What makes this network interesting is that they share the same core problems:
◽ Young people across all five cities are disengaging from formal civic life.
◽Participation clusters among the already-engaged.
◽Marginalised youth, from peripheral neighbourhoods, low-income households, minority communities, remain hard to reach.
Therefore, the challenge is the same, but the local context, governance culture and existing infrastructure are not. The pathways to get there will look different in each city.
✔️ Leeuwarden, with the highest share of young residents in the network (28%), already runs Project500 - €500 micro-grants approved by a youth commission within two weeks. It also brings a deep legacy of citizen-led creative placemaking from its time as European Capital of Culture in 2018.
✔️ Piacenza brings grassroots neighbourhood governance and two existing participatory budgeting mechanisms: one city-wide (Piacenza Partecipa) and one youth-specific (Giovane Città Futura), supporting informal groups aged 14–35 with funding between €3,000 and €9,000.
✔️ Valongo already runs a youth participatory budget targeting residents aged 6 to 35, with projects voted on and funded with up to €10,000. It is a pioneering example of youth co-creation in a suburban context.
✔️ Veszprém, European Capital of Culture in 2023, launched its first participatory budget only in 2025. No dedicated youth format yet.
The goal is not to copy Cluj-Napoca, it is to transfer the core principles: low bureaucracy, trust-based micro-funding, demand-driven mentoring, genuine outreach to young people outside the usual suspects and let each city build a locally owned version from the ground up, ideally co-designed with young people themselves. Same rules, different playground.
Cluj-Napoca, meanwhile, is interrogating its own model: how to reach Roma youth, LGBTQIA+ young people and young people with disabilities more effectively; how to move from a single city-wide format to neighbourhood and school editions; how to turn first-time participants into future mentors.
What changes when a city genuinely trusts its young people? Everything, apparently. Com'ON City is three years of finding out how far that trust can travel, one city, one idea, one move at a time.
Give teenagers €1,000, no strings attached, trust them to make their city better, step back and watch what happens.
That was the bet Cluj-Napoca made in 2015. A decade later, it has paid off more than 1,000 times. Now comes a more complicated question: can a model built in Cluj-Napoca work in four other European cities?
Under the URBACT-funded Com'ON City transfer network, five cities are working together until 2028 to adapt this model to their own local realities: Leeuwarden (Netherlands), Piacenza (Italy), Valongo (Portugal), Veszprém (Hungary) and Cluj-Napoca as lead partner.