The HubCities project was situated within the contemporary European policy and strategic context that addressed the urgent need for sustainable, resilient, and inclusive urban development, particularly in areas shaped by large scale transport and logistics infrastructures. Airport and seaport territories represented critical hubs of mobility, economic activity, and resource consumption, yet they were frequently treated in spatial planning as purely functional or infrastructural zones rather than as integral parts of urban and regional systems. This approach contributed to spatial conflicts, environmental pressures, and social disconnection between infrastructure-driven territories and surrounding communities. Within EU political and strategic contexts such as the Driving Urban Transitions partnership, the European Green Deal, and broader strategies promoting inclusive governance and sustainability, there was increasing recognition that complex urban challenges required systemic, interdisciplinary, and participatory solutions. However, despite these policy ambitions, planning practices in airport and seaport areas remained largely top-down, with limited mechanisms for meaningful citizen involvement. The exclusion of local knowledge, everyday experience, and social perspectives from decision-making processes constituted a significant gap between identified problems and needs and existing planning practice. The overall objectives of HubCities were to address this gap by introducing a citizen science-based approach to spatial planning in airport and seaport territories. The project was motivated by the context of insufficient bottom-up approaches and aimed to integrate citizen knowledge into urban development processes. HubCities reconceptualized these territories as “HubCities”: socio-spatial systems that combined infrastructure, economic activity, environmental impact, and everyday life. In doing so, the project defined a clear pathway to impact that linked research, participation, and planning practice. The pathway to impact was structured around the development and application of participatory methodologies, digital tools, and empirical testing in selected testbed regions. HubCities combined citizen science methods, such as surveys, workshops, and stakeholder engagement, with a dedicated digital platform that enabled data collection, knowledge sharing, and communication between citizens, planners, and institutions. Through this pathway, the results of the project were expected to contribute to tackling identified problems and needs by embedding citizen-generated knowledge into planning and governance processes. The expected impacts of the project operated at multiple levels. At the scientific level, HubCities contributed to methodological innovation in participatory urban planning for infrastructure-dominated territories. At the societal level, it strengthened citizen engagement, inclusion, and trust in planning processes. At the policy and practice level, it provided transferable tools and evidence-based insights that supported alignment with European sustainability objectives. The scale and significance of the project’s expected impacts lay in the transferability of the HubCities methodology across diverse European airport and seaport contexts.
Projects under topics requiring the integration of social sciences and humanities were directly addressed in HubCities. Social sciences and humanities played a central role through the application of citizen science, qualitative research, and participatory design methods. Citizens were positioned as active contributors and knowledge holders, whose everyday experiences and social practices informed spatial analysis and decision-making. This integration ensured that technical, environmental, and infrastructural considerations were balanced with social, cultural, and ethical dimensions of urban development.Overall this section set the scene for the story of the project, demonstrating how HubCities responded to a clear societal and policy need and how its approach contributed to more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient urban development in airport and seaport territories across Europe.
