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

  • Articles

    Hackathons and Gender-Based Violence: How Innovation Drives Urban Change

  • Articles

    Medzinárodná spolupráca v praxi: Konferencia v Čunove spojila expertov na klímu, mestá a energiu

    Máme za sebou druhý ročník slovenského podujatia "Spolupráca naprieč hranicami 2026". Priestory ekocentra Čunovo tematicky umocnili vybranú nosnú tému:  "Medzinárodná spolupráca v kontexte zmeny klímy

  • 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