BLOOM - Bringing Life Back to European City Centres

Across many European cities, urban cores are facing a visible increase in vacant ground-floor premises, declining local commerce and a gradual weakening of everyday urban life. At the same time, municipalities are challenged to revitalise these areas without compromising sustainable urban development, ensuring a balanced use of public space that supports economic activity while enhancing residents’ quality of life.

Our project aims to strengthen the attractiveness and vitality of historic city centres, transforming them into lively and accessible places where residents, businesses, visitors and local communities can coexist and thrive. 

The network will focus on revitalising historic centres through integrated and place-based actions, such as:

1. reactivating vacant ground-floor shops through temporary uses, creative industries, pop-up activities and incentives for new local businesses;
2. improving public spaces through ornamental greenery and small-scale urban design interventions; 
3. promoting street art and cultural actions to enhance identity, vibrancy and sense of belonging;
4. improving accessibility and walkability to make city centres more inclusive and attractive.

• By combining economic revitalisation with public space enhancement and community engagement, the project seeks to restore historic centres as dynamic hubs of social and commercial life.

The project follows the URBACT Programme methodology, combining transnational learning with strong local action. Its distinctive feature is a clear implementation focus. Rather than developing new strategies, the network will help cities activate existing ones through concrete pilot actions, generating practical, evidence-based knowledge on what works. Building on partner cities' existing strategies – including Integrated Action Plans and urban agendas – the proposal addresses a critical need: moving from planning to implementation in urban centre revitalisation.

The network will organise transnational exchanges through partner meetings, study visits and thematic workshops, enabling cities to share experiences, learn from peers, and adapt solutions to their local contexts. Finally, the project is designed to ensure continuity beyond its duration, by embedding its actions within existing local strategies and by creating the conditions for scaling up through other European and national funding instruments.

Relevance of the theme: 

The proposed topic is fully aligned with EU Cohesion Policy objectives and the URBACT call for Action Networks, which promotes sustainable and integrated urban development while addressing cross-cutting priorities such as gender equality, the green transition and digital transformation. Revitalising historic city centres by tackling vacant ground-floor premises, strengthening local commerce and improving public spaces contributes to more inclusive, resilient and attractive urban environments. These actions support local economies, enhance walkability and accessibility, and improve quality of life, in line with the objectives of sustainable urban development and a “Europe closer to its citizens”.

The proposal is also consistent with the Leipzig Charter, which highlights the importance of integrated, place-based approaches and well-governed urban centres. Many cities already recognise the decline of urban cores as a strategic challenge; this network responds to the need to move from planning to implementation through concrete pilot actions, local stakeholder involvement and transnational learning, fully reflecting the implementation-oriented spirit of URBACT Action Networks.

Fit with URBACT

Cesena considers this idea strongly aligned with the URBACT call for several reasons.

First, it addresses a challenge that is both local and widely shared across Europe: the decline of historic city centres, the increase in vacant ground-floor premises and the weakening of local commerce and everyday urban life. Cesena is directly experiencing these dynamics and recognises the need for integrated and innovative solutions.

Second, the proposal fully matches the philosophy of URBACT Action Networks. Cesena already has a historic city centres Integrated Action Plan developed during the previous URBACT project Cities@Heart. Therefore, the city is now ready to move from planning to implementation, capitalising the Action Plan developed in the previous URBACT project.

Third, Cesena has solid experience in European projects (e.g. EUI - Innovative Action; CERV-DAPHNE, Interreg, Horizon). The city has developed the administrative capacity and local partnerships necessary to actively contribute to and benefit from peer learning. Many European cities are facing similar challenges in revitalising their historic centres; Cesena is therefore motivated to both share its experience and learn from others, contributing to the co-production of practical and transferable solutions within the URBACT framework.