testbed access, and citizen engagement infrastructure.

Highlights from their portfolio

• proGIreg
  By far their largest project (EUR 1.14M, 77% of total funding), demonstrating Zagreb's deep commitment to nature-based urban regeneration with a 5-year engagement spanning green infrastructure, urban agriculture, and soil restoration.
• TRIPS
  Focused on transport for vulnerable populations using co-design and participatory methods — signals Zagreb's growing interest in inclusive, citizen-centered urban policy.
• CITYKEYS
  Early smart city benchmarking project that gave Zagreb a foundation in standardized urban performance metrics across European cities.