The Syncity project, which ran from 2019 to 2021, focused on the Cureghem neighbourhood in Brussels, Belgium.

It was about people exchanging ideas on the present and the future of a neighbourhood that is undergoing major urban transformation pressures. It was about starting new conversations and making connections, between academics, local associations, public authorities, retailers, business people, workers, students and residents. It was about understanding a neighbourhood as a truly social place. Then came Covid-19 and not surprisingly, the onset of the pandemic also affected the Syncity project.

The backbone of communication between the project partners and the residents and users of the neighbour­hood was a series of Urban Living Labs: spaces of lively exchange and discussion that were meant to run over a period of two years and address the very tangible challenges faced by the people of Cureghem. This exchange became very difficult from spring 2020 onwards. Many planned events were banned as a preventive measure against the spread of Covid-19, others could only be orga­nised in a much-reduced form and still involving risks. Syncity, as a transnational, applied, participatory and social science-oriented project, thrived on a diverse source base, including contributions from participating residents and users of Cureghem in the context of these Urban Living Labs. Cutting back on these labs obviously had an impact on the course of the project.

The Syncity consortium has endeavoured to make the best of the exceptional situation in 2020 and 2021, to continue the project within its means and to produce useful tools for urban transformation processes.

Over the year, Syncity became more theory-focused than originally intended. In response to this, the team decided to include insights from the whole project process into this handbook, and to broaden its scope with conceptual input, moving back and forth between theory and practice, as the Syncity project did.

This handbook presents the Syncity approach: an innovative way to make urban planning sustainability-driven and stakeholder-inclusive – in particular for arrival areas in European cities. It is based on the experiences and results derived from the Syncity project, combined with the expertise of the team in the fields of architecture, social geography, urban planning, social work, ecological process evaluation, participation, sociology, and transdisciplinary communication.

Syncity — Synergetic Cities for Europe, funded by JPI Urban Europe, was a research and innovation project between Austrian and Belgian partners, carried out from 2019 – 2021. How to make urban trans¬formation processes more just and green? In exchange with experiences, learnings and good practice from Vienna, the Syncity project explored this question in the reallife context of Cureghem, a city quarter within the municipality of Anderlecht in the Brussels Region. Cureghem has historically been an »arrival area« for immigrants in Brussels, and still is. The local population faces various challenges, such as high unemployment, a precarious housing situation, a lack of public spaces and ecological hotspots. The Syncity toolbox and this book present a hands-on approach to lay a basis for improvement.