Access economy: now is the time for retailers and manufacturers to care
Picture walking into a shop and asking for a drill. The salesperson replies, “Are you looking to rent or buy one?” Now imagine more than half of drill transactions being taken over by rentals. That’s a glimpse of how the access economy is set to transform the retail space. The access economy is reshaping how […]
Empowering urban action: key takeaways from the new EU Agenda for Cities
Europe’s cities are not only engines of economic growth, they are also critical frontrunners driving the green and digital transitions. In December 2025, the European Commission published their latest communication establishing an EU Agenda for Cities. This marks a welcome next step in the EU’s recognition of the central role cities play in tackling the […]
From vision to impact: Bax deepens collaboration with DUT to shape strategy and guide projects
Bax has recently expanded its expert support for the Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Partnership. In this article, we provide an update on the impact of our ongoing collaboration. In July 2024, Bax strengthened its commitment to progressing Europe’s sustainable urban future with the launch of a four-year collaboration with the Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Partnership. […]
Young Leaders: Navigating Urban Futures in a Changing Climate
Authored by: Ruth Gow Mclenachan Being young in today’s world can be challenging. On one hand, we can feel hopeless when faced with the climate emergency, with three out of four people aged 16 to 25 globally agreeing that the “future is frightening” when asked about the threats of climate change in 2021. Many are […]
One Health in cities: what we’ve learned (and what comes next)
Written by Sofia Aivalioti for URBACT One Health is not new, but its implementation in planning and designing cities is both innovative and necessary. Most cities promote health through some often-disconnected angles: by mitigating adverse impacts of climate change, tackling biodiversity loss, or designing public space for active and healthy mobility. However, coordinated actions that […]
Green axes: where urban greenery meets active mobility
Written by Dennis Martínez In the face of climate change and urbanisation pressures, cities worldwide are rethinking their relationship with nature and wellbeing. However, this is no easy path, as they must tackle the complex challenge of redistributing limited public space to prioritise nature and healthy lifestyles. One urban planning instrument gaining traction is the […]
The rise of the ‘sharing city’ model
Written by Nienke de Jong for the Progress Playbook Cities are at the forefront of the global sustainability challenge. Covering just 3% of the earth’s landmass, they generate 70% of global CO2 emissions and consume 75% of the world’s energy. With 84% of Europeans projected to live in cities by 2050, urban areas must rethink […]
The case for healthier cities: How urban design shapes wellbeing
Written by Amy McCready for the Progress Playbook With more than two-thirds of the global population projected to live in cities by 2050, the design of urban environments is increasingly recognised as a critical factor influencing public health. From the placement of parks to the layout of neighbourhoods, urban planning decisions have far-reaching implications for […]
Urban Health: How cities influence chronic disease risk
We’re identifying and measuring the association between urban environment features and Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in the HORUS project. How does the urban environment influence our health? Many factors related to our urban surroundings have an impact on our lifestyle choices, and therefore on our health. Studies show that up to 89% of our health is […]
Bax positions itself at the forefront of challenge-driven urban innovation with DUT partnership
Bax recently confirmed its commitment to progressing Europe’s sustainable urban future with the launch of a four-year collaboration with the Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Partnership. The DUT Partnership is an intergovernmental research and innovation programme supporting much-needed urban transformation processes across Europe. It aims to strengthen capacities and tools to make urban change happen and […]
European Network for Urban Sharing Launches: Introducing Digital Kiosks
The Digital Kiosks Network has officially launched, promising to transform the sharing and rental economy. Led by Bax, the new European network facilitates the sustainable implementation of sharing stations by working with more than 30 public authorities, housing providers, sharing station providers, brand manufacturers, researchers and sharing economy practitioners. “The Digital Kiosks network aims to […]
Revitalising Barcelona’s industrial Besòs district through healthy urban planning
Barcelona City Council has awarded Bax the opportunity to create an urban redevelopment strategy for one of the city’s biggest industrial districts. The neighbourhood surrounding the industrial zone is one of Barcelona’s most deprived areas, with a life expectancy 12 years below more affluent parts of the city. Our strategy imagines an Innovation District that […]
Human-centric urban design and active mobility create liveable cities
Written by Jamie Coles Imagine a city. What do you see? Tower blocks, perhaps, cutting through the sky. Perhaps a grid of tarmac—streets choked with the droning of car traffic. But consider the spaces between these blocks—the parks that soak up rainwater to prevent floods, shaded paths that cool the air, mitigating urban heat islands. […]
Putting people at the heart of urban mobility
Active ways of getting from A to B like walking and cycling are low-cost, healthy, and sustainable. But towns and cities are not always designed to promote active travel. To find people-first solutions to the way we move around cities, Bax is supporting eight cities to pilot new solutions as part of the Active Cities […]
Bax & Company’s Sofia Aivalioti tours frontrunner cities as Lead Expert for Europe’s One Health transition
recently welcomed Bax & Company’s Sofia Aivalioti as the lead expert of One Health 4 Cities. This URBACT project brings together 9 European cities to put the health of people, animals, and the environment at the centre of urban improvement projects. “Following the pandemic, there has been a renewed energy to consider health and wellbeing […]
Healthy Cities team win research award at international Healthy City Design Congress
Bax’s Healthy Cities team were invited to present at the Healthy City Design International Congress, showcasing their work on healthy city planning for more than 500 urban practitioners. The team’s work on the Healthy Cities Generator was awarded Best Research Paper of the Congress. Celebrating human-centred urban design The 2023 Healthy City Design International Congress […]
Designing human habitats healthy enough to prescribe
Bax & Company’s Healthy Cities team has guided a group of expert urban practitioners to understand the power of prescribing green space and socialising for urban wellbeing. Organised by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), the workshop showed planners and health professionals how to use urban design as a first-choice treatment for mental illness […]
How Barcelona is designing its streets for health and happiness – Ideas That Happen
We are the only animals which build habitats that harm us. Eloi Juvillà, Director of Building and Logistics at the Diputacio de Barcelona, speaking on Ideas That Happen We recently sat down with Eloi Juvillà, Director of Building and Logistics at the Diputació de Barcelona, to learn how Barcelona is rethinking city design for healthy […]
The Open Source Starter Kit for Public Service Delivery
To help public service providers harness digital solutions to do more with less, Bax & Company has produced the Open Source Starter Kit for Public Service Delivery. The Kit contains three documents to help providers make sense of the value that cost-effective open source solutions can offer their service delivery. The Municipality of Dordrecht developed […]
5 Lessons from European Cities Using Open Source Software to Improve Public Services
Digital innovation is key to improving public services, and relies heavily on supporting softwares… Cities and governments have a responsibility to exploit digital innovation as it represents a key opportunity for meeting citizens’ expectations of next generation public services and helps cities in solving societal challenges. Open collaboration around software development and data sharing can […]
Exploiting the Potential of Open Source Software for Better, Cheaper, Faster Public Services
The world is changing. Transformations of mobility patterns, pressing air quality issues, and growing flood risks present new challenges for European cities. Now, however, thanks to data and digitalisation, cities can tackle these challenges together. Rather than reinventing the wheel or going down the traditional software vendor route with its associated issues, cities can improve local […]
Connectivity, Mobility, and Healthy Cities
The Healthy Cities Network aims to deepen the relationship between health and the urban environment, following a holistic approach by focusing on three overarching topics: greening and landscaping, mobility and connectivity, and lifestyle and sports. To gather expert advice for urban planners on improving health outcomes in cities, we are creating a series of three […]
Crowd data can improve city services, efficiency, and quality of life. Ghent’s Justine Ottevaere explains why.
Crowd monitoring in cities gained considerable attention with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The City of Ghent, however, was a step ahead, as they were already working with crowd data well before the start of the pandemic in 2020. To understand how and why cities should strategically look at crowd data, we interviewed Justine […]
Share and Share Alike: Replicable Open-Source Solutions for Improved Public Service Delivery
Originally published in IoT For All by Amber De La Haye, Camilla Sandberg, Juliette Tenart and Sebastiaan van Herk Our world is changing. Transformations to mobility patterns, pressing air quality issues and growing flood risks present new challenges for European cities. Now, however, thanks to digitization and data, cities can tackle these challenges together. Rather than reinventing […]
Gender Equal Cities are Healthy Cities
By Sofia Aivalioti, Amber De La Haye, Sebastiaan van Herk, and Marta Rofin Serra. What makes a city a healthy place to live, work, and socialise? And do planning needs differ depending on gender? For International Women’s Day this year we are exploring some key ideas of how urban planning can be used to foster […]
HEALTHY CITIES: Bridging Urban Planning and Health
By Sofia Aivalioti, Sebastiaan van Herk, Marta Rofin Serra and Amber De La Haye. Almost all urban planning policies and actions have an impact on human health. Think busy, polluting roads, unwalkable streets, or access to shops selling fresh fruit and vegetables. By baking health factors into every stage of the planning process, the HEALTHY […]
Making cities healthier, faster
The COVID-19 pandemic that has sent the world into lockdown has also affected, but not derailed, progress towards building healthier cities. In fact, it’s only under confinement that many people truly took stock of their living environment – their homes, streets and neighbourhoods – and appreciated the value of accessible green spaces. It was also […]
4 recommendations for successful blue and green infrastructure in cities
Our climate action project BEGIN (Blue Green Infrastructures through Social Innovation) just published its policy brief, which sets out four recommendations for local governments that aim to construct Blue and Green Infrastructure (BGI) in their cities. Co-authored by Dr. Jannes Willems (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Prof. Richard Ashley (IHE-Delft), Dr. William Veerbeek (IHE-Delft), Ellen Kelder (City of Dordrecht), and our […]
Preparing for a crisis and building healthier cities
Modern medicine has managed to either wipe out or control the infectious diseases that plagued humankind for so long. But when a new strain appears, such as COVID-19, it becomes clear that we are not always prepared to fully comprehend the threat level and respond accordingly. How can we better prepare our cities and people […]
Innovative Procurement: insights from Glasgow City Council
Innovative procurement is a much more flexible and open process compared to traditional procurement. Instead of buying a specific product or service the local authority is given an opportunity to discover new approaches. It’s allowing them to have a greater influence on products and find solutions that are catered to solving particular challenges, but will […]
City-to-city learning on disaster risk reduction; call for proposals.
On 30 November the European Commission, UNISDR and UN Habitat launched a call for proposals via the Resilience City Connect market place (RCC). FYI, below the communication from Making Cities Resilient Campaign. The city-to-city learning exchange approach and service were developed and tested by UNESCO-IHE and Bax & Company (see brochure here) and we have been involved in […]
Create Blue-Green Cities through Social Innovation and International Collaboration
Blue and Green Infrastructures (BGI) comprises an approach to climate resilience for cities that mimics nature’s potential to deal with flooding. BGI supports existing grey infrastructure to cope with extreme weather events (reducing flood risk by 30%) and improves urban liveability. Research (TEEB, 2015) shows that BGI benefits outweigh costs by a factor of 2 […]
Innovation session on Smart Cities through data re-use
Bax & Company organised an open innovation event in the inspiring DataLab Amsterdam, dedicated at facilitating peer-learning among 9 large and mid-sized cities in Northern Europe on Smart City concepts (e.g. Smart Mobility, Smart Parking etc.) to improve cities’ public service delivery. The cities had two constructive days to actively share ideas, learn from each other, […]
Lenders and investors start to value energy efficiency in housing – perhaps more so than owners and tenants do
As part of the REVALUE project, Maastricht University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology brought together lenders, investors and researchers to discuss policies and trends in investments in green housing. A picture emerged of careful investors paying more attention to energy quality of their stock than the actual tenants do. While practitioners confirm energy efficient […]
A new model for innovation through Open Data in cities
Over the last decade, recognising the innovation potential, we have established a strong track record in various Smart sectors such as energy efficiency, city resilience and industry. Innovation within these themes has pushed them closer to become mainstream. In the last three years, authorities at all levels realise that data is a key asset and […]
RIS3 communities: a big opportunity for R&D in Catalonia
RIS3CAT strategy: context Last March 2014, the Catalan government presented in Brussels the RIS3CAT: the Research and Innovation Strategy for the Smart Specialisation of Catalonia. This document aims at identifying top priority areas of economic activity for the region, a prerequisite set by the European Commission to the regions for receiving the ERDF funds (assessed […]
