Synergies in Practice: Creativity, Climate & the Night

This panel looks at how a shared agenda between sustainable urban development and night-time considerations can be put to work. It brings together experts from architecture, city practice, European networks and the night-time field, who will present tools, projects, cases and municipal practice that connect these perspectives and show current models of working with the night. We will look at what is already happening in European cities, including work from the URBACT “Cities After Dark” network, and how these experiences can be opened to partners for inspiration.

The session invites actors from culture, research and administration to continue this collaboration in 2026 through pilots, calls and joint city projects so that cultural life after dark and sustainable urban development can strengthen each other.

Stadt nach Acht 2025 and Fraunhofer Morgenstadt

Urban Systems After Dark: A Mutual Agenda for Nightlife and Sustainability”

Fraunhofer IAO’s Department of Urban Systems Engineering, working within its Morgenstadt (City of Tomorrow) vision, is working with VibeLab and the Stadt nach Acht Conference to look at the night as a serious field for urban innovation. The shared interest is to see what could be possible when planners, researchers and night-time actors coordinate their efforts and systematically work together. Evening and night hours often allow more creativity and less rigid thinking than office routines. If this energy stays separate from sustainability agendas, cities may be missing an important driver for transition.

This partnership links cultural life after dark with sustainable urban development so that both can support each other, in Berlin and in other European cities. The aim is not to merge one sector into another, but to create a common space where night-time culture, creative economies and sustainable urban development pull in the same direction to make cities healthier and more attractive, by day and by night.