• How do URBACT Good Practices strive towards more sustainability together with citizens and other stakeholders?

    Striving towards sustainability together

    The occurrences and types of events and catastrophes related to climate change (environmental , biodiversity, human, social or societal concerns) have been constantly increasing for more than a century and especially in the last decades. Although these are mostly observed at meta level, it is a local level that both public authorities and citizens should act to implement and undertake concrete actions for a wide societal change. Some URBACT Good Practices understood it quite well and are developing not only sustainable strategies that are local and concrete, but also participatory ones: this is what Manchester (UK), Santiago de Compostela (ES), Milan (IT) and Tallinn (EE) addressed during the “Together for sustainability panel” of the URBACT City Festival held in Tallinn, Estonia on 5 October 2017.

    The incremental integration of citizens in sustainable policies

    Marcelline Bonneau

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  • Procurement is a Cycle – monitoring is a core and continuous spoke

    The sixth transnational meeting of the Procure network took place in Koszalin, Poland on Tuesday 12th and Wednesday 13th September 2017. The focus of the meeting was upon how cities can monitor the impact of their procurement spend in local economic, social and environmental terms. 

    sbamber

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  • From co-visualising the 'in between' to more integrated policies and actions? Mapping common ground in European social innovation projects

    Spin-Off' project that responds to the specific needs of the partners and will be suitable for further development and will be in compliance with the requirements of the respective Transnational/Interregional Programmes and Calls. Spin-off projects are meant to kick-start the implementation of the LAPs.

    Aldo de Moor

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  • Two cities united by a love of good food

    As URBACT opens its first call for Transfer Networks here’s a story of how a Good Practice from one city was adapted and transferred to a completely different local context.

    Amy Labarrière

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  • Accommodating and integrating refugees in the city of Thessaloniki: the multi-stakeholder programme REACT

    Thessaloniki has been at the forefront of the management crisis of refugee flows. The city launched its emergency response in 2015, just before the closure of the Balkan Route and the EU-Turkey common statement of March 2016. In 2016, three times more people applied for asylum in Greece than the year before, with 51,092 asylum applications, compared with 13,195 in 2015. And as the ‘temporariness’ of the transit refugee population has evolved to become semi-temporary to potentially permanent, a strategic urban response has been all the more essential. With this in mind, the Municipality of Thessaloniki, with support from the URBACT network Arrival Cities, is drafting an Integrated Action Plan (IAP) to provide a holistic inclusion and integration strategy coordinating key state and non-state actors. As a partner in Arrival Cities, Thessaloniki formed an URBACT Local Group, which helped to create a multi-stakeholder consortium for the REACT programme. This type of consortium for managing refugee integration is a first in Greece, and has been considered as best practice by the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

    REACT programme and the role of the URBACT local group

    Meric Ozgunes

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  • Cities and digitalisation: “Adapt or die”

    How can cities benefit from digitalisation?  With dramatic headlines about jobs being destroyed by digitalisation, and many policy makers resisting change, Alison Partridge argues that the 4th industrial revolution, and industry 4.0, are best seen as an opportunity, not a threat, for Europe's towns and cities.

    First, some definitions…

    For many this is a complex, unfamiliar and somewhat bewildering landscape. So here are a few explanations of key terms before delving deeper.

    Alison Partridge

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  • Can nature make your city climate-resilient?

    Among the headlines of summer 2017: disastrous floods in the South of England, Istanbul and Berlin, extreme water scarcity in Rome, wild fires damaging homes on the Croatian coast, the Côte d'Azur and elsewhere… The magnitude and frequency of these and other events indicate that climate change is already a reality, and the impacts will be even bigger in the future. Yes, we need to reduce greenhouse gases to limit climate change, but equally urgent: we need to adapt to the remaining impacts. All cities, depending on their geographical position, are likely to experience prolonged and more intensive heatwaves or droughts, more frequent wild fires, coastal flooding, or an increase in the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall with the associated threat of urban flooding, river flooding or landslides. How can cities cope with these huge predicted impacts of climate change in the future, even when they are faced with tight budgets? Can nature be a solution?

    Malmö enjoys its green infrastructure solutions

    Birgit Georgi

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  • Emerging retail and consumer trends that challenge small cities and their centres

    Mireia Sanabria, URBACT III RetaiLink network Lead Expert

    What follows is a summary of the presentation delivered at the URBACT III City Centre Doctor network transnational meeting held in San Donà di Piave (It), 29-31 May 2017. It introduces the key challenges that small and medium-sized European cities experience with regards to retailing in their city centres as a result of consumer and sector trends. It also points at some methods and policy guidelines for mediumsized cities to approach the topic with an aim of minimising the impact that the new consumption and business models have in their cities.

    Alberto Ferri

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  • The growing role of food in fixing our cities

    El pasado 7 de enero de 2019 se lanzó oficialmente la nueva convocatoria las URBACT Action Planning Networks, que estará abierta hasta el 17 de abril. Puedes conocer todos los detalles aquí

    Eddy Adams

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  • Green Public Procurement & Socially Responsible Public Procurement

    Green Public Procurement (GPP) and Socially Responsible Public Procurement (SRPP) bring environmental, societal and economic benefits at the local level, and can help drive the market towards sustainability. By taking smart decisions when purchasing products and services, public authorities achieve real value for the public purse. 

    sbamber

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