People from all over Budapest (HU) take part in the city's Weekend of Open Houses – Budapest100, a festival that opens the gates of 50-60 houses and institutions each year. The event has become a tradition since its launch in 2011, with attendance reaching 20,000 visitors during the weekend.
Between 2011 and 2015 it was organised as a community-building initiative celebrating 100-year-old Budapest buildings, with the cooperation of citizens, NGOs, public institutions and district municipalities. Its main aim is to draw attention to local buildings, their architectural value and history - and to the civilian power that organises residential communities and holds them together. Since 2016, the event has been structured around a given theme or location.
The broad mission of Budapest100 is to initiate a common discussion about revival and inspire the establishment and strengthening of residential communities.

The solution offered by Budapest100 is threefold. It contributes to reforming urban community co-existence, to change the relationship between residents and the city and to help people become more responsible citizens. The weekend of open houses initiates common discussion about urban revival, underlines the values of the built environment and takes action against social isolation. Throughout Europe there are similar initiatives, but with a much lower social impact. The examples are mainly concentrating on the built environment, letting the audience enter a building and sharing with them the most important data, collected and presented by experts. Budapest100, on the other hand, adds the factors of community-building and creating value. In the apartment blocks joining the programme, residents prepare in a self-organized way (with the help of volunteers) exhibitions, cultural events, concerts and give building-history tours for the visiting audiences. The strength of the event lies in creating a demand to share and value transfer. The easiest way of social mobilisation is to create emotional engagement. The festival creates a platform for telling the stories behind closed doors and to start dialogues. Budapest100 has highlighted the possibilities of a cleverly organised, friendly city involving the residents.

Through its strong community development focus, its link to informal education, social isolation and nurturing of local organisers, Budapest100 essentially includes the social aspect related to integrated urban development. Both economic and environmental aspects of urban development are tackled by the fact that residents form communities within the programme and are more alert to physical degradation. Many apartment blocks started repeating community action in a self-organising way after Budapest100, resulting in renovations and smaller architectural changes, not to mention self-organised actions. Besides mobilising internal efforts (local people caring more), Budapest100 also draws the attention of tourists, local businesses and municipalities. The real economic impact potentially achieved through these actors is significant, even if indirect. Budapest100 not only addresses the city-loving audience, but a wide range of professionals, namely architects, landscape architects and urban planners, and initiates a common discourse on the themes affecting the city and its people. During the months of the preparations for the weekend festival a significant number of volunteers are involved and trained, who get in touch with the buildings which respond to the open call. In line with the above progress of the initiative, in 2016 the festival departed from the historical aspect of celebrating 100-year-old houses (because as a consequence of WW1 there were no buildings to celebrate) and has started to be organised around a theme. In 2016 the topic was the Grand Boulevard of Budapest, in 2017 the Danube quays, in 2018 the squares of the city while in 2019 the Bauhaus heritage.

Budapest100 was launched by the Open Society Archives and is organised by the Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre, an NGO dedicated to the dissemination of architectural practices. Budapest metropolitan and district municipalities aid the organisation by financial and in-kind support (human resources, data, communication). Since the 2011 beginning, the event has been performed with a constantly growing infrastructure and press attention, with many partners joining the initiative. The festival uses already successful methods in a further developed way: recruiting a network of 150 volunteers and involving researchers. Their composition is mixed across ages and professions, including students, retired people, architects, employees of companies and artists. There is no declared hierarchical relationship among the various actors, the structure is transparent, with open communication. Residents and volunteers are realising community programmes together alongside the principles articulated by the core team of Budapest100: culture development, information transfer, preservation of values and community cooperation. Along with the programmes in the houses, workshops and discussions on urban planning also take place attracting professionals and decision-makers. The core team pays attention to the residents and makes sure they are getting involved in these discussions, so they have the opportunity to offer their own opinions and ideas.

In the past ten years, Budapest100 has opened the gates of 50 to 60 houses and institutions yearly. Based on the feedback from involved residents, the weekends were full of experiences and lessons learnt. Many of them have highlighted that they would never have thought that so many people would be interested in their lives or their neighbourhoods. In an indirect way the festival offered them the feeling of uniqueness and importance and created conditions for neighbourhoods working together towards a common goal, making the residents’ voices heard. Local communities became stronger through the access to knowledge that helps them get closer to their own stories, their buildings and through that their cities, making them feel responsible. A more concrete success is that many apartment blocks started repeating community actions in a self-organised way following Budapest100, resulting in renovations and smaller architectural changes or organising a yard picnic or concert. The festival also got international reputation: in 2013 the Guardian chose the festival as one of the most interesting programmes of the continent, and it also received one of the prizes in “The most beautiful city feast” by Lebendige Stadt Stiftung, Hamburg. Besides the URBACT good practice label Budapest100 has become a part of the Cultural Heritage in Action Programme too.

After being awarded the URBACT Good Practice title, Újbuda was able to create the Come In! Transfer Network to which six European cities (Gheorgheni RO, Forlì IT, Varaždin HR, Pori FI, Plasencia ES, Targówek/Warsaw PL) were invited. Actually, Újbuda itself also used the method of Budapest100 in another target area, Őrmező, a prefabricated housing estate. Equipped by URBACT with a toolkit, the cities could learn from each other. The transfer process was not one-sided, during the transnational meetings the existing practices of some of the transfer cities inspired Újbuda and contributed to the development of ideas to further improve the Good Practice in the following ways. 1. Organisation of spin-off activities besides the annual big festival (like the event in the Castle District of Budapest). This has partly been inspired by the Come in! project partners which transferred the good practice in neighbourhoods and not in fragmented houses through the entire city centre. 2. Reflection on modern built environment during the annual festival. It already happened that the topic of prefabricated housing estates was one among the potential topics. Most likely one of the next BP100 festivals will reflect on modern heritage. 3. Budapest100 was inspired by the Forli website as well. In Budapest there is a massive database of houses involved in the last years, but the Italian website is very professional in terms of highlighting storytelling. This was one of the key themes of the Come in! network: describing the stories of the places (in a website and on the spot) can extend the effect of the festival, making it permanent, not only one-off event. 4. Using design thinking workshop methods as a further motivation for the volunteers. 5. Moving forward from celebration to joint placemaking actions on super local level (e.g. building an inner garden in a patio).

Innova.TO is a competition for all municipal employees of Turin (IT), except the directors, inspired by the principles of lean organisation. It aims to stimulate and develop innovative projects to improve the administration's performance, reducing waste and/or valuing resources.
The city of Torino employs a 10,000-strong community of well-educated, skilled people. At the heart of Innova.TO is the ambition to encourage all these employees to see themselves as potential innovators. To reinforce participation: project proposals were anonymous; the jury was composed of internal and external experts; private sponsors agreed to offer awards.
So far, 71 projects have been submitted, 111 employees involved, and 10 proposals rewarded. No public budget has been allocated. Winning proposals include an idea for improving transparency and community participation in local projects, sensors to regulate lighting in public buildings, and a new model for smart procurements.

Of 71 proposals submitted, 63 were from individual employees, five were presented by two employees and the remaining were proposed by three people. Proposals were related to service quality improvement (19), new services (7), environmental friendly projects (7), organisational development (16), employee welfare (5), informatics (3), and operative efficiency (14). The web-platform hosting Innova.TO has obtained more than 4,000 contacts. Ten projects have been awarded, for example:

• 5*1,000. The idea was using the 5x1,000 donation for the development of specific projects selected by the local community. In this manner, the citizens of Turin can concretely see what they finance through the donation of the 5x1000 of their individual income tax return, promoting the transparency of public action and better participation by the local community.
• Smart solutions for smart procurements. The project would like to organise a team inside the municipality dedicated to the procurement of innovative goods and services, and able to operate in integration with the existing organisational structures. It encompasses the definition of a new organisational model and dedicated administrative instruments to systematise the use of innovation’s procurement and realise Smart City policies. The project proposes the installation of sensors to regulate the intensity of the light in the public buildings and, consequently, save energy consumptions.

Innova.TO has been designed by a team drawn from different departments of the City of Torino to assemble appropriated competencies and assure a good level of knowledge for the definition of each phase of the implementation process. Public employees as proponents of innovative solutions face directly or indirectly urban challenges in every field of intervention - it doesn’t matter the workstation placed by the public servant in the phase of ideas generation - shows evidence of how important for a big organisation to adopt lean and sustainable instruments to better deal with complex urban problems. The public administration is asked even more to find innovative solutions with smaller public budgets. Therefore it becomes crucial to create a collaborative environment enabling the generation of ideas of everyone “without having to ask permission to propose to make better”.

Changing mindsets is an important aspect of Innova.TO. In fact it has been designed to encourage public employees to become active participants in the city’s growing “intelligent community”. The challenge reflects the growing importance placed on staff and customers in public service redesign. The public employees know how things function, are well aware of user expectations and, for this reason, have a wealth of knowledge and experience. Innova.TO has ambitions to create a “ vibrant context”; it can be a very useful tool for the improvement of structures and lead to services of higher quality, maybe even generating managerial savings. Small or large, the ideas of workers may turn out to be valuable resources, especially in the current context, where all public entities are called to do more with less. Innova.TO is a successful example that shows how the adoption of the principles of an open innovation model can make social innovation. It’s a flag initiative of Torino’s strategy to trigger urban innovation which leverages on collaborative knowledge and action to create a multi-actor local ecosystem as well as a new open culture nurtured within the public administration and the territory.

Innova.TO shows that public employees can come forward with innovative ideas if they are engaged in a collaborative way. Employees are citizens too, and they know well how public money is spent as well as the environmental impact of our work. It also debunks the myth that the private sector is the sole reservoir of innovative thinking. It's important for employees to have a green light to experiment and to potentially make mistakes. Employees should also take a step back from their daily roles to consider the wider aspects of the organisation’s functions. These important messages about structures and work culture come from these "reflective spaces", and from the encouragement to think beyond the daily job. Leadership takes many forms: Innova.TO shows that. When It is bottom-up, It can flourish where there is high-level support, and even where that high-level support is initially lukewarm, it can be secured in other ways, provided senior staff are open-minded and listening. Here we see the streetwise and savvy civil servants coming to the fore, being prepared to persevere after initial disappointments. There is much talk nowadays about the multifaceted nature of civic leadership, and this is one example of it in action. Changing attitudes and mindsets is the start of a change process – a profound and potentially lengthy one – aimed at stimulating innovative and enterprising attitudes within public administrations.

Innova.TO is a model that is easily replicable, not expensive, and very flexible and agile. For these reasons it has received an award from Place Marketing Forum 2016, an international conference organised each year by the New Place Marketing and Attractiveness Chair of the Public Management Institute (Aix-Marseille University) as one the best worldwide practices in the category "Innovation marketing / Offer qualification / Relations personalisation". Innova.TO has been successfully promoted in public events such as the first URBACT City Festival (Riga, 6-8 May 2015) and during the Third World Forum of Local Economic Development, organised by the United Nations (Torino, 13-16 October 2015).

To respond to the lack of coordination and communication among the many social organisation in Riga, the NGO offers a new model of civic-ecosystem creation. Operating since 2013, the NGO House is the virtual and physical space of collaboration and support for non-governmental organisations, and the place where volunteers, representatives of NGOs and citizens can engage in socio-cultural activities, learn, explore and create.

The solutions offered by the Riga good practice are oriented towards the creation of a democratic and inclusive society based on solidarity, sustainability and equal access to civil, social, economic and cultural rights. While the idea of a hub for civic oriented organisations was born in 2010 for the capital city of Latvia, it is in September 2013 that the Riga City Council established the NGO House. The scope is to address the challenges of participation in the activities of the municipality, to achieve social integration for people of different ages, social groups and nationalities, by supporting NGOs promoting citizens' awareness of local affairs. The Riga NGO House is a platform for cooperation , but also a physical space located in a five-storey high white brick building in one of the neighbourhoods of Riga, 20 minutes ride away from the city centre. The place is meant for meeting among organisations to receive educational, technical, administrative and information support. The NGO House is a place for organising informative and practical seminars for the representatives of NGOs for free, offering an opportunity to get new, useful knowledge on various topics, important for the operation and development of NGOs. Furthermost The NGO House organises events, thematic talks to address current societal issues and challenges.

European cities have committed themselves to providing integrated and quality services and cooperation possibilities for citizens to ensure their active integration into society. The cities adapt to citizens’ expectations and needs and not vice versa. Targeted and appropriate investment in urban integration, participation and social inclusion processes will result in economic and social betterment. The founding and operation of the Riga NGO House is based on a participatory approach. The cooperation model of the Riga municipality, non-governmental organisations and citizens is focused on sustainable long-term activities, and the NGO House serves as a tool for this cooperation model. Members of NGOs are the most active part of society, bringing together people of all ages, professions and nationalities. NGOs help citizens to make their voices heard, express their creativity, represent and defend their interests. The role of the non-governmental sector in the development of civil society is growing alongside the support of the municipality for joint projects and activities. There's also increased participation of NGOs and citizens in implementing various municipal policies and proposals put forward by citizens. The founding and development of the NGO House demonstrate the interest of the Riga government in bilateral cooperation as it provides a significant long-term support system for NGOs' activities, henceforth a sustainable society and integration policy development direction.

The NGO House was set up at the request of the inhabitants of Riga. Organisations' needs are taken into account in the development of services, and the city conducts regular consultations. Since the opening of the NGO House, more than 47,000 people have visited it and attended the events organised by the NGO House or NGOs. In 2016 the number of visitors doubled compared with the first two years of operation. In the course of three years 140 NGOs have organised 2,920 events. Every year we witness the growth of the number of events: in 2014 there were 400 events, in 2015 830 events, and in 2016 1,690 events. Representatives of more than 500 organisations have participated in the events organised by organisations themselves or municipalities. Some 104 informative, educational seminars or practical workshops attended by representatives of more than 410 NGOs have been produced by NGO House staff as support measures. Twinning and networking events of 18 organisations drew more than 1,000 participants.

Through the participation in Active NGO, the city of Riga took the opportunity to expand the NGO House potentials beyond the physical walls of the House itself. Riga has 58 neighbourhoods and NGos are spread all over the city. Thanks to the Active NGO leadership, Riga could embark in an improvement plan that launched several actions of the “NGO House outside the House”. The scope was to reach out more people in a more capillary way in the entire city area. The partners in the network .( Siracusa IT, Santa Pola ES, Dubrovnik CR, Espoo FI and Brighton and Hove UK have been excellent advisors providing fresh new ideas. For instance, inspiring was the case of Brightong and Hove, with the initiative “Hawks Community Cafe” for informal meetings and the programme “Active Life”, with events offering possibilities of voluntary work or joint walks taken by the councillors and residents in the neighbourhood to highlight the issues that need to be solved within communities. As response Riga organised a similar events and other festivities in peripheral neighbourhood of Riga, reaching out places where the presence of community based activities was sporadic ( further info here). While operating I, the life time of the network Riga was able to organise also ad hoc seminars in project management, public speech, personal data protection directed to almost 600 NGO members, employees and volunteers. During the heights of the pandemics the NGO House practice resulted crucial in providing support to most in need and adapting their activities to this time of crisis.The NGO House became a point of contact, exchanging information and providing distance seminars to guide people in the digital environment with advices on how to reorganise work and private life . NGO House was closely cooperating with the voluntary movement “Stay Home” born in Latvia, which, by using technologies – an application with tasks and Hotline phone number, provides help to those most in need of it. The work was focused on providing help in e.g. delivering groceries and other purchases, taking pets for a walk, thus allowing people to stay at home.

Riga’s learning was supported by exchange visits in cities part of the network which contributed to expand the wealth of ideas and practice of the initial NGO House. These international visits brought together different members of the ULGs, allowing municipal officers and their civil counterparts to establish new connections and partnerships, thus strengthening their local ecosystems. In addition, Active NGO closely collaborated with Civic Estate and Comm.unity Lab Urban network for exchange of practices and knowledge sharing. In terms of transfer, the Riga NGO House is a specific model that is strongly rooted in its own local administrative, policy, economic and social environment. At the same time, the Transfer of learning from Riga’s NGO House and the local experiences of other partner cities could bring specific, custom-made knowledge to each municipality and local stakeholder group.The final outcome of the Network is in form of a book The Power of Civic Ecosystems based on the testimonies of the participating cities, enriched by case studies of other sister practices in cities all over Europe. .

The overarching theme of this good practice is strategic management in the context of long-term decline and stagnation. After local industries closed, the population of Altena (DE) shrank by 43% between 1975 and 2014. Facing diminishing resources and increasingly complex problems, the municipality adjusted its priorities, working more closely with citizens. Actions include: organisational restructuring (such as downsizing and resource-sharing), developing civil society (including the involvement of hundreds of volunteers), economic revitalisation (through tourism, for example), and integration of refugees. In 2015 Altena's population increased for the first time since the 1970s. Municipal finances have improved, there are fewer empty shops, and unemployment has fallen for the first time in 40 years.
Having shifted its strategic objectives to work more closely with citizens and focus on controlling decline rather than focusing on growth, Altena has stabilised its population and improved municipal finances. Altena provides examples where the response to decline is rooted in local resources and expertise. The experience of Altena shows that activating often dormant resources and opportunities requires a frank debate about the future direction of the town. This requires strong visionary leadership combined with the ability to integrate conflicting interests and overcome resistance to change.

Altena provides a case study of two practical interventions which can arrest and ultimately reverse decline: the ‘Stellwerk’ volunteers’ platform, and a ‘Pop-up Shop’ campaign. 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. Economic decline and outmigration of economically active populations result in an over-supply of retail premises, especially in town centres. Pop-up shops provide an effective way to populate the town centre with new enterprises. The goal is to support entrepreneurs in testing the viability of their business in that particular location and then facilitate the transition into permanent rental agreement with the property owners. The municipality carries some costs and also risks during this period and needs to be prepared to overcome resistance from existing shops and also the owners of empty premises. Altena established 14 pop-ups of which 5 are now trading as permanent, regular businesses on the high street. The good practices Altena are relevant to all smaller cities that have to rely on their own resources to create opportunities for improving socio-economic and environmental conditions. This includes creating opportunities for meaningful paid and unpaid work, tackling environmental degradation, reducing financial liabilities for public agencies, safeguarding essential services, enhancing economic activity and integrating vulnerable members of society. The practices developed by Altena are locally created sustainable innovations based on the resources that are typically available to smaller cities, including: natural resources, such as landscapes, forests, rivers, man-made physical resources, such as buildings, roads and infrastructure, economic resources, such as existing companies, education and training facilities, and, perhaps most important, social resources, meaning the skills, energy, resources and networks of the people who live and work in the city. To generate effective responses to shrinkage these resources need to be bundled in ways which resonate with local stakeholders because they are the engine that mobilises the skills and energies available locally.

Altena has been identified by national and international experts as a good practice case in responding to urban decline in sustainable and cross-cutting ways. Downsizing and restructuring the municipality resulted in the integration of planning, economic development, transport functions, education and leisure services were combined, housing and adult social care were integrated. But equally important, the civil society forum (Stellwerk) was strengthened and given a voice as well as influence over the strategic decisions the city administration would have made in isolation in the past. These actions were embedded in a strategy framework developed in close collaboration with the local population, which resulted in the Altena 2015 strategy (see below). Hence the good practices promoted here are fully aligned with the URBACT principles of sustainable urban living as well as an integrated and participatory approach to socio-economic and environmental development.

Between 2003 and 2005 Altena received support from the Bertelsmann Foundation to develop participatory initiatives for building an inter-generational town that embraced the needs of an ageing population. Planning consultants, architects and academics facilitated a comprehensive range of workshop to explore the ideas as well as apprehensions local people had about the future of their city. This process was called ‘Altena 2015’ and resulted in a strategic development framework for the city which was governed not by the municipality alone but in conjunction with a newly created partnership of civil society organisations. The strategy went beyond generational matters and identified a large number of priorities for new social, economic and environmental developments – none of the ‘old’ initiatives when the town was still in denial about the reality of shrinkage were included. The strategy was based on the principle that citizens had to contribute in practical ways to the services and any improvements they wanted to see. Given that the municipality was technically bankrupt at the time, the active and extensive input of citizens who live and work in Altena is considered to be the distinctive and decisive element of a strategy that has brought about a reversal in the fortunes of the city.

Through the ‘Altena 2015’ strategy many problems were tackled in an integrated and collaborative way. By working with civil society it was possible to reduce the number of schools, nurseries, leisure centres and vacant housing stock in ways which minimised the impact on people’s lives. Problems were turned into opportunities by:

• Connecting the town with a major visitor attraction on the mountain above Altena through an elevator, the ‘Erlebnisaufzug’.
• Pop-up shops to bring entrepreneurs into the town centre
• Refurbishing the riverfront
• Developing inter-generational projects
• Strengthening voluntary agencies. In 2011 there were 23 empty shops in the town centre, now there are 18 and essential services are provided to a high standard, often complemented with support from citizens. The local economy has turned a corner and for the first time in 40 years unemployment has fallen and stands at 6.5%. The financial resources of the municipality are now stable, showing a break-even budget 2017/18 instead of projecting a deficit as in previous decades. In 2015 Altena’s population increased for the first time since the 1970s, primarily by inviting more refugees than required by legislation, thus growing its capacity to respond to shrinkage. The exemplary work undertaken to integrate refugees is well known: http://www.dw.com/en/altena-leads-by-example-in-refugee-crisis/av-19098707

After being awarded the URBACT Good Practice title, Altena was able to create the Re-growCity Transfer Network to which seven European cities (Manresa Spain, Idrija Slovenia, Igoumenitsa Greece, Isernia Italy, Melgaço Portugal, Aluksne Latvia, Nyírbátor Hungary) were invited which were similarly facing the challenge of declining population. Equipped by URBACT with a toolkit, the cities could learn 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). 16.500 https://www.citypopulation.de/en/germany/nordrheinwestfalen/m%C3%A4rkischer_kreis/05962004__altena/

Every day, citizens, tourists and enterprises need to access a range of city services and resources, and in some cases to pay for them. Meanwhile, city councils are also developing various policies to boost healthy habits and social behavior to improve the quality of life.
The Gijon City Council (ES) fulfils both these groups of needs with a smart card (Gijon Citizen Card) that gives citizens access to the city's services and public facilities, such as shared transport, cultural activities and digital services. It also sets up citizenship profiles to better match citizens' needs with public policies. The Citizen Card has become both an integrated tool for public services and a coordination and loyalty mechanism. Launched in 2002, the Citizen Card is now used by more than 300.000 people to access and pay for municipal services and activities.

The following list shows the different uses of the Citizen Card:

• Citizen Terminals: there are one-stop shops where citizens can access different procedures around the clock and with terminals that are located in the neighborhoods (currently, there are 21);
• Public Transport: citizens can recharge the Citizen Card to use the bus. As it is a personal item, the card has information about citizens' situations and adapts the prices, and if someone loses their card the transport company refunds the credit previously put on the card;
• Virtual Office: access to online services;
• Parking tickets: to get a ticket to park the car in a restricted area;
• Libraries & Media Centres: the card allows members to borrow books, CDs and DVDs. There are 12 Tele-centres, each with approximately 15 computers where citizens can take courses or can connect to the Internet for one hour using the Citizen Card;
• Public toilets: with the Citizen Card, 18 equipped toilets can be used for free. Otherwise users have to pay for it;
• Free entry to local museums;
• Use of Bicycles: Throughout the city, there are 64 bikes that can be picked up and returned to eight terminals. The bikes are available for use free of charge for Citizen Card holders;
• Leisure Activities and venues: With the Citizen Card, it is possible to pay for and book different sport and cultural activities and venues;
• Car sharing of public electric vehicles: Free recharge of electric vehicles at five points in the city.

The Citizen Card will contribute to sustainable urban living because it promotes and facilitates the use of public transport and other sustainable ways of transportation such as car sharing or electric vehicles. Other uses linked to the promotion of sports and cultural activities are very important to foster integration, good health habits and to avoid social exclusion. The Citizen Card also contains details about users’ socio-economic situations, which allows us to adapt the rates of the different services, contributing in this way to the reduction of poverty. One of the current aims of the Citizen Card is to work with a holistic and participative approach, because it combines different services that are interconnected and can share relevant information. It also allows citizens to participate and use the services throughout different tools (Citizen Terminals, online, etc.). Additionally, a free training session is offered on how to use the Citizen Card, favouring the digital inclusion of some groups and connectivity, and minimizing unnecessary trips. To sum up, the Citizen Card plays a key role in the development of sustainable mobility by encouraging behaviours and habits of a healthy life, promoting a culture of energy efficiency and sustainable growth.

The Citizen Card will contribute to sustainable urban living because it promotes and facilitates the use of public transport and other sustainable ways of transportation such as car sharing or electric vehicles. Other uses linked to the promotion of sports and cultural activities are very important to foster integration, good health habits and to avoid social exclusion. The Citizen Card also contains details about users’ socio-economic situations, which allows us to adapt the rates of the different services, contributing in this way to the reduction of poverty.
One of the current aims of the Citizen Card is to work with a holistic and participative approach, because it combines different services that are interconnected and can share relevant information. It also allows citizens to participate and use the services throughout different tools (Citizen Terminals, online, etc.). Additionally, a free training session is offered on how to use the Citizen Card, favoring the digital inclusion of some groups and connectivity, and minimizing unnecessary trips.
To sum up, the Citizen Card plays a key role in the development of sustainable mobility by encouraging behaviors' and habits of a healthy life, promoting a culture of energy efficiency and sustainable growth.

People and legal entities including associations, migrants and foreigners can have a Citizen Card. Currently, there are 363.966 cards held by people and 1.496 by enterprises. Gijón has a population of 272,202 (you can check the data in real time on our open data portal), but people who are citizens and carry out any activity in Gijón can also have a Citizen Card. The city schools also have Citizen Cards to take part in the programming of cultural and sport activities. During the launch phase of the project, all citizen groups were involved. It is worth mentioning the incorporation of participative movements in the development phase. The methodology was focused on the active participation and collaboration of municipal departments in charge of each civic sector (Sport, Education, Social Services, Mobility, Governance and Sustainability) which have been acting as mediators with different citizen groups. Examples of contributors were the associative movements incorporated from neighborhood groups and economic and social sectors of the city, such as architects, engineers, the hotel industry, building and transport enterprises, traders, etc.

Gijon has sought to turn the citizen card into a living element that accomplishes the new needs of the citizens and the city: to offer citizens good quality services, have one card for all municipal actions, improve existing functions and add new ones. It has become an essential tool to the quality of life in Gijon City: "Smart living". Citizens of Gijón, businesses and tourists could access municipal services, allowing a reduction in bureaucracy, time saving, ensuring access to services, promoting policies of social inclusion, sustainability, smart growth and sustainable mobility.

During the lifetime of the URBACT Transfer Network, Gijon has enhanced the portfolio of services and turned the citizen card into the driving force to achieve a smart society for innovative and sustainable city by implementing the following measures:

• Study the use of Gijón Citizen Card with a Commerce loyalty Card to encourage retail trade
• Possibility of including credit linked to Social Services Subsidies
• Access to trash bins with citizen card: policy of tax incentives to recycle
• Access to charging points of electrical vehicles
• Interoperability of citizen cards between European cities. Evaluation of conclusions given by Eurocties Citizen Card Lab
• Communication with urban equipment and facilities (IoT)
• Energy efficiency: streetlights, smart management of equipment
• Advantageous use of data provided by the citizen cards Big data management
• App for mobile devices development
• Appointment management in public offices due to Covid-19 limitations
• Control access to different venues due to Covid-19

The Citizen Card has an average of 32,000 uses/day and around 1,000,000 uses/month.

Gijon led the Card4all Network over 2.5 years, transferring its practices to 5 other cities: Suceava (Romania), Aveiro (Portugal), Clermont Ferrand (France), Jurmala (Latvia), and Sassari (Italy). You can, in particular, check Aveiro’s Good practice here. The approach was based on the 3 learning approaches: Experiential, Reflective, and Contextual support. All these covered topics (I.T integration, standardization, interoperability of Citizen Cards between European cities, business models, governance, data protection, integration with smartphones, web applications, local cross-sectorial services, pool of services to be considered, policy support, and, marketing strategy to reach visibility and a sense of owning) whose outputs can be found in the Final report of the Network available online. Card4all and Gijón as mentor city was also a key contributor to the Eurocities’ Knowledge Society Forum on Citizen Cards.

Tropa Verde is a multimedia platform set up by Santiago de Compostela (ES) to encourage environmentally responsible behaviour. Using a game-based web platform, citizens can win recycling vouchers and exchange them for rewards from the City Council and local retailers.
The project started after a 2015 survey showed that many inhabitants were reluctant to recycle due to habit and a lack of information. In under two years, recycling had soared: more than 115 local sponsors had delivered 800 rewards, from hotel accommodations to beauty treatments. Citizens received these gifts or discounts in exchange for 16,000 "recycling actions" in social and civic centres and green points.
There were also workshops, street actions and other promotional activities. School campaigns have collected thousands of litres of used cooking oil and 3,299 electric appliances. Today, Tropa Verde is active in at least six cities.

Tropa Verde is a multimedia platform that aims at promoting recycling and environmental responsibility among the citizens by rewarding good environmental practices; increasing recycling rates; promoting the environmental awareness of the citizenship applying gaming and rewarding techniques. It uses a game-based web platform at where citizens can exchange recycling points for rewards from the City Council and local retailers. The website connects the elements necessary to achieve the objective: the places where citizens can dispose of waste and where they will be rewarded if they do so (green points, civic and social centres, recovery points, etc.), and local businesses that collaborate by providing gifts or discounts, such as retailers, restaurants, outdoor activities and shops. For successful implementation, all players are required. Tropa Verde is led by Santiago de Compostela, developed by local technology company Teimas Desenvolvemento, and now adopted by more than six cities.

Tropa Verde directly aims at encouraging and increasing re-using and recycling, bringing up significant savings for the cities and contributing to efficiency in the use of the resources and to the improvement of environmental quality, fully in line with the objectives of the EU2020 Strategy and its Resource Efficiency Flagship Initiative. Its benefits are clear for the municipalities and other stakeholders:

• It encourages re-use and recycling, facilitates efficient waste collection, and reduces waste disposed, which brings savings for the councils.
• It facilitates compliance with the Waste Framework Directive and Circular Economy related Directives, allowing increasing rates of reduction, reuse and recycling of waste.
• It facilitates recycling, increasing the number of collection points for some waste products that are especially difficult to collect, such as used cooking oil or electrical and electronic equipment.
• It reduces the environmental impact and the costs associated with waste management.
• It has a positive impact on the citizen behavior, as it offers direct rewards to environmental responsible actions.
• From a political perspective, thanks to its innovative and participatory approach, it offers a great potential of visibility of the environmental efforts carried out by the municipalities

There is a strong involvement of local stakeholders in the development and implementation of the practice in Tropa Verde. The collaborating entities in this project are: Santiago's City Council; civic and local social centres; Urbaser, the municipal solid waste (MSW) management company; and Teimas Desenvolvemento, in charge of the technological side of the project as well as the promotion and the marketing plan. Local sponsors include retailers, restaurants, shops and other businesses; and the citizens of Santiago de Compostela. Schools participate in environmental education campaigns.

Tropa Verde has been implemented in this city since 2015 with great success: 4065 users in 5 years, with 29 recycling points located throughout the city and issuing vouchers; over; 150 sponsors; 2,302 rewards offered; more than €15,000 in prizes and rewards; over 15,168 vouchers given; close to 2000 Facebook followers; more than 820 Twitter followers; and over 1500 rewards delivered. There have been several workshops for children: Recycle, Reutilise and Play with Tropa Verde to commemorate the European Environment Week and two school campaigns "Recycling at school is rewarded". The campaign consists of the collection of used cooking oil and electrical and electronic appliances involving 20 different educational centres, with a total of 2,416 students. In the school campaigns, a total of 2,356 litres of used cooking oil and 3,299 electrical and electronic appliances were collected. From the beginning of the initiative, the involvement of citizens towards recycling has been highly increased, with a higher volume of visitors at the waste collection points. Tropa Verde's initiative has improved environmental quality and, consequently, the citizens’ quality of life, while at the same time promoting the local economy.

Santiago de Compostela led the Tropa Verde Network over 2.5 years, transferring its practices to 5 other cities: Guimarães (Portugal), Dimos Pavlou Mela (Greece), Urban Community Nice Côte d'Azur (France), Opole Agglomeration (Poland) and Zugló (Hungary). You can, in particular, check Zugló ‘s Good practice here. The approach was based on 2 stages: the Core transfer learning stage (Understanding and adapting), the mature stage – Reuse (testing), covering the stages followed by Santiago for its own process.