Limerick City and County Council is calling for creative and innovative solutions to rejuvenate its Georgian Neighbourhood. Limerick’s Georgian Neighbourhood is being used as a test bed to develop smart city applications such as prototyping to revitalise the district. This will be achieved in close cooperation with the various stakeholders: citizens, companies, local authority and researchers.
As part of the +CityxChange (Positive City Exchange) project, Limerick City and County Council is putting out an open call looking for teams involving local community groups, supported by designers and makers, to design to create and test solutions to common issues in the Georgian Neighbourhood area.
It will identify and support the first Urban Prototypes to be tested in the Georgian Neighbourhood and focus on developing solutions for Laneway usage and Citizen Sensing supports.
Solutions will be tested in real life settings during a period of up to 12 months. The programme will support pilot projects and offer tools to innovate, co-create and experiment with new programmes, initiatives and changes to regulation, products and services etc, together with citizens, makers, creatives, startups and other stakeholders.
The call will support two types of prototypes that will help the transition of the Limerick Georgian Neighborhood into a Positive Energy District:
- Urban design/ tactical urbanism solutions which respond to common issues with the laneways
- Digital innovation solutions at their heart
Any artistic/ design discipline is welcome to submit ideas, and the call may be suitable for architects, software and hardware professionals, product designers, urban designers, landscape architects, and ‘hackers’.
For digital innovation solutions, the call is open to any discipline but technical capacity to implement the solution must be proven by the application team. Digital innovation solutions could be about environmental sensing, data visualization, energy generation, energy storage and any other themes covered in the +CityxChange project. Open source hardware and software approaches will be positively evaluated.
Proposals should meet the description of “Energy-related Innovation”, and use the ideas of Urban Prototyping and Citizen Sensing to address any of the following themes aligned with the concepts of the +CityxChange project:
- Introduction of more renewable energy sources in the Georgian Neighbourhood
- Sustainable energy management including increased use of energy storage
- Improvement of air quality
- Increased community participation in the energy transition to ‘positive energy’ status
- Increased e-mobility (electric vehicles)
- Improved quality of the built environment
- Shared public space - ways to encourage equity in shared use of public space
- Space for electric transport in the city
- Promotion of electric mobility options
To facilitate this call, Limerick City and County Council is running an Information Session and Matchmaking Event on Wednesday 12 February at 6.30pm at the Citizen Observatory, Fab Lab, Rutland Street, Limerick.
A people-focused approach and location in the Georgian Neighbourhood is extremely important for the project. We welcome applications from groups who wish to work together on this project. Designers must work with community groups, communities of interest, and businesses or residents in the Georgian Neighbourhood.
The Limerick Georgian Neighbourhood’s Innovation Playground stretches from Wolfe Tone Street to Roches Street and Henry Street to Parnell Street/ Lord Edward Street.
The deadline for submissions is Monday 02 March 2020 at 5.30pm. Submissions comments and ideas can be made via:
- MyPoint https://mypoint.limerick.ie/ – Click on Surveys and select ‘Open Call: Innovative Citizen Solutions for Positive Energy Transition and Limerick’s Georgian Laneways.
- Email: cityxchange@limerick.ie and requesting an application form
- Post: CityXChange Open Call, The Engine, Cecil Street, Limerick V94 TN32
For more information about the +CityxChange project please visit www.limerick.ie/cityxchange.