OPENCities is a British Council project funded by URBACT and led by Belfast City Council in collaboration with a network of European cities. The partner cities include Bilbao, Bucharest, Cardiff, Dublin, Dusseldorf, Nitra, Poznan, Sofia and Vienna.  URBACT is a European exchange and learning programme promoting sustainable urban development.

The partners all recognise that the arrival of large numbers of new residents can create great opportunities for innovation and progress in social, economic and cultural development.

OPENCities aims to explore how cities can attract and retain migrant populations and what initiatives cities can employ to make themselves a popular choice with international workers.
 

Baseline studies
Baseline studies were completed by each partner city during the development phase of the project. The aim was to show how open each city was and what initiatives were currently in place. These provided a starting point from which we can measure the impact of the project.

Index of Openness
One of the objectives of OPENCities is to develop a common definition of openness allowing cities to carry out benchmarking and self-assessment.  Data to populate an OPENCities Index will be gathered across the lifetime of the project and beyond.  A feasibility study on whether openness can be measured internationally is complete and available online.

Local Support Groups
Local Support Groups have been set up in each of the partner cities with the aim of spreading the learning from trans-national exchanges to a broader cross-section of local stakeholders and to ensure that the lessons learnt through the OPENCities project lead to change at a local level.  Each city will produce a Local Action Plan (LAP) which will form the legacy of the project.  LAPs will contain innovative pilot projects led by cities, policy makers and stakeholders that will actively address barriers to economic migrants.

Thematic Papers
Papers will be produced by Greg Clark, OPENCities advisor, on each theme of the project

• Leadership and Governance
• Internationalisation
• Integration and Inclusion

Conference reports will be produced as a result of 6 thematic workshops held across the lifetime of the project.

These reports are compiled by the lead expert for the project, Damian Duffy, with input from each of the cities by way of case studies relating to the topic.

Download Key Findings: Leadership & Governance
Download Key Findings: Internationalisation

Full copies of all reports mentioned above are available to download from the URBACT website www.urbact.eu/opencities
 

Bilbao, strategically situated on the Bay of Biscay, is located in the middle of the Atlantic Arc. Its metropolitan area groups together a population of one million inhabitants, rising to more than 16 million people in the surrounding areas.

The Department of Equality, Cooperation and Citizenship of the City Council of Bilbao is working on the OPENCities project, along with the collaboration of Bilbao Metropoli- 30, Association for the strategic regeneration of Bilbao, and Ikuspegi, the Basque Observatory of Immigration.

The Local Support Group (LSG), led by the expert from the Ikuspegi, comprises of local representatives from various sectors:
• Local, Regional and Autonomous Administration,
• Universities,
• NGOs,
• Integration and Social inclusion agents

The LSG aims to develop a Local Action Plan (LAP), which sets out the principles for responding to the demands of integration. This is achieved through the establishment of active and effective public policies and through the creation of an indicators system which measures and periodically analyses the integration of the immigrant population in the city.

With regards to the methodology, the group has proposed to address a series of themes that are considered key to the field of integration. Eight technical committees have been established to develop an indicators system. 

Visit Bilbao City Council at www.bilbao.net
 

The OPENCities project is now reaching a wider EU audience. At a recent meeting of the Eurocities Economic Development Forum in Madrid, the city of Belfast was appointed Chair of the Economic Migration Working Group. This group, with a city membership of over 25 medium sized cities, will share in the learning from the OPENCities project.

The working group will focus particularly on the findings and practical transferable case studies emanating from the internationalisation theme. The working group looks forward to adding to the work of the project and to disseminating the OPENCities outputs to a much wider audience of cities and EU Institutions. 
 

For more information visit the Eurocities website: http://www.eurocities.eu

 

URBACT and the British Council have website pages dedicated to OPENCities.
On these sites you will find additional information and background to the project, events calendars, research documents and information about each of the partners.
http://urbact.eu/opencities
www.opencities.eu

Each partner also has an OPENCities page on their own city council website.