MALMO KOMMUN

Their core work

Malmö is Sweden's third-largest city and a municipal government that serves as a living laboratory for urban sustainability innovations. The city contributes real-world urban environments, policy implementation capacity, and citizen engagement infrastructure to EU research projects focused on sustainable mobility, nature-based solutions, water systems, and food policy. Their role is to test, validate, and scale research outcomes in an actual city context — translating academic concepts into municipal practice across transport planning, climate adaptation, and public health.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Malmö's early H2020 involvement (2016–2018) centered on sustainable urban mobility — accelerating SUMP adoption, peer-to-peer city exchange, and neighbourhood-level transport interventions. From 2018 onward, the focus broadened significantly into environmental resilience, water infrastructure, and food systems, with their two most recent and largest projects (REWAISE and SchoolFood4Change) moving well beyond transport. The trajectory shows a city expanding from a transport-planning testbed into a comprehensive urban sustainability demonstrator covering water, food, climate, and social inclusion.

Malmö is diversifying from transport into broader urban resilience themes — water, food systems, and climate adaptation — making them increasingly relevant for cross-sectoral urban sustainability projects.

How they like to work

Malmö participates exclusively as a partner, never as coordinator — consistent with their role as a city providing real-world demonstration sites rather than driving research agendas. With 162 unique partners across 27 countries in just 7 projects, they operate in large, diverse consortia (averaging 23+ partners per project). This wide network suggests they are a sought-after city partner valued for their implementation capacity and willingness to open municipal systems to experimentation.

Malmö has built an exceptionally broad network of 162 unique partners spanning 27 countries through just 7 projects, indicating participation in large pan-European consortia. Their geographic reach covers nearly all EU member states, with no visible concentration in any single region.

What sets them apart

Malmö offers what few cities can: a progressive municipal government with a track record of actually implementing EU research outcomes across multiple urban domains — transport, nature, water, and food. Their willingness to open city infrastructure, schools, and neighbourhoods as testbeds makes them a high-value demonstration partner. For consortium builders, Malmö provides the credible "city validation" that reviewers look for, backed by a municipality that has done this seven times and knows how EU projects work.

Highlights from their portfolio

• REWAISE
  Their largest project (EUR 730K) and a strategic pivot into smart water systems, energy recovery, and climate resilience governance — running until 2026.
• MORE
  A focused transport innovation project on multi-modal road-space reallocation using dynamic signing and new materials — their most technically specific contribution.
• SchoolFood4Change
  An unusual cross-sector move into public health and food procurement, demonstrating Malmö's breadth as an urban living lab beyond traditional infrastructure themes.