Networks and cities' news

Small cities, the potential best place to live in Europe?

For most of human history, most people across the world lived in small communities. Over the past 500 years, this reality has shifted dramatically, and in 2015, 73.5% of Europeans were already living in urban areas. People's concentration leads to some challenges related to quality of life, such as lack of safety, housing problems, pollution concentration, and poverty.

According to the Report on the Quality of Life in European Cities, a 2023 European Commission study, smaller cities are perceived as being better places to live. The study shows that the happiness and well-being of people increase in cities smaller than 250.000 inhabitants.

iPlace- gli strumenti dell’handbook per lo sviluppo dell’economia locale e l’esperienza di Grosseto

di Nicole Mercurio

Nella progettazione e nelle politiche per lo sviluppo urbano, troppo spesso lo sviluppo economico locale viene pensato e pianificato sulla base delle esperienze e delle conoscenze sviluppate dalle grandi città.
Affinché l’obiettivo di generare un impatto economico reale sui piccoli centri sia perseguito, è però importante attuare un cambio di paradigma e partire dalla premessa per la quale le realtà minori necessitano di nuovi strumenti e chiavi di lettura, che partano dalle loro differenze e che rendano le loro piccole dimensioni non uno svantaggio ma un valore aggiunto dal quale partire.

Opportunity to get to know each other during the First Transnational meeting

Designing and implementing sustainable development strategies are one of the primary tasks of urban areas. In the long term, achieving such a goal must include efforts to mitigate climate change. While this is a challenge that all cities are facing, this topic is a special area of interest for the partners of the GreenPlace network.

Cities@Heart: an URBACT Network proposing solutions for city centres, the testing ground for addressing future urban challenges

In spite of urban sprawl and a franchise economy, city centres are on the rise! Cities@Heart is here to defend proximity and mixed use, making downtown more accessible and appealing for new generations.

Falling in love with downtown: the URBACT Cities@Heart network is here!

As a part of the URBACT IV European Programme, ten European urban areas come together to form Cities@Heart, a network dedicated to sharing best practices and innovations for improving city centre management.

Female entrepreneurship - a way to development in rural areas

Within the framework of its participation in the FEMACT-Cities project, the County Administrative Board of Skåne primarily works on how the proportion of female entrepreneurs can be increased and how the amount of venture capital that goes to female entrepreneurs can be higher.