This webpage aims to share information, news and articles about URBACT in your native language. Currently under development, the webpage will be fully functional in the course of October.
In the meantime, we inform you that the next URBACT call for Action Planning Networks will open early January 2023.
We kindly invite you to look for events taking place in your country here and find out more about how to get involved in URBACT here (link in English). For any inquiries in your language, please contact the National URBACT Point in your country.
Like most of the walled cities in Malta, the best way to truly take in the charm and architectural splendour of Senglea and appreciate its stunning viewpoints of the Grand Harbour is on foot.
The Planning Authority (PA) in collaboration with the Senglea Local Council and the Ministry for Health and Local Government Division has launched a new smartphone app, Healthy Cities Malta, which combines the need for physical activity and a healthier lifestyle with interesting and important landmarks within the city.
The Healthy Cities Malta app, which can be downloaded free of charge from the Play Store, provides the user with options of different walking routes, each with different levels of difficulty, within the city and recommends additional physical exercises that can be carried out at certain spots along the route. So when the user is close to one of the city’s many stepped-streets, they are encouraged to carry out a short work-out of ‘step lunges’; while when in the Gardjola Garden ‘press-ups’ against one of the benches are recommended. All workout exercises come with instructions on posture and safety. The app also gives the user the number of calories they lost after following a particular route.
Perit Vincent Cassar, Planning Board Chairperson said “today the aspect of holistic wellbeing has rightfully come to the forefront of our lives. With so many people suffering from mental health issues, it has become so important to get oneself active and start leading a healthier lifestyle.” Perit Cassar pointed out “we started off this app with the locality of Senglea because this city is a hidden gem in terms of heritage, architecture and open spaces. Once the necessary funding is made available, in the months ahead we plan on adding other localities to this smartphone app, giving users a wider choice of routes and places of interest which they can experience.”
Senglea’s Mayor, Mr Clive Pulis said “We are grateful that our locality was the first city to be included in this mobile app. To develop this digital tool together with the PA, we involved a number of residents from within our community who helped contribute towards the information that is made available through the app.” “We are optimistic that this app will not only promote and benefit a healthier lifestyle amongst the locals but will encourage more tourists visiting our Island to come to our city and discover for themselves the uniqueness of this place.”
“This app has been a great learning experience, as it allowed us to explore new technologies and work with people from various domains. Moreover, it is an opportunity to raise awareness through technology on the importance of health and how it can be integrated with our heritage while being fun and promoting a better lifestyle,” concluded Ms Karen Dimech, a systems developer at the PA.
The development of this new smartphone app is a result of an URBACT Action Planning Network, in which the Planning Authority is a partner and financially funded and supported by the European Regional Development Fund and the URBACT Programme. This URBACT programme seeks to enable cities across the EU to work together and develop integrated solutions to common urban challenges, by networking, learning from one another’s experiences, drawing lessons and identifying good practices to improve urban policies.
This Action Planning network aims to deepen the relationship between health and the urban environment, planning actions that focus on improving the population’s health, while developing a rigorous health impact assessment around it. Urban Planning can become a health generator on many grounds. This partnership reflects the multiplicity of possible approaches to tackle the issue: green areas, mobility, social cohesion or promotion of sports are some examples.
Lead Partner Cities are from as many as 17 countries: Italy (16), Spain (7), Portugal (7), the Netherlands (6), France, Romania and Belgium (with 4 proposals each). Other member states with more than one proposal include Poland (3), Greece (2) and Germany (2). The member states with only one lead partner city are the United Kingdom, Austria, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia and Sweden.
The most popular thematic objective is “environmental protection and resource efficiency”, with almost one quarter of the proposals. Thematic objectives of “social inclusion” and “research technological development and innovation” are covered by about one fifth of the proposals. “Sustainable transport and education” and “skills and lifelong learning” are at the core of about 10% of the proposals.
The URBACT Monitoring Committee will make a decision based on the assessment of the external experts on 25 June 2019. A maximum of 23 networks will be selected.
Well done to all those who submitted and good luck!
Right before the start of this year’s URBACT City Festival in Lisbon I found myself sitting at the waterfront at Praça do Comércio, enjoying the atmosphere with people and boats passing by. Later, I discovered this beautiful area around Largo Corpo Santo and Porta do Mar, just a few minutes walk from Praça do Comércio, too. I was surprised to learn during the festival workshops that just a few years ago, my perception of Lisbon’s urban spaces would have been very different. Where people now meet and linger, cars were parked – far from creating a charming atmosphere! So, what happened over the years? asks Claus Kollinger
Planning for people and not for vehicles – how urban mobility becomes an integrated part of our city development
Lisbon (PT) is seeing a paradigm shift in urban space use. Public space is no longer seen as an asset for car traffic on a large scale. Instead, it is dedicated to a multitude of use embracing transport with more sustainable mobility options.
“Cars evaporate” is what Prof. Tiago Farias told us at the City Festival workshop dedicated to urban mobility planning. Lisbon’s recent and longer term experience prove him right. And, Lisbon is not alone in its endeavour to take traffic out of the urban space to create a more liveable city. More and more cities in Europe are turning their transport planning approach on its head – abandoning the idea of providing space to growing traffic volumes in favour of putting the actual city’s and citizens’ needs at the centre of development.
Planning for people and with people
The idea of putting people at the centre of urban mobility planning emerged with the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) concept over the last ten years across Europe. Now, it is a success story thanks to an integrated planning approach to urban mobility development. The SUMP concept innovates transport planning in a range of areas, like putting emphasis on accessibility for all, quality of life and supporting cleaner transport options. They place mobility in the frame of the city ‘s very fabric, cooperating with diverse sectors and within overall development goals. They do not stop at city limits but consider commuting in and out too. They cater for goods and people’s movement employing all available transport services. But most of all, they apply an integrated planning approach involving citizens and all concerned stakeholders to truly plan for people with people.
SUMPS mean a giant leap in transport planning. While transport planning focused on providing space for the emergence of cars during the last century and then saw the re-emergence of public transport and cycling, SUMPs now seek to answer the needs of a complex dynamic of societal, economic and technological changes cities are facing thanks to a well-structured planning process. They identify the current state of play connected to existing challenges, looking at future development pathways to create a development vision and select fitting priorities and actions to this vision. The plan details resources, responsibilities, timelines as well as monitoring and evaluating schemes. SUMPs are the blueprint of a comprehensive policy for urban mobility development. But as is often the case, the step from theory to practice is the hardest one, how do we match the SUMP idea with life in cities?
Many roads lead to Rome
This challenge was at the heart of URBACT’s CityMobilNet network. Facing 11 different locations, conditions and development histories, it quickly became clear that there is no “one-fits-all” solution at hand. The diversity ranged from small cities of 15.000 inhabitants to larger metropolis of more than half a million, from experienced SUMP practitioners to complete newcomers, from mobility cultures valuing public transport to cycling or walking dominated cities - as well as centralised planning traditions to participation practitioners... The network partners needed to apply solutions tailored to their local conditions for their SUMP development.
Where to start?
Identifying the right problem turned out to be crucial. The City of Slatina (RO) worked with the interlinkage of effects and causes and involved the entire URBACT Local Group: 97 people from public officials, security services, educational representatives, NGOs, local and international businesses and the media. The novelty was in quality and quantity of the community point of view received and integrated to the problem description. For Slatina, working methodologically at identifying the city’s problem jointly with the city society proved a new and positive experience.
The Greek city of Agii Anargyri & Kamatero (GR) took another road by approaching the problems and challenges from the view of children and families. The local team went back to school and talked with pupils, teachers and parents to identify their mobility related needs and challenges. Starting with schools, they could map the requirements to accommodate the mobility needs of local families.
The town of Morne-a-l’Eau (FR) again based the start of their SUMP development on well-existing resources: work groups, objectives and knowledge out of the Local Agenda 21 process, especially in relation to the town’s plan for its eco-quartier. Taken from there, the necessities to develop a sustainable urban mobility scheme for Morne-a-l’Eau were developed jointly with the local stakeholders and citizens.
Going step by step or taking it all at once?
The actual planning process took different formats in the network cities, too. In Gdansk (PO), the technical topics of urban mobility were processed one by one, starting with the most eminent challenge of parking space management and then continuing to public transport, cycling and other areas of urban mobility. The local CityMobilNet partner employed a large set of workshops for this step-by-step approach always involving a core group to all topics and extending it to interested persons and concerned stakeholders. Political buy-in was taken care of by presenting to the group of Vice Mayors and thorough citizen involvement by going to the city districts focussing on people’s needs and concerns there.
The City of Bielefeld (DE) contrasts to Gdansk by taking a global view of planning urban mobility. Here, a careful analysis of the entire mobility network and services was put in place including a
survey on current mobility choices and behaviour used to create a detailed picture ranging from city-wide to single locality challenges. The Bielefeld URBACT Local Group elaborated the global vision and six priorities out of this covering all aspects of relevance to Bielefeld’s urban mobility development. The policy field cross-connecting nature of a SUMP is clearly visible by the choice in priorities: “liveable city and road space”. Bielefeld continued its global approach by applying a “Future Workshop” to establish actions and measure packages to the vision and priorities: stakeholders from Bielefeld, but as well outside the area worked with maps, statistics and the pre-work results gathering knowledge as well as the opinions of cyclists, automobile-federations, public transport bodies, teachers, doctors and police personnel. Another speciality of Bielefeld’s comprehensive planning process was to continuously include all political parties present in the city council on the progress and the next steps of the planning process.
Bottom-up and “top-down”?
Does size matter? The clear answer from the CityMobilNet network is “yes”, since it directly impacts conditions and opportunities at hand. The Metropole Aix Marseille Provence (FR) had the task of breaking down its regional sustainable mobility strategy – the regional SUMP – detailing the local level. Acting as the responsible planning and implementation entity for the mobility development in their area, the Metropole employed local knowledge and needs of Cassis, La Ciotat and Ceyreste to design the future urban mobility network and services in these municipalities. They needed to align the regional objectives to the diverse local conditions of a tourist destination, a former shipyard town and a residential dominated community. Local knowledge and positions were key to come up with fitting measures for the areas by the supra-local administration of a Metropole.
The South East Region of Malta (MA) used a very much “bottom-up” approach for its planning process including direct talks with citizens and stakeholders of the many local regional councils to establish the picture of mobility development needs. Engaged local politicians employed their local networks to virtually include all interested persons in problem analysis and solution development. It is best to talk to people directly to learn what they need and then think about it, is what local politicians like Lawrance Attard stressed. This open-minded policy of citizen participation works by keeping council meetings public – by physical presence or online streaming.
Don’t be afraid to go your own way
Applying the SUMP concept and process is very much worthwhile for any town and city. But, towns and cities have different local backgrounds and capacities and might not be used to run a complex integrated planning process. Here are some tips for the journey ahead:
Make it fit
Don’t be afraid to tailor the concept and process to your local conditions. The product of the planning process needs to suit your city development. Stick to the SUMP concept and process, but not at any cost.
Take care and time to identify the problems at hand as done by Slatina involving stakeholders and citizens on assessing problems, causes and effects.
Communicate with stakeholders
Take care of participation and be clear on which role stakeholders and citizens should take in your case. Should they be sources of ideas, concerns and opinions? Or advisors? Or decision makers having a say? They are clearly a valuable resource to involve but be clear in communication! Urban mobility is a complex topic with many interrelations and specialist knowledge at hand. Stakeholders and citizen need to understand what they are discussing and working on.
