Today, cities face the challenge of transforming themselves to become more sustainable, livable, and carbon neutral. To meet this challenge, tools that help visualize and understand change are essential. At CARTIF, we have developed the Solution Bundles tool as a digital solution that invites users to explore how different solutions (energy, urban, or natural) can be combined to design better urban environments.
Its development has been part of CARTIF’s work on the NetZeroCities project, one of the flagship projects of the European Cities Mission, which is promoting the transition to climate neutrality in more than 100 European cities. Integrated as a tool within the Mission Platform, the Solution Bundles reflect CARTIF’s commitment to applied innovation, bringing science and technology closer to urban planning to accelerate local climate action.
Using this tool turns urban planning into a visual and interactive experience, where citizens, politicians, urban planners, or anyone with a relevant role in city-level decision-making can explore how different solutions (related to energy, mobility, nature, or the circular economy) combine to shape a more sustainable urban model.
One of the biggest challenges in developing the concept for this tool was addressing the inherent complexity of urban planning, a process that involves multiple scales, actors, and objectives. The Solution Bundles tool takes a step forward and focuses on the synergies that can be found within a broad catalog of technological solutions, associating them with strategic urban areas to facilitate an integrated vision of change.
Because planning a city is not just about deciding where to build or implement technology, but about choosing how we want to live: what kind of energy we consume, how we move around, what green spaces we enjoy, and how we make the local a global force.
What does this tool offer?
Solution Bundles, as an interactive tool, encourages cities to think systemically. Through a 3D visual environment, it allows users to explore and combine technological solutions that, when applied together, generate a greater impact on urban climate transition.
The tool brings together four major “bundles” or sets of solutions that reflect the main areas of action in a city:
- Low-emission energy and interconnection between sectors, to integrate renewable sources, buildings, and industry into a more efficient energy system.
- Electric mobility and electrification, aimed at transforming urban transport towards clean and shared models.
- Reduction of energy and resource needs, promoting efficiency and the circular economy.
- Carbon capture, storage, and removal, with solutions that strengthen environmental resilience.
Each set of solutions is linked to technical data sheets and real-life examples available in the Mission Platform’s online repository, making it easier for cities to move from idea to action by connecting the strategic vision with practical cases and implementation resources. In addition, its cross-cutting approach and visual power allow users to work collaboratively, visualize synergies with other users, and discuss issues based on a common knowledge base.
In short, Solution Bundles transform urban planning into a clearer, more attractive, interactive, and connected process, helping to design integrated urban strategies focused on citizen well-being.
Let’s not lose sight of the goal: more humane and climate-neutral cities
The transformations that take place in a city cannot be understood solely from a technical or planning perspective, but also from a sensitivity to the identity and daily lives of those who inhabit it. Strategies that generate coherent urban regeneration start precisely from there: from adaptation to the context, from studying what is happening, and from respect for the cultural significance of the place.
In this sense, we must not forget that digital urbanism, understood as a new way of thinking about and designing the city through data, simulations, and technological intelligence, is not the goal, but the means. A means that allows us to connect information, space, and people, facilitating more conscious decisions and planning that is more in tune with urban reality.
Technological innovation only makes sense when it translates into more livable, inclusive, and sustainable environments, where science and technology work to serve people and not the other way around.
CARTIF supporting urban and technological change
At CARTIF’s City, Territory, and Climate department, we work on projects such as NEUTRALPATH, aligned with European cities’ commitment to climate neutrality by 2030, as promoted by NetZeroCities, and focused on exploring new approaches to urban development at the district level.
These types of projects reinforce our goal of supporting cities in their planning, decarbonization, and adaptation processes, contributing knowledge, methodologies, and innovative solutions that connect the technical with the human.
- Solution Bundles, connecting solutions to planify more sustainable cities - 12 December 2025