Networks and cities' news

Youth Work Goes Digital: European Cities Unite to Tackle Online Engagement Gap

As young Europeans spend more time online, a groundbreaking initiative is helping cities adapt their youth engagement strategies. NextGen YouthWork (NGYW), a network of ten European cities, is pioneering a hybrid approach to bridge the digital divide and ensure youth workers can connect with young people where they are: online.

Shaping rural and urban mobility together: how community action drives practical change

On a chilly morning in Bram in southern France, families gather as the community-run Vélobus sets off. Children cycle together instead of adding to traffic at the school gate. Meanwhile, in Treviso in northern Italy, residents step into Piazza Duomo during a temporary car-free trial and experience their historic centre differently. And in Szabolcs 05 in Hungary, a small painted crossing near a village school has become one of the most valued improvements of the year.

Across Europe, these modest scenes show how small and community-led experiments can influence the way rural and semi-urban places approach mobility. They reveal that a shift in everyday travel patterns does not always require major projects. It often begins with simple actions that respond to local routines.

Cities After Dark - #6 Quarterly Journal

Remote-IT Quarterly Report #6

Preparing cities for new ways of working - insights from the Remote-IT network

When the Remote-IT URBACT Action Planning Network started its work in 2023, the eight partner cities shared a common intuition- that remote and hybrid work were not a temporary legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic, but a structural shift reshaping labour markets, mobility patterns, tourism, public administration, and urban life. What they did not yet have was a clear understanding of what this shift meant at city level, what their specific role should be, or how to respond in a way that was strategic rather than reactive.

Remote-IT was created to fill that gap. Over two years, the network enabled cities to move from fragmented experimentation and abstract debates to concrete strategies, tested actions, and integrated plans for the future of work. The result is not only eight Integrated Action Plans, but a shared body of knowledge, tools, and lessons that are now available to other cities through the Remote-IT Digital Playbook.

Who Is in Control of Your City’s Narrative?

How URBACT Pioneers Accelerator cities turn data into stories - and participation into belonging