The European Union wants to create 100 climate neutral and innovative cities by 2030. The U!REKA partnership (Urban Research and Education Knowledge Alliance), of which HOGENT is a partner, is responding to that European objective with its application for an Erasmus+ 'European Universities Initiative'.
The European Union sees a crucial role for urban areas towards a climate neutral Europe. U!REKA makes that EU-mission the central ambition in its application for recognition as a 'European Universities Initiative'. Such recognition leads to more integrated cooperation and more resources. That the U!REKA partners support the objectives of the EU. Such recognition leads to more integrated cooperation and more resources.
The fact that the U!REKA partners support the EU goal around climate-neutral cities is not a coincidence: sustainable cities have been a central focus since the start of the partnership in 2016.
As an international network, U!REKA's ambition is to contribute to a sustainable, inclusive and innovative Europe through multidisciplinary education, applied research, development and innovation. More specifically, it aims to add substantial value to the ambitious European goal of achieving 100 climate neutral and smart, innovative cities by 2030. Incidentally, five of the 100 cities selected by Europe include institutions of the U!REKA partnership: Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Espoo, Helsinki and Lisbon.
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Manifesto
Already 44 European European Universities Initiatives involving a total of 340 universities and colleges have been funded in recent years. The EU wants to fund another 16 alliances and 160 universities by mid-2024. So U!REKA is once again submitting a dossier for this - the previous two project proposals were just not approved - with the EU-mission as a guiding concept.
The U!REKA partnership (Urban Research and Education Knowledge Alliance) consists of seven higher education institutions in Europe. Besides HOGENT, these include Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University, Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Politécnico de Lisboa, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (Finland) and VSB Technical University Ostrava (Czech Republic).