After working all of his life as a sound technician for the Bulgarian state television, Emil is now retired. He lives in a 120 square meter house in Gorni Lozen, a village not far from Sofia, but only uses its ground floor and basement because he can’t afford to heat the whole of it.

Ana, 32, loves going to the movies, is keen on theatre and takes regular yoga lessons. However, during the Covid pandemic she quit the frenzy of Madrid to settle in a remote village in Extremadura , a large Spanish rural area, bordering Portugal.

Forming attitudes is hard. It may be exciting to start a new habit, but it’s challenging to make it stick. This may often happen when we try to go green, consume less energy and constantly follow virtuous behaviours in the buildings where we live and work.

Sabrina is an Italian graphic designer, an editorial project manager and a graphologist. She is one of the European “slash workers” : self-employed professionals who put a slash between their multiple jobs in different sectors .

Understanding how people decide to use less energy at home or at work is crucial to boost virtuous behaviours. Our reaction to any novelty is so complex that a lot of socio-psychological research has been done to try to make it more predictable.

Overtourism affects many world's beautiful cities, which often find themselves unprepared to deal with massive flows of visitors encouraged by low prices and easy mobility.

The notion of “smart city” has grown in popularity during the last twenty years. Digital revolution fans believe that communication technologies will radically transform our cities, offering a vast range of new services that will simplify our daily life.

Would you enjoy a city full of parks, where streets were tree-lined, where cycling and walking were pleasant, a city with grass-insulated roofs on houses and public buildings to keep you warm in winter? According to a Eurobarometer study , there is an 84 per cent chance that your answer is yes.

As one of her final acts as Prime Minister, Theresa May , announced that she will be signing into law a pledge to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 . This would make Britain the first member of the G7 to make such a commitment official.

Householders do not always know how much energy they consume. To help improve their awareness, the EnergyLife app was developed through BeAware , a EU funded project, led by the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT), in Finland.

We are what we eat. However, little is known on how a specific dietary regime can impact the life of the elderly . Now, researchers from an EU funded project called NU-AGE are investigating the effects of the Mediterranean diet on older people.

Niklaus Ledergerber, president of the cultural heritage preservation commission of the Swiss canton of Appenzell, is an expert in local building history. He tells youris.

Home sweet home, but not always safe. We hear daily about gas leaks, floods, circuit breaks and fires. Victims are often children, the elderly and the disabled. But now the smart house can guard your life.

The front door opens to welcome visitors. The oven bakes a pizza and the washing machine starts by itself. You are in a smart house, where the Internet is a butler.

When Dutch artist Jalila Essaïdi was looking to import some American goats, they produce a protein she needed for a ‘bio-art’ project, she hit an unexpected obstacle.

Long-touted advances of smart cities may finally become reality with the increases to wireless network speeds and bandwidths promised by the switch to 5G .

Skiing has been around for at least eight millennia. Skis from 6000 BCE have been found in northern Russia , while 5000-year-old cave paintings in China appear to show people skiing .

Bristol is at the forefront of high-tech innovation in the UK, named European green capital in 2015. But it is also the second least affordable major British city housing-wise only after London.

Researchers in the US have developed bio-based air filters that they claim can capture toxic chemicals that current filters can’t.

“Are we all on the same page? Singing from the same hymn sheet?” For anyone working with groups of people in policy areas, the answer is nearly always “yes”.