As summers grow hotter and longer, Mediterranean cities like Limassol are becoming increasingly vulnerable to urban overheating, which is escalating energy demand for cooling and widening social inequalities in thermal comfort exposure. The Lemesos City Cooling Challenge (LC³), a Pilot Activity within the EU's NetZeroCities Pilot Cities Programme, is Limassol's response to this complex crisis, and a key instrument in advancing its target of climate neutrality by 2030.
Rather than tackling rising heat through technical fixes alone, LC³ frames urban cooling as a systemic, governance-intensive challenge. The pilot seeks to reduce reliance on conventional air conditioning, increase climate resilience, and decarbonise the urban fabric by shifting not just infrastructure but also behaviours, governance culture, and decision-making processes.
The LC³ takes a systemic approach to heat resilience, placing co-creation, digital innovation, and governance reform at its core. Rather than offering isolated technical fixes, LC³ works across urban, institutional, and social layers to rethink how Limassol cools its people, buildings, and public spaces in a decarbonised, equitable, and adaptive way.
Cooling as a system challenge
LC³ starts from the understanding that cooling isn't only a technical or design issue - it's social, economic, behavioural, and political. The pilot reframes urban cooling as an intersectional domain that links public health, climate justice, energy efficiency, and spatial equity. It has helped shift the framing from "installing more AC units" to "creating climate-responsive neighbourhoods."
Participatory governance and co-creation
A flagship innovation is the Lemesos Commons, a deliberative governance forum where 25 rotating citizens, city staff, researchers, and professionals meet monthly to assess, shape, and refine the city's climate neutrality actions. So far, over 120 proposals have been discussed, with several already integrated into municipal plans. Co-creation is not a consultation; it is a continuous governance process. LC³ also runs participatory design workshops in neighbourhoods, engaging citizens and stakeholders to co-develop interventions, ranging from passive cooling infrastructure in parks to shared cooling solutions for vulnerable populations.
Cooling through urban experiments
Instead of deploying fully scaled solutions, LC³ focused on a series of exploratory pilot interventions to test real-world constraints, such as procurement procedures, technical capacity, and the practical application of environmental measures. These included rooftop cooling and greening at a primary school in Zakaki, studies for redesigning Koriní Park and municipal parking areas, and the installation of renewable energy systems at the municipal theatre.
Data and digital tools as public assets
The use of remote sensing, GIS mapping, and predictive modelling enables the city to identify urban heat hotspots, prioritise areas with vulnerable populations, and model intervention impacts. These insights are shared in open-access formats, supporting participatory decisions and transparency.
Institutional innovation
LC³ is anchored by a newly established Municipal Transition Office, staffed by planners, engineers, and community engagement specialists. This office supports coordination across departments and ensures that climate neutrality isn't siloed - it becomes a core operational lens across municipal services.
The LC³ approach illustrates that cooling systems are governance systems. What's cooling Limassol isn't just shade; it is participation, data, distributed leadership, and institutional courage.
What were the key drivers of the initiative?
- Climate neutrality as a political and institutional mandate: The Climate City Contract provides more than a vision. It creates a structural incentive for integration. The pilot operates within a framework that demands systemic alignment, and this has helped climate action become a city-wide responsibility rather than the remit of a single department.
- Direct involvement of city leadership: The active involvement of the Mayor in the Lemesos Commons sends a strong message: community-driven processes are not symbolic, they are strategic. This consistent top-level participation bridges political and community agendas, ensures vertical accountability, and embeds co-governance into the DNA of the initiative. Over 250 citizens and stakeholders have engaged in these sessions since launch, building continuity and collective memory.
- Institutional redesign: Rather than layering climate action onto existing structures, Limassol created a dedicated Transition Office for Climate Neutrality. This has been critical for horizontal coordination, enabling the integration of climate objectives into departments like spatial planning, housing, procurement, and mobility.
- Citizen agency: What distinguishes LC³ is its effort to treat citizens as designers, not just end-users. The participatory workshops and Commons meetings create an ecosystem where technical ideas are enriched, challenged, and co-developed with the community. It has boosted legitimacy and produced solutions grounded in local realities.
- Digital infrastructure: Tools like GIS, remote sensing, and digital twins allow the project to translate complex environmental data into actionable insights. Crucially, these tools are not reserved for technical staff. They're actively used in co-creation settings, helping stakeholders understand trade-offs, simulate outcomes, and make informed decisions together.
- Framing cooling as a civic right: By linking urban heat resilience to equity, safety, and wellbeing, LC³ has framed cooling as a basic public service. This reframing has helped mobilise diverse actors, from health advocates to urban developers, under a shared umbrella of responsibility.
What were the challenges and barriers?
- Behavioural inertia: Changing citizens' cooling habits, especially reliance on individual air conditioning, is difficult. The pilot must overcome a cultural default toward private, techno-centric solutions.
- Institutional limitations: While the Transition Office is pivotal, many municipal departments still operate in silos, and change requires sustained political and administrative leadership.
- Complexity of coordination: Bridging technical expertise, participatory processes, and rapid implementation can strain local capacities, especially with limited timeframes.
- Equity concerns: Not all communities are equally engaged or empowered. Ensuring interventions benefit the most heat-vulnerable populations requires targeted outreach and equity-focused design.
- Scalability tensions: Prototypes must be robust enough to inform long-term urban planning but agile enough to iterate. Balancing ambition and pragmatism is a continual challenge.
Key lessons learned
- Urban cooling must be approached systemically. Fragmented solutions won't suffice; climate adaptation must link infrastructure, governance, and public behaviour.
- Co-governance builds legitimacy and uptake. Citizens engaged from the outset are more likely to support, maintain, and advocate for interventions.
- Institutional transformation underpins success. Without internal reorganisation and investment in staff capacity, even the best-designed projects risk stalling.
- Building credibility through science-based participation. Pairing citizen input with rigorous data enables smarter, more politically durable decisions.
- Cooling is a gateway to broader change. It's an accessible entry point for engaging the public on climate issues, and can serve as a springboard for broader urban transformation
Potential for replication
The LC³ model is highly adaptable, particularly for small and mid-sized cities facing similar climate pressures. Key transferable elements include:
- The creation of a Commons-style participatory governance hub;
- Use of digital spatial tools to guide cooling interventions;
- Embedding of climate functions in municipal teams (e.g. transition offices);
- Designing cooling prototypes as rapid experiments, not finished products;
- Treating citizen behaviour change as a core objective, not an afterthought.
Other Mediterranean cities, and beyond, can replicate LC³ by starting with addressing cooling as an ubiquitous issue, building trust through co-creation, and using that momentum to reform institutional routines and governance culture gradually.