The Challenge
As one of Sweden's fastest-growing cities, Skellefteå is experiencing significant population and industrial growth. While this development brings new opportunities, it has also increased pressure on the city's transport system. The municipality covers a large geographic area, making car travel the dominant mode of transport and contributing to traffic congestion, high transport emissions, and limited alternatives for residents.
Skellefteå has committed to becoming climate-neutral by 2030 through its participation in the Climate Neutral Cities 2030 initiative and its Climate City Contract. To achieve this goal, the city must accelerate the transition towards electric mobility, expand public transport, strengthen cycling and walking infrastructure, and reduce dependence on private vehicles. Ensuring that these investments deliver maximum environmental and social benefits requires better data, stronger public participation, and more effective planning tools.
What GENeCITY will do
GENeCITY will support Skellefteå by developing a Local Digital Twin that combines geospatial information with more than a decade of mobility and air quality data. The platform will integrate information on traffic patterns, public transport, air quality, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and active mobility networks to create a comprehensive picture of how people move around the city.
Using artificial intelligence and scenario modelling, stakeholders will be able to explore different future mobility strategies before they are implemented. Scenarios will assess options such as optimising bus networks, expanding electric vehicle charging infrastructure, reforming parking policies, improving cycling and walking connections, and reducing traffic congestion and transport emissions.
Citizen participation will be a key component of the pilot. Through citizen science activities, a participatory mobile application, workshops, and local hackathons, residents, businesses, urban planners, and policymakers will contribute to the development and evaluation of mobility solutions. Interactive visualisation tools will help stakeholders understand the implications of different decisions and co-design future interventions.
Expected Results
The Skellefteå pilot will demonstrate how digital tools can support sustainable mobility and climate-neutral growth in mid-sized industrial cities. The project aims to engage citizens, small and medium-sized enterprises, and policymakers and municipal staff in the design and evaluation of mobility strategies.
The pilot will deliver an operational Local Digital Twin capable of analysing mobility patterns, transport emissions, air quality, and infrastructure performance. By testing future scenarios and evaluating potential interventions, Skellefteå will gain valuable insights into how to accelerate the shift towards cleaner transport and more sustainable mobility choices.
The lessons, methods, and tools developed through the pilot will also be shared with three replicator cities through the GENeCITY acceleration programme, helping other cities address similar challenges and advance their climate neutrality ambitions.