Idrija, is a small former mercury mining and industrial town set in the Alpine foothills, which has developed into an important global and regional node with a growing economy.  Even so, Idrija displays classic shrinkage dynamic. The long-term decline of the population due to low birth rates and out-migration is 2,5% and by 2028 the total population is expected to be around 11.000.

In 2016, Idrija participated in the URBACT City Centre Doctor Network, producing an Integrated Action Plan to revive the town centre. This included an idea for a new community centre.

Idrija already had various local NGOs, a youth centre and a multi-generational centre in a retirement home, but each was relatively focused on its own agenda. The municipality was looking for a solution that would connect people, enable them to make decisions together, give them feeling of being part of the community and open new possibilities. The opportunity for a solution came with the Altenas’ good practice, more precisely with the NGO platform ‘Stellwerk’.

Fostering the engagement of inhabitants who are not in paid employment but have access to skills and resources to help support those in need, builds the capacity of civil society to engage with often complex social problems in a structured way. Altena founded its NGO platform in 2008 and called it Stellwerk. The Stellwerk started without a budget. The municipality made available premises, paid the energy and cleaning bills, provided a minimum of administrative resources. Currently the Stellwerk has 8 volunteer workers who co-ordinate several hundred volunteers providing disability support, arts and music groups, home visiting and home care services, refugee integration and much more. The Stellwerk provides an essential channel of communication between civil society and municipality.

In February 2020, Idrija launched its new ‘Towns’ Living Room’: the municipality offered a vacant building to house a small ULG involving the heads of the city administration, active citizens, social services, development agency, public library and nursing home, local clubs and various associations.

The ‘Towns’ Living Room’ links organisations with interested citizens if needed, but it is a “by the people for the people’’ model. Activities have already included events on housing and building refurbishment, chess classes, evening of poetry, book presentation, reading of fairy tales for children, knitting evening to raise breast cancer awareness and many more. It hosts services, such as a municipality supported volunteer based free transport service for elderly people and a book corner provided by the local library.

For successful transfer of good practice, it connected and established cooperation across different departments of a municipality. As well as also it strengthened the connection between local actors, NGOs and municipality.

With the practice based on ‘people to people’ approach it also improves the quality of design and implementation of smaller local actions.

Good practice works when there is trust established between all different parties – municipality, NGOs/volunteers, institutions and citizens.

The practice is based on people, NGOs, volunteers that are encouraged by ULG. The coordination between all the elements was done by ULG coordinator. It includes all important stakeholders and interested citizens which is essential part of success of a practice based on ‘’people to people’’ approach. It uses bottom-up approach which leads to that people actually want to be part of good practice and want to give to community because they are having opportunity to fulfil their wishes and they actually have a say in what will happen.

After official opening of the premises of the NGO platform (the "Towns living room’’) volunteers started to turn up. Ideas are coming in all the time which means that people are actually engaging and doing things on their own. There is also a wide acceptance now in public. At the start there were a lot of opinions about "just another project’’ and now those opinions are different and more in a way "we really needed that’’ "it is nice to have a place where we can do something’’. A lot of ideas are already on the list to do, and everyone is more confident now. With less Covid-19 restrictions the "Town living room" was able to open up again which resulted in a rich monthly program with different activities organized as well as giving people a place to hang out a bit without organized activities.

Idrija was one of the seven European cities (besides Manresa Spain, Igoumenitsa Greece, Isernia Italy, Melgaço Portugal, Aluksne Latvia, Nyírbátor Hungary) of the Re-grow City Transfer Network, led by Altena, Germany, to transfer the URBACT Good Practice of Altena on finding opportunities in declining cities. Some of the cities were transferring the NGO platform while others the Pop-up shops.

This good practice has also been chosen as one of 5 URBACT National Practice Transfer Initiatives (NPTI) and will be transferred to 6 other Slovenian municipalities. The project is led by Slovenian NUP, with Tina Lisac as national expert.

Equipped by URBACT with a toolkit, the cities could learn from the good practice and also from each other.

Re-grow City deliberately focused on small and medium sized towns, because they face distinctive challenges in terms of constrained resources and limited technical capabilities when compared to larger cities. These constraints offer opportunities, however, for example robust social networks with high levels of ‘social capital’ and short decision making routes that speed up the adoption of untested or controversial methods. Taken together with the resources and skills local people have, shrinking cities are places of opportunity and can demonstrate considerable resilience even where they face severe constraints.

As a side-outcome of the Re-Grow City network, in May 2021 the new pan-European network ReGrow Towns has been established. This is aimed for towns below the size of 50 th residents and is an addendum to the already existing networks of Eurocities (cities above 250 th residents) and Eurotowns (cities between 50-250 th residents).

Since 2015 the city of Naples has adopted the "Urban Civic Use Regula-tion" as a policy instrument allowing local communities to manage public assets as common goods. Starting from the pilot project established with the Ex Asilo Filangieri in 2012, more spaces in the city have been interest-ed by this innovative governance model enhancing local communities to use free and shared spaces, resources, knowledge and skills and improv-ing the engagement of citizens in the self-management of common re-sources. Through the participation to the URBACT transfer network Civic eState the City of Naples invested in developing networking among the different experiences self-managing Urban Commons in the city, supported their communication capacity, improved know-how and guidelines for the self-recovery of the buildings and community empowerment and fund raising strategies.

By revisiting the outmoded institution of civic use, the good practice of Napoli aims at making spontaneous bottom-up initiatives recognisable and institutionalised, ensuring the autonomy of both parties involved, the proactive citizens and the institutions. The first asset to be recognised as a commons, and therefore proposed as a good practice, is the Ex-Asilo Filangeri, a building that by resolution n.400 (2012) was already identified by the city of Naples as a “place with a complex use in the cultural field, and whose spaces are used to experiment in participative democracy”. At that time, it had been occupied by a group of art and culture professionals protesting against abandonment of the newly restored premises. With the following decision, n.893/2015, the city of Naples recognised the “Urban Civic Use Regulation” of the good, a declaration produced in an autonomous way by the community that benefits from the good, and that puts self-management as the main principle of its administration. Thanks to the good practice's governance model, more than 250 projects came to life, breaking down the production costs by using free and shared spaces, resources, knowledge and skills. During the last decade, the City of Naples has been experimenting with this new governance model to get back in use abandoned or underused buildings subtracted from the life of the city. Conflictual actions of occupation and bottom-up rule-creation were turned into an opportunity.
By acknowledging this regulation, the public administration assumes the burden of ensuring the usability of the place, while the right to make use of it is free and guaranteed to all citizens, accompanied by a participatory model that is founded on open assemblies and thematic roundtable talks.
The later resolution n.446/2016, recognised seven more public properties as “relevant civic spaces to be ascribed to the category of common goods”.

The integration is first and foremost assured through an ad-hoc municipal department, the “social enhancement of municipally owned spaces and common goods”, and with a political coordination in charge of the Urban Planning councillor. This department (technical level) and the above-mentioned councillor (political level) are in charge of promoting the col-laboration with other departments and councillors of the municipality, or other institutions.

Furthermore, the city waives completely the role of top-down manager and, with a horizontal subsidiarity mechanism, acts like a guarantor and takes its own burdens and responsibilities related to the operation of the good, while recognising the autonomy of the management system adopted by the users.

The horizontal integration lies also in the basic principles that are stated in the Urban Civic Use Regulation, produced autonomously by the community, and recognised by the Naples city council. The Civic Use of the Common goods is based on the principles of self-management, cooperation and mutualism, and tends to strengthen individual and collective responsibility. Empowerment is established by cooperation, in which each member of the community, whether guest or so-called inhabitant, contributes to the community's activities and management. Accordingly, every community of use has established his own Civic use declaration for the different goods.

Since March 2012 an open and inclusive management model is in place at the Ex -Asilo and has been progressively extended through an increasing number of experiences. Every week, an open meeting is convened (more than 190 since the projects' beginning), as well as several working groups for the implementation of activities (more than 830, with about 18,000 attendances). Besides ensuring transparency, this has established a strong bond between the inhabitants of the city, and narrowed the gap between artists, academics and citizens.

Main numbers since March 2012:

• 18,000 people took part in the direct management of the Ex-Asilo through roundtable talks and public management assemblies;
• 150 public management assemblies for the self-government of the Ex-Asilo;
• 830 days of public working groups ("tables"), to deepen the projects and proposals. Topics are: "armeria" (visual arts), performing arts, self-government, library, cinema, "tavolo sociale", social, and urban gardening;
• 2,000 creatives including arts, culture and entertainment professionals, workers, artists, scholars, researchers, academics, associations, institu-tions, and citizens that have used Ex-Asilo spaces and resources, and/or organised activities.

Through the civic eState Transfer Network the City of Napoli has been able to support the improvement of the practice with three key actions:

• The first identified objective was to improve the “Communication” of the urban commons of Naples, not only as a way to inform but also to involve actively other citizens in the network and also to help the “reproduction” of the network of the urban commons itself. The creation of the website CommonsNapoli managed by the network of Common goods in Napoli provides a web platform for the coordination of the different initiatives happening in this field that includes information about the activities developed in the seven self-managed spaces and documentation about the legal and policy tools and the observatory of urban commons goods.
• The second objective was to recognize institutionally the practices of co-design, self-construction and self-recovery of the urban commons, with the aim to strengthen the local capacity (both administrative and of the local communities) in finding solutions to the physical deterioration of the assets compatible with collective management and civic uses that are being experimented by the commoners. An ad hoc expert of a study has been commissioned a study that looks at innovations in the legal framework and experiences of self-recovery done in Italy in order to establish legal precedents and innovative procedures to apply the self-help construction procedure to publicly owned buildings destined to social use. The preliminary study has been preliminary to drafting of a set of guidelines to introduce the practice of self-help regeneration of common goods in the regulations of the City of Napoli.
• Ads a community empowerment action, a training on fund-raising was directed at the activists running the common goods in Napoli to support the financing of the regeneration and the activity of the seven initiatives. For this purpose, a very intense capacity building programme was offered to the activists, that included a workshop on community fundraising, whose beneficiaries were 46 activists belonging to 22 urban commons and other non-profit organizations; tutoring of the activists in the operational planning of 5 pilot fundraising campaigns for 5 urban commons, and a document elaborated by a senior fundraiser, who followed the whole training process, that contains specific guidelines for the fundraising of urban commons.

The participation to the Transfer network had the objective to share the urban co-governance principle in the use, management and ownership of urban commons and to discuss the use of local legal hacks such as the example of the urban civic uses successfully experimented in Naples. The mechanism proposed by the City of Naples, although routed in the Italian legal system, is characterized by a high degree of adaptability to other European urban contexts as it is based on largely shared ethic, legal and social values, already widespread in other countries. The civic eState Transfer Network included seven cities, with Napoli leading Amsterdam, Barcelona, Gdánsk, Ghent, Iaśi and Presov into the exchange of good practices. https://urbact.eu/civic-estate

Bees are rich in terms of biodiversity protection, education development and touristic attraction. Transferring the practice of Lubljana, Bydgoszcz develop its own approach of connecting sites in the city that are bee-friendly and where apiaries can be visited. This is also included in a wider campaign for bee awareness and protection.

Bydgoszcz is the eighth largest city in Poland, part of the Bydgoszcz–Toruń metropolitan area, set on the on the Brda and Vistula rivers in northern Poland. It is an increasingly important economic centre, but the city is well known for its water, Art Nouveau buildings, and urban greenery – including the largest city park in Poland (830 ha).

The city has a dynamic approach to sustainable development as part of its efforts to improve the quality of life of the city’s inhabitants. Against this background, Bydgoszcz wanted to link its agricultural land and green spaces with ecological education and took a particular interest in Ljubljana’s approach to connecting sites in the city that are bee-friendly and where apiaries can be visited.

The City started to test and promote the quality of Bydgoszcz honey and used World Bee Day to implement a campaign on the ‘Urban reality of bees and people - let’s create a more bee-friendly world’, including photos at bus and tram stops, and messages on billboards. A local biologist produced a brochure on proper human behaviour towards bees and an exhibition.

But for ULG Coordinator, Justyna Olszewska, a highlight was local teachers getting enthusiastic about teaching children about bees. They developed a new educational programme called “With Bees Throughout the Year”, which gives children the opportunity to get to know about bees, beekeeping and related topics around health, plants and nature.

The approach undertaken by Bydgoszcz is fully aligned with the integrated approach of the Practice of Ljubljana that it transferred. Ecological practices related to beekeeping have been developed. The new EU project “Bez Lipy” introduces participatory approach to greenery development and a member of URBACT local group participates in the works.

The practice is also focusing on children and their education and attitude towards bees. This has also meant the development of professional skills and capacity to raise their awareness and develop bee-related activities as well as the enlargement of the network of urban beekeepers in the city. The city also promotes new (touristic) products and services related to beekeeping such as educational workshops run by Dawid Kilon, a biologist, guide and draftsman and bee-keeping workshops run at WSG University of Economy in Bydgoszcz.

Bydgoszcz municipality formed an URBACT Local Group (ULG) mixing around 30 members - beekeepers, teachers, entrepreneurs, researchers, local tour guides and interested individuals. The group identified 16 places in the city with apiaries and melliferous potential to appear on their own Bee Path map of 16 stops – from a roof on the university, through Shopping Mall with beehives, pollinator houses in city parks, sensory garden at school, Bydgoszcz Soap Works to the botanical garden.

In 2018 the City of Bydgoszcz lifted the ban on beekeeping in the city centre. Within the project we have managed to get to know beekeepers and educators who are ready to share their knowledge – in the very 2021 there are new beehives in the city centre: in May an apiary was installed by Mateusz Andryszak in Ostromecko Park and Palace Ensemble, and in June another one was installed in the Biziel University Hospital (Mateusz guided the endeavour). There are more and more bees initiatives application within the city grants and Bydgoszcz Citizens’ Participatory Budget, e.g. in 2022 there will be a municipal beehive installed and a bee-themed playground. Bydgoszcz is also starting the promotion of the Bee Education Programme in schools and we celebrate World Bee Day by installing the exhibition on bees that is accessible and offered to download and use as an open source and to be installed in any other city that wishes to educate about bees.

Visiting Ljubljana in April 2019 - together with stakeholders of BeePathNet’s other partner cities - members of Bydgoszcz’s ULG were truly inspired by how they too could create their own story around bees, linking to history, architecture and natural values.

The city hopes to install the popular bee educational programme across the whole education sector, from kindergarten up. There are also plans that Ania Izdebska with the local Tourist Office will create a ‘Bee Quest Game’ that will complement the town’s existing game for visitors.

Finally, the city also plans to explore further business opportunities and promotion, to take advantage of the growing interest in the project - including in other towns in the region.