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

    Insights and advancements from quartely network journal #1

    Joining forces on #energypoverty

     

    Across Europe, local authorities are increasingly facing the challenge of helping vulnerable households cope with rising energy costs while supporting a fair and

  • Social cohesion
    transnational meeting in trikala

    Harnessing data to combat energy poverty

    Written by Aegli Gioumi

     

    The city of Trikala (Greece) hosted the second transnational meeting of the EmPowerIngUs network between 15th and 17th of April 2025. Partners from across Europe gathered at

  • Breaking Isolation | Pombal, Portugal

    O diagnóstico da vida urbana: como é que as cidades têm impacto na saúde para além da assistência médica

    Três redes URBACT respondem à seguinte questão: e se uma saúde melhor começasse antes mesmo de as pessoas precisarem de cuidados de saúde?