JOINING FORCES

Edited on 10/07/2025

21/04/2008 26/05/2010

Closed
  • Participative governance
  • Mobility
  • Urban renewal

JOINING FORCES aims at exploring how strategy making and governance arrangements at city-region scale can help to effectively address the main challenges faced by urban Europe: competitiveness, cohesion, and sustainability.

Summary

Introduction

JOINING FORCES is an Urbact Working Group that brings together 8 partners: Brno, Brussels-Capital Region, Burgas, Eindhoven, Florence, Krakow, Lille Metropole, and Seville.

 

All over Europe, metropolitan areas / city-regions are increasingly recognised, even by local authorities, as the "real city" level, the right one for developing more effective governance and strategy developments. Achieving successful cooperation between cities and their surrounding areas is obviously crucial to improve local cohesion, but even more to increase territorial competitiveness and sustainability.

 

The project aims at describing and analysing partners' situations in order to propose conclusions and suitable recommendations to the local / regional / national / European authorities on governance at city-region level. This theme will be considered through different aspects: 

  • Strategy and spatial planning
  • Mobility management and transport
  • Main environmental issues: water supply, waste disposal, etc.
  • Knowledge economy (creativity, research and education)
  • Governance (public / public & public / private arrangements
  • Social inclusion, participation, empowerment
    Attractiveness & Competitiveness (including promotion / marketing)

 

Partners

Lead Partner : Lille - France
  • Seville - Spain
  • Florence - Italy
  • Burgas - Bulgaria
  • Krakow - Poland
  • Brno - Czech Republic
  • Eindhoven - Netherlands
  • Brussels - Belgium

Timeline

Project launch

Project completed

Articles

  • Beyond Physical Accessibility: Lived Experience and Inclusive Urban Governance

    Can a city be physically accessible without being genuinely inclusive? 

     

    This question challenges approaches to urban accessibility centred primarily on infrastructure provision and technical

  • Articles

    Mestá v centre pozornosti na festivale URBACT City Festival 2026 v Nikózii

    Dva dni nabité nápadmi sú za nami, no energia z mestských inovácií v nás stále zostáva.

  • Articles
    Nicosia (CY), Festivalul Orașului URBACT. URBACT / Giorgios Michael

    URBACT City Festival 2026: o ponto de encontro das cidades

    Continuamos a celebrar as soluções urbanas e a inspiração, após os dois dias produtivos, que contaram com a participação de mais de 40 representantes de cidades portuguesas.