LYON CONFLUENCE

Their core work

Lyon Confluence is the urban development company that plans and runs the Confluence district regeneration in Lyon, turning a former industrial zone into a working smart-city testbed. Their real work is operating urban transformation on the ground: low-energy building retrofits, district heating, e-mobility deployments, and citizen co-creation processes at neighborhood scale. They bring something most research partners cannot: an actual territory, a population, and the governance authority to deploy and measure real technologies in live conditions.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In 2016-2021 they were anchored in physical smart-city deployment: retrofitting buildings, rolling out district heating and e-mobility, and engaging residents at district scale through SMARTER TOGETHER. By 2020-2023 their contribution shifted toward the digital operating layer of the city, entering LEAD to work on digital twins and physical-internet last-mile logistics. The trajectory moves from building the smart district to running and optimising it with data.

They are moving from delivering physical smart-city infrastructure toward data-driven urban operations, making them an interesting partner for digital-twin, mobility and logistics projects that need a real district to deploy in.

How they like to work

They act as a heavyweight coordinator when the project matches their urban mandate (SMARTER TOGETHER, a large Innovation Action) and as a focused local demonstrator when it does not (LEAD, where they contribute only EUR 98k). Their two projects already pull in 81 partners across 15 countries, so they function as a consortium hub rather than a loyal repeat-partner. Expect them to negotiate hard on what specifically happens inside the Confluence district.

81 unique consortium partners across 15 countries, concentrated around the SMARTER TOGETHER lighthouse consortium which linked Lyon with other European smart-city demonstrator cities.

What sets them apart

Most partners in smart-city calls are technology vendors or research institutes; Lyon Confluence is the actual urban operator of one of Europe's best-known regeneration districts. Partnering with them does not get you another lab: it gets you access to a live district with real residents, real buildings and real governance to test, measure and scale solutions. For any project that needs a credible urban deployment site, they are effectively a turnkey testbed.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SMARTER TOGETHER
  EUR 3.23M coordinator role in an SCC lighthouse project tying together low-energy retrofit, district heating, e-mobility, data platforms and citizen co-creation at district scale.
• LEAD
  Small but strategic participation that extends their urban expertise into digital twins and last-mile logistics for the on-demand economy.