Our meeting centred around the “implementability” of our IAPs. This means getting governance structures ready for the kick-start of implementation. And preparing a wide acceptance of the final product of planning to ease implementation and secure acceptance of the IAP and its measures among stakeholders.

Implementation challenges were subject to the work of the entire first day starting with identifying the top challenges we see at local level: a lack of political support, opposition by stakeholders to the IAP’s actions and resourcing for the delivery of the actions. Amongst many ideas to address these challenges, 3 were present as options for each of them: to use data as evidence to convince stakeholders and political players, to continue applying pilots to showcase the benefits of the actions and to integrate decision makers and stakeholders in the implementation process for a better understanding and a direct influence on the measures’ realisation.

Certainly, all three challenges and main ideas are connected to a good communication strategy starting with the promotion of our 2-year work’s result: the final IAPs. What better to start with than to see what communication and participation measure fits to which stakeholder group for this? Backed by an adapted stakeholder analysis matrix using the dimensions of importance for approval and implementation as well as level of interactivity for promotional measures, 3 main “stakeholder group – promotion activity” couples got identified:

• To address political decision makers with more static measures like official presentations, visualisations, executive brochures, and adoption ceremonies
• To address retailers, gastronomy, businesses with interactive and integrative measures like community councils, pilot activities and participatory projects
• To address citizens and residents as well with interactive and integrative measures like street stalls, citizen projects and exhibitions

But how can these activities look in detail to get to the objective of ownership, acceptance, and adoption of the IAPs? We decided to take a look into the future and employed our own version of the “Newspaper of tomorrow” tool for this. Split up in smaller groups, each agreed on a stakeholder group to address, think on the challenges we might meet with this one, ideate promotional activities to use for counteracting these and finally create an article on how all of this worked out successfully.

Two of our groups focused on retailers and gastronomy as a potential driver to oppose restrictive measures to access by car in their shop’s streets. The main elements how they got convinced to back the measure were

• a visualisation event to showcase possible change scenarios,
• influence on the design changes to the street,
• the use of pilots to allow retail and gastronomy to make their own experiences,
• a well working coordination with administration safeguarding a quick and cooperative implementation without much impact on their business.

A third group selected the target group of pupils and parents as key actors in working for a modal shift from car-based to sustainable school trips. The main elements how to get specifically parents backing the plan used an approach addressing them through their children by e. g.

• school yard design activities with pupils following a tactical urbanism approach
• festivals and games directed to test walking, cycling or PT use to school
• guidance and argumentation on the benefits of a safe and healthy school trip

The results of the work exercise are now used to elaborate promotional activities for the set objectives and planned measures in our efforts to finalise our IAPs!

Daugiau informacijos rasite Europos Tarybos plėtros banko svetainėje: https://coebank.org/en/tenders/

Paraiškų pateikimo terminas yra 2022 m. liepos 19 d. 18.00 (CET).

Most people now agree that green is good for health and resilience. Greening urban areas and connecting them to water, or ’blue’ areas, is high on the agenda in most towns and cities. Yet, says URBACT Programme Expert Iván Tosics, even this seemingly self-evident issue is not without contradictions. In this article, he looks beyond the general “green is good” statement and finds a more nuanced picture.

It has been said many times, almost to the point of banality, that during Covid times, the demand for outdoor activites grew dramatically, leading to a marked increase in the use of parks and outdoor spaces. We all saw this in our cities in Europe. However, this did not necessarily happen to the same extent everywhere in the world. There is an interesting website, based on Google data, showing how the number of visitors to parks and outdoor spaces has changed compared to the selected baseline period, January 2020. Although it is not easy to interpret the data due to factors such as seasonal differences between North and South, we can hypothesise that in Europe and the global North, green areas were able to meet the increase in demand more easily, being generally more secure and better maintained than those in many parts of the global South.

There are many good summaries about the immediate, easy-to-reach interventions by cities as a reaction to Covid – see for example my article on temporary interventions in the use of public spaces, such as closing streets and creating pop-up bike lanes, or encouraging street play. Key questions discussed in this article are: what kind of tactical interventions into greening are observable? And how can these be turned into long-term, strategic programmes, avoiding potential pitfalls?

Many people think that all greening efforts are good for the wellbeing of citizens in general, and their health in particular. However, it is necessary to go beyond this cliché, understanding the different ways to implement the greening of cities, highlighting the efforts made to achieve synergy with other aspects of sustainable and resilient development, and calling attention to potential unwanted externalities of greening projects – among which the most important is the potential increase in socio-spatial differentiation through gentrification.

Types and benefits of green places

Owen Douglas, of the Eastern and Midland Regional Assembly in Ireland, listed the benefits of green spaces in his presentation at the URBACT Health&Greenspace Academy in December 2020. These include: enabling physical activities; improving mental well-being; supporting social interactions; and reducing environmental risks of air pollution and extreme weather events.

Green infrastructure planning can do a lot to mitigate stressful city life in compact cities, with strategically planned networks of natural and semi-natural areas, and creating new green and ‘blue’ spaces – areas of water. To achieve that, green infrastructure planning has to be multifunctional, including a diversity of green elements, such as: large natural areas as hubs; forests and parks as green parcels; smaller private gardens, playgrounds, roadside greenery, or green roofs as individual elements; corridors connecting the hubs, parcels and elements; and finally land use buffers, as transition areas, separating dense urban spaces from the suburbs.

In another presentation at the December 2020 URBACT Health&Greenspace Academy, Eduarda Marques da Costa, of the University of London, listed different types of green space interventions, from overarching development of new neighbourhoods through regeneration of residential areas and brownfield areas, including smaller-scale improvements to public spaces and support for urban gardening.

Innovative greening examples

Let us see now a few examples of the different types of greening interventions and their potential consequences.

Certain European cities have conducted large projects of strategic importance to improve sustainability and resilience.

Barcelona, Parc de les Glories (photo by Iván Tosics, November 2021)

Barcelona (ES) provides an excellent example, with its efforts to renaturalise the densely built-up city. One of the emblematic projects is the rebuilding of the Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes: besides the demolition of the elevated roundabout for cars and the building of a new High Speed Train station, a large new park is being erected under the motto of renaturalisation.

Utrecht (NL) has put re-canalisation into the core of its urban development strategy. Forty years after the historic mistake of converting the canal that encircled Utrecht’s old town into a 12-lane motorway, in 2020, the city opened the canal back up again. The restoration of the waterway was the central piece of the 2002 referendum in which residents voted for a city-centre master plan with the aim to replace roads with water. With the reopening of the Catharijnesingel, Utrecht’s inner city is again surrounded by water and greenery rather than asphalt and car traffic.

Paris (FR) has undergone large changes since the election of Mayor Anne Hidalgo in 2014. One of the key elements of the changes towards more sustainable urban development is the permanent pedestrianisation of roads along the river Seine and certain canals, which made the access to waterfront areas much easier.

Another pathway towards more sustainability is to renovate, animate, and improve the safety of existing green areas. A prime example of this is the case of Bryant park in New York (US). This was one of the no-go areas of the city, getting the nickname 'Needle Park' in the 1970s because of the large number of drug addicts who frequented it. Changes started in 1988 with an extensive renovation of the park, including radical physical restructuring of the area, making the green space attractive, transparent and lively, clearing areas to let in light, installing many moveable chairs, and creating coffee places. The park has been transformed from an insecure to a lovely space. 

Breda, Valkenberg Park

A similar story is the redesign of the Valkenberg Park in Breda (NL) to improve safety, presented at the URBACT Health&Greenspace Academy in October 2021 by David Louwerse, project manager, Municipality of Tilburg.

The most common greening interventions in European cities are smaller interventions, such as creating urban gardens, or greening streets and rooftops. An article by Tamás Kállay, Lead Expert of the URBACT Health&Greenspace network, gives a good overview of such initiatives. He mentiones Tartu (EE), where “meadow boxes were placed on the road. A beach bar was opened, and the street section accommodated also an outdoor reading room, a market, picnic tables, an outdoor cinema, and various programs”. Another example from the Health&Greenspace network is Poznań (PL), where “as part of a pilot activity natural playgrounds were created in the yards of several kindergartens providing direct contact with nature and supporting creative play”.

Such examples demonstrate that “… small green space interventions, both physical changes and social activities can trigger a massive change and lead to larger actions promoting positive health outcomes.” This conclusion is further supported by another URBACT article, arguing for the importance of walking, not only in shopping streets, but also across all neighbourhoods – including ‘consumption-free’ areas.

Besides punctual interventions, many cities aim to ensure fair distribution of green across the whole city and to connect green areas into networks. Poznań is good example for the latter, aiming to protect the green belt around the city from real estate development and urban sprawl, while also increasing forest cover within the city boundaries and preserving and improving existing parks and green spaces.

Changing people's mindset and reorganising the structure of local government

Hegyvidék, district 12 of Budapest, Lead Partner of Health&Greenspace, provides innovative examples of public spaces being improved and used more frequently thanks to new ideas, rather than concrete physical greening interventions. In order to change people's mindset, the “…municipality identified ‘green prescription’ as an appropriate tool for linking cardiac rehabilitation with the Active Hegyvidék program. Green prescription is a written advice of a health professional to a patient to participate in some sort of nature-based activity.”

Hegyvidék is also pioneering an institutional restructuring of the the municipality, creating a so-called Green office. Changes can also be achieved without reorganising the municipality. For example, the URBACT network UrbSecurity presents an Urban Planning Game where Leiria’s municipal technicians develop step-by-step new approaches to increase the security of public spaces in the city. Cities can also use nudging techniques to influence behaviour, as many of the publications of Pieter Raymaekers (Leuven) show.

The positive effects of greening and their link to urban planning

Another URBACT network, Healthy Cities, focuses on including health considerations systematically into urban planning. To make this easier, a new tool has been developed, enabling users to quickly assess the health impact of their whole urban plan, and see how small adjustments could make a big difference to the lives of local people. This Healthy Cities Generator is a practical planning tool designed to give actionable indicators for anyone looking to integrate health into planning. It is based on a systematic review of scientific peer-reviewed publications linking urban determinants and their impact on health, through which the tool automatically calculates the health impact of urban planning actions.

The integration of green considerations into planning can best be achieved by regulating the access to green areas at metropolitan level – this proved to be very useful during the Covid pandemic in those urban areas, where metropolitan coordination was strong enough.

A word of caution: potential dangers of greening interventions

Against all good will, greening interventions can also have negative effects, if not applied in an integrated manner, without creating synergies with other aspects of development.  

Greening usually goes well with sustainable urban mobility interventions. When regenerating public spaces, areas taken away from cars can give place to green elements, for example changing motorways into urban boulevards with trees, pedestrianising streets, turning parking spaces into ‘parklets’ with moveable plant pots. However, if large green developments are concentrated in peripheral areas of cities that are difficult to access by public transport, they can easily result in increased car use. In a broader sense, this is a danger in all green developments that create large spatial imbalances in cities, i.e. new green areas far away from many residents who would like to use them.

When managed in the right way, greening can have very important social advantages: it is a good tool to better involve disadvantaged groups into society. Greening can help the social involvement of the elderly and school children – see for example the OASIS project, converting schoolyards into green cooling islands in Paris. Even so, the biggest danger of greening interventions lies in their negative social externalities, through the gentrification process.

Gentrification can take various forms. The direct form is the regeneration of socially contested areas into high-quality neighbourhoods. If no parallel efforts are made to support disadvantaged groups, the outcome will be socially unacceptable: pushing out disadvantaged social groups to other parts of the city. I described this process in an earlier article, on the case of Teleki tér, Budapest (HU), comparing this one-sided, gentrifying regeneration to the more integrated approach used in the case of Helmholtz square, Berlin (DE). The latter, through ongoing social assistance, is much closer to the URBACT-supported integrated approach, despite the fact that participative planning was also applied in the Budapest case. 

Budapest, Teleki square with fences around, 2015. Source: www.hvg.hu	Berlin, Helmholtz square, 2015. Source: Imre Pákozdi

A more common and less direct form of gentrification prevails through the increase of property values and rents in areas of improving quality of life, for example due to green interventions, which leads to the gradual displacement of people of lower socio-economic status. This well-known market mechanism can be kept under control with public regulations on rents, housing allowances and/or maintaining a substantial share of publicly owned housing. Unfortunately, such public interventions to control gentrification are rarely applied (or even considered) along with urban greening.

Greening is an essential form of environmental intervention. The principle of integrated development requires a certain balance between economic, environmental and social aspects of development. This, however, is not easy to achieve, even in cases when there is strong determination to keep the balance. The comparison of two European cities, developing new ecological areas, illustrates the difficulties, showing how overly strong insistence on high environmental standards might lead to the deterioration of social goals, if public resources are limited. If greening aspects are given preference over social protection aspects, the outcome is again gentrification, against the original will of the politicians.

Vienna, Aspern Seestadt, 2018. Source: Iván Tosics	Stockholm, Hammarby Sjöstad, 2006. Source: Iván Tosics

This article aimed to show that greening is usually a very advantageous aspect of urban development. However, certain dilemmas and potential pitfalls must be taken into account when planning green policies and interventions. With careful procedures, including green infrastructure planning as part of an integrated vision, and measuring the green and social outcomes of all investments, these pitfalls can be avoided.

Come and meet us!

This topic will be discussed at the upcoming URBACT City Festival on 15 June 2022 in a session titled ‘Greening as pathway to urban well-being and resilience’. The session will feature good practices from three URBACT Action Planning Networks, Health&Greenspace, Healthy Cities, and UrbSecurity.

„Umeå má problém s kvalitou ovzdušia v centre mesta – toto bol východiskový bod pre našu prácu s nákladnou dopravou a náš vstup pre zapojenie sa do OP URBACT,“ spomína Lina Samuelsson, projektová manažérka v meste Umeå. Mesto v priebehu dvoch rokov spolupracovalo s deviatimi partnerskými mestami v rámci siete Freight TAILS a vypracovalo jednoznačný integrovaný plán: „Program nákladnej dopravy pre centrum mesta Umeå 2018 – 2025“, ktorý získal úplnú podporu mestského zastupiteľstva. „Dnes máme program, ktorý uľahčuje prijímanie správnych rozhodnutí týkajúcich sa nákladnej dopravy v meste Umeå. Program slúži celému mestu, všetkým našim obyvateľom, návštevníkom a ľuďom, ktorí tu pracujú alebo sa v budúcnosti zamestnajú v odvetví dopravy,“ hovorí Samuelsson.

Demystifikácia miestnych záujmov
Dopravcovia, obyvatelia, miestna samospráva, dodávatelia, podniky, prenajímatelia, výrobcovia vozidiel,... – takéto zložité záujmy bránili plánovaniu budúcnosti nákladnej dopravy v meste Umeå. Pre jednotlivcov problém nákladnej dopravy nie je komplexný, takže bolo zložité porozumieť riešeniam, komunikovať o nich a dohodnúť sa na nich. Po vstupe do OP URBACT mesto Umeå založilo miestnu skupinu URBACT, ktorá spája relevantných ľudí s cieľom identifikovať hlavné výzvy týkajúce sa nákladnej dopravy vrátane nebezpečného nakladania a vykladania tovarov na uliciach, znečistenia ovzdušia hluku, neregulovaného systému dodávok a komplexného zberu odpadu. Okrem iného mesto vypracovalo správu o aktuálnom stave, ktorá tvorí základ pre nový program nákladnej dopravy a je v súlade s rozvojovými stratégiami mesta. „Naša miestna skupina URBACT bola veľmi dôležitou podporou pri poskytovaní informácií, vstupov a údajov, ktoré sme využili pri vypracovaní správy o stave mesta,“ hovorí pani Samuelsson „V budúcnosti bude miestna skupina URBACT jedným z najdôležitejších partnerov pri plnení cieľov Programu nákladnej dopravy v meste Umeå.“ „Mesto Umeå malo skúsenosti s uvažovaním o vzťahu medzi nákladnou dopravou a maloobchodom,“ vysvetľuje URBACT vedúci expert – Philip Stein, „ale žiadne skutočné znalosti o tom, ako sa s tým vyrovnať v kontexte mesta – neboli schopní spojiť sa s odvetviami, napríklad s prevádzkovateľmi nákladnej dopravy. Nakoniec boli jedným z najúspešnejších pri získavaní politikov na svoju stranu“.

                        

Spustenie integrovaného plánu nákladnej dopravy
Mesto Umeå začalo s realizáciou nového programu nákladnej dopravy. Lisa Persson z oddelenia dopravného plánovania, ulíc a parkov mesta Umeå pripravuje „kontrolný zoznam pre nákladnú dopravu“, ktorý bude základom rozhodovania pri plánovaní rozhodnutí a príprave brožúry pre dopravcov. Čoskoro budú monitorované nakladacie priestory v centre mesta, aby sa lepšie rozhodlo o ich budúcom umiestnení. Budúce aktivity zahŕňajú požiadavky na obstarávanie podporujúce tichú, energeticky hospodárnu mestskú dopravu, zlepšenia dodávok v zónach s obmedzeným vjazdom vrátane fyzického riešenia priestorov a návrhu trás. Odrážajúc rozmanitosť zainteresovaných subjektov, táto práca si vyžaduje zapojenie rôznych odborov mestského úradu, od územného plánovania a obstarávania až po ochranu životného prostredia a zdravia, ale zároveň aj majiteľov obchodov, dopravcov, komunálnej organizácie zaoberajúcej sa odpadom a vodou a ďalších. Plán nákladnej dopravy zahŕňa štyri realistické „ukazovatele“, merajúce miestne názory, prítomnosť nákladných vozidiel na uliciach, počet úmrtí a vážnych zranení spôsobených nákladnými vozidlami a podiel ťažkých vozidiel, ktoré rešpektujú ekologické zónové obmedzenia vjazdu. Aj keď je URBACT sieť Freight TAILS už na konci, zdá sa, že Umeå bude mať chuť aj naďalej budovať medziodvetvové a participatívne projekty.

          

In particular, the urban development strategy of Bari moved around three pillars:

• strengthening the role of the 12 city districts as accessible spaces for community development and cultural production, places where to express new ideas of ​​active citizenship;
• boosting existing and creating new public spaces such as parks, markets, playgrounds, social innovation centres, libraries, kindergartens, schools, by investing in material infrastructures available to local communities and their activities;
• cultivating skills and networks for the acceleration of local entrepreneurial initiatives, promoted by local and foreign citizens, to gradually support the formation of a neighbourhood entrepreneurial ecosystem, dedicated to social and cultural innovation.

In this framework of interventions, the “Urban Civic Networks” (Reti Civiche Urbane, or RCU in Italian language) measure represented the system action enabling a coordination of these efforts and the energy of communities. RCU policy has in fact encouraged the creation of 12 permanent consortia in as many city districts, totally bottom-up and autonomously built by neighbourhood committees, schools, civic organizations, NGOs, cultural industries, volunteering associations, churches, willing to co-design and implement some 18-month socio-cultural animation program in their own territory.

An experiment of civic self-determination, able to assess the will and readiness of the communities to build a shared vision and a working method, based on collaborative values. Such a path allowed Bari to grow a powerful multilevel intangible infrastructure that today directly involves more than 300 organizations and 10,000 people over the 12 districts, thus enabling the City to have 12 stable, locally rooted interlocutors for discussion. The intermediation of RCUs is proving extremely effective in designing common urban transformation strategies, encouraging the emergence of cooperative projects, sharing objectives for the reuse of abandoned public buildings and open spaces, aggregating ideas, needs and skills on a local basis.

A work that over time has being consolidating in the citizens a strong sense of belonging to the city together with a strong local and community identity, representing a strong point for Bari during the first Covid-19 lockdown. In a pandemic Europe, where the public urban debate stepped back to reflect on the value of proximity, closeness and solidarity, the city of Bari fortunately appeared to have an advantage.

The RCUs, in fact, immediately reorganized in solidarity, becoming indispensable in the daily actions in their neighbourhood, acting as collective organizations, supporting the needs of the most vulnerable people, facilitating the emergence of spontaneous forms of voluntary proximity. From the experience of RCU, “BARI SOLIDALE” arose: an urban network of 700 volunteers who, during the lockdown, delivered medicine, food and basic necessities to the neediest families in the city, through 10 neighbourhood hubs, created in schools, churches and family centres for storage and distribution.

Many of the volunteers came from RCU experiences, others from the social and cultural sector, still others from Catholic or environmental activism. Certainly, working overtime on community membership and strengthening the neighbourhood principals has provided the Municipality of Bari the capacity to organize timely responses, especially towards elderly, poor, immigrant and disabled people.

The volunteers, coordinated by the Welfare Department, in addition to distributing goods, stimulated the contributions of local businesses and enterprises, fuelling a virtuous circuit of widespread donations. Thus, Bari experienced an extraordinary proof of activism and subsidiarity, as well as participation, in both social practice and cultural circuits. In fact, during the lockdown emergency, the 12 RCUs, coordinated by the Municipality, transferred most of their cultural programmes and activities to digital platforms, promoting the digital participation of residents and facilitating dialogue between people even at a distance. It was another attempt to continue working on proximity, albeit in different ways, pursued by simply keeping the communities together and providing virtual spaces where they could share and discuss the extraordinary experience they were living.

Although we are all aware of the potential and limitations of digital engagement, especially in term of quality of fruition and accessibility, the digital transition of the RCU practices represented an important resilience experiment for Bari, and particularly a sort of technical test for the local administration, to intensify the principles of active citizenship and participation through a platform and a dedicated digital space.  The “BARI PARTICIPA” web tool was published last June, at the end of the lockdown, to allow citizens to stay in permanent dialogue with the Administration about plans and projects, enabling discussion or applying to manage a public good through the website www.bariinnovazionesociale.it.

Each city is learning something new and different from its past, struggling to find the right way to continue practicing their values ​​despite the pandemic emergency.  This is why the City’s participation to Com.Unity.Lab, the URBACT transfer network and the model exchange between 8 cities (where Bari works together with Aalborg, Den Haag, Lille, Lisbon, Lublin, Ostrava and Sofia) represent an extraordinary opportunity to consolidate know-how on the subject of social participation under the leading experience of Lisbon.

Now that the threat of another lockdown is emerging in Italy, citizens are more ready and less afraid of loneliness and exclusion. Despite the limits, the anomalies and the social and economic emergencies that a new lockdown can generate in Bari, they know they belong to a supportive community, ready to intervene and make them participate.

A policy paper calling for implementation of a renewed approach to tackling urban poverty based on a ‘Local Pact’ is the core output of work delivered by URBACT for the Urban Poverty Partnership (UPP) of the Urban Agenda for the EU. Here, we present the key elements of the proposed approach and the paper’s messages for the development of future policies addressing urban poverty across Europe.

Citizen participation at the centre of the revitalisation efforts in Łódź (PL), URBACT Regeneration Mix network

Seven dimensions of a reinforced policy approach

A manifesto within the policy paper calls for the Local Pact as a new and reinforced approach to tackling urban poverty. This approach combines area-based regeneration (prioritising public interventions in neighbourhoods with the most socio-economic difficulties) together with a clear commitment to more participatory co-creation processes with local stakeholders (based on an extended model of public-private-community partnerships).

The Local Pact approach comprises at least seven different aspects:

1. Area-based policy – to reinforce (technically and financially) public interventions in priority areas which experience the most socio-economic difficulties.
    
2. Integrated urban development – to deliver ambitious local strategies and action plans combining physical and soft interventions.
    
3. Multi-level governance (finance) – to concentrate and optimise funds from all territorial levels (European, national, regional, local) and all sources (public and private).
    
4. Co-creation and social innovation – to encourage and empower local inhabitants to become active stakeholders in the transformation of their area and the implementation of new solutions.
    
5. Multi-level governance (strategies) – to encourage and support urban authorities to implement strategies at the local level according to a common national/regional framework.
    
6. Horizontal cooperation (governance) – to ensure active participation from all municipality departments, all sectors and all type of stakeholders in local governance bodies.
    
7. Capacity building – enhancing human resources and mobilising local stakeholders to increase capacities to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate actions.

A call to action at all levels

This reinforced approach for tackling urban poverty has clear implications for decision-making at local, national and European levels. At the local level, the approach calls on municipalities to co-build new solutions with local inhabitants, public institutions, knowledge organisations and the private sector.

At the national level, the concept of the Local Pact can stimulate countries to allocate at least 6% of their European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) resources to sustainable urban development (Article 9 of the proposed post-2020 ERDF regulation) and more specifically to priority urban areas.

Finally, at European level, this approach offers a useful basis for reflection on the next Cohesion Policy and how the different European Structural Funds can be effectively harnessed to support local strategies targeting priority urban districts. It can also positively contribute to the updating of the Leipzig Charter on sustainable European cities and to the implementation the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Or why not be even bolder and deliver a specific new European territorial instrument to encourage and support local authorities to apply the Local Pact policy approach in deprived urban areas? Such a ‘Local Integrated Pact’ (LIP) instrument would be multi-fund, flexible, integrated and largely based on ideas of local stakeholders, within the framework of the future Cohesion Policy and its future policy objective 5.

Priority area in France, in the context of the ‘Politique de la Ville’

Learning from four country examples

The policy paper was built on work carried out by URBACT at the request of the UPP. URBACT was asked to take forward the UPP proposal for “the Local Pact as a multi-fund instrument… in the Cohesion Policy post-2020,” providing a potential tool for urban authorities to focus interventions on areas most impacted by poverty.

In that context, URBACT organised a set of three policy labs during the course of 2018 to examine the models and examples of four countries: France, Germany, Poland and Spain. The labs brought together representatives of national, regional and local levels to analyse their urban policies targeting deprived areas.

The labs identified important differences in approach to tackling urban poverty reflecting specific national contexts. This was seen notably in terms of the administrative framework in place and the extent to which decision-making is centralised or devolved, the relative importance of European funds – in particular the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and European Social Fund (ESF) – for supporting targeted urban policies, and the culture and experience of citizen participation thus far.

The labs also identified important differences in approach reflecting specific local contexts. For example, whether the most deprived urban areas are in the historical centre or the suburbs of a city leads to quite different intervention policies. In the first case, the challenge is typically more about how to improve quality of life without causing gentrification, whilst in the latter, the challenge is typically about avoiding ‘ghettoisation’ and promoting social diversity.

Guidelines on core aspects of the Local Pact approach

To support urban policymaking, the paper provides an overview of how to put into practice different elements of the desired approach, with particular reference to the examples provided by France, Germany, Poland and Spain.

These ‘guidelines’ cover: multi-level governance; an integrated approach; participation; financial management of area-based policies; institutional management and technical support; and monitoring and evaluation. Under each heading, the document sets out some of the key challenges to be overcome, important aspects of the approach to be implemented and practical examples from the four countries examined.

For example, under ‘participation’, the paper identifies that the main challenge is to develop active participation of citizens from priority districts. This involves making skills and resources available to engage residents with a large diversity of profiles in genuine co-design and co-implementation of local urban policies. The guidelines address the examples of Citizens Councils used in France, and Neighbourhood Councils and Action Fund Juries in Germany.

Under ‘integrated approach’, the paper highlights the main challenges as being to ensure a multi-sectoral intervention in priority districts taking into account social, environmental, economic and physical aspects. This involves combining physical interventions with soft measures (social support), and effective horizontal cooperation between different administrative departments. The examples presented include the use of ‘City Contracts’ covering social cohesion, liveability and economic development in France, and the ‘Social City’ programme in Germany.

A final call to action!

The URBACT policy paper on tackling urban poverty argues that much could be achieved if a growing number of countries would commit by applying the suggested multi-level governance model for urban policy, targeting priority areas. In any case, as we move into the next EU programming cycle, it will be important that significant funding and adequate instruments are in place to target the most deprived areas. Let us together be bold!

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The Local Pact policy paper is available here.
To read the country profiles, click on the relevant links for France, Germany, Poland and Spain.
 

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It is not the latest news to tell that our cities are growing. To put it in figures: population forecasts show an increase of population from 72% to 85% in urban areas in 2050. And cities have seen a 50% faster growth in terms of GDP, and saw an increase in jobs of 7%, in comparison to other areas which have stagnated over the last years. Many cities are busied with developing new residential areas, space for businesses or mixed-use districts. Looking in the back-mirror, cities have not just started their growth periods. The facts presented in the future forecasts base themselves on the steady growth history of the past decades.

Nor is it the latest news that traffic in our cities is growing. And this is only the logical consequence of the growth pathways of population, businesses and new building developments – more people and more opportunities result in more traffic needs. The growing traffic figures have been met by supplying enough space to accommodate those traffic needs for over at least five decades. The most prevalent solution followed the most dominant transport mode, which was and still is car traffic.

The consequence of these developments is more space for motorised traffic – for cars. City development dedicated the largest part of public space to accommodate car traffic, through roads and parking facilities alike. The ruling paradigm for traffic planning was to forecast future traffic figures and to prepare for the steady growth of traffic volumes by constructing infrastructure able to meet these growth figures. Consequently, more and more public space was used to cater the needs of motorised transport mainly for cars, which at the same time increased the attractiveness of car use fostering more car traffic. In the end, supply of public space to meet car traffic growth projections and the connected increase of car traffic formed a self-perpetuating process.

The result is that a high share of public space is dedicated to motorised transport. Roads, parking facilities and other traffic infrastructure for motorised means shape the image of our cities. Other use forms of public space such as areas to meet and linger, to take a stroll or to cycle are rather the exception compared to the overall average public space use. Of course, and luckily, some cities are demonstrating how a different public space use can look like, such as in Danish Copenhagen, Spanish Vitoria-Gasteiz or Italian Bolzano. These and further good practise examples give good reason to engage in the reallocation and redesign of public space in our cities.

Is the solution easy and at hand? The argumentation of growth of cities and their traffic volumes alongside the knowledge on past and recent public space use might create the image that both, challenges and solutions are known. But in fact, our cities’ realities are much more diverse and complex to apply a one-fits-all solution.
Differences start with the nature of growth by e.g. population groups, need to face the existence of shrinking cities, have to deal with demands on public space from various sectors, like industry, businesses, retailers, tourism, children, seniors, gender aspects, education, sports, leisure activities, greening and more.

Example from Arad (RO) on traffic loaded streets and pedestrianised solutions

The Space4People approach. Our network is approaching the challenge of public space use from the perspective of its largest “user” – transport. We aim to work for a more fair and valuable use of public space for cities and their stakeholders and inhabitants; striving to contribute to the overall goal of more liveable cities – with people at the centre of future developments.

By this, we are challenging the current “inhuman” main use of public space by transport focusing rather on vehicles than on people’s needs. Among the many aspects connected to urban transport, we chose to focus on three areas where we see most potential, due to their effectiveness and the fact that these potentials have been neglected or underused so far. Our focus areas are:

• Walking: to assess and improve quality and quantity of public space dedicated to pedestrian movement and pedestrianised areas
• Parking: to increase parking management options for higher efficiency of public space use by parking, to re-allocate parking space to more valuable use forms of public space and to use supply of parking and connected conditions as a steering element for transport mode choices
• Intermodal hubs: to improve user experiences at focal transport locations such as public transport interchanges and exploit their potential to work as centres of city development uniting more than just transport functions

Clearly, our selling point is the efficient use of the scarce resource public space. We aim to create a more liveable transport reality by steering modal choices in favour of active modes and reducing the needed space for transport. This tackles the current use forms like infrastructure supply by shifting its purpose to the actual user needs. Space4People consequently puts the diverse user perspectives and stakeholder views at the centre of work, which is an at least twofold challenge: to accommodate the needs of underrepresented population groups in decision making such as seniors, children and youth of women as well as working with the difference in perception of what people want against others’ - like decision makers’ -  views on this.

Reasons for these two aspects are easy to recognise. To quote Jane Jacobs, “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” Jane Jacobs 1916 – 2016, American Canadian journalist, author and activist.

ULG meeting of stakeholders in Serres (EL)

Perception on the other hand can be a trigger for better planning in the case of better understanding of each other, but otherwise as well source for misinterpretation and wrong-guided albeit well-intended actions. The following example from German Leipzig showcases the need to work on perception: taking the opinions of citizens to investing in public transport or car transport, actual opinion and the perception of stakeholders vary greatly (compare illustration below).

Source: Socialdata

Within Space4People, we work with 10 cities and their different challenges:

• How to push sustainable modal choices connected to the inner-city area to mitigate high emission loads and improve high quality public space in Bielefeld (DE)?
• How to meet the reality of a large and disperse municipal area promoting walkability and safeguarding accessibility for locals and tourism at the same time in Guía de Isora (ES)?
• How to cater the needs of locals and tourism connected to accessibility, quality of stay and the topographical challenges at hand in Nazaré (PT)?
• How to design attractive public spaces for creating civic pride in a shrinking town facing a cross-border twinning city reality and the challenge of historical monument protection in Valga (EE)?
• How to deal with the overuse of existing parking spaces and the dominance of car traffic infrastructure in the city centre and provide more pedestrian spaces for people at the same time in Arad (RO)?
• How to push for higher attractiveness of the inner-city area facing major traffic volumes at peak hours, different perceptions of stakeholders as well as overcoming the natural and artificial divide in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (FR)?
• How to cater for the needs of all population groups in walking infrastructure and to supply attractive public spaces facing diverse current use forms in Serres (EL)?
• How to solve the challenge of heavily undersupplied parking options in residential areas leading to misuse of public space as well as high traffic volumes and parking loads at central points of interest in Panevėžys (LT)?
• How to solve the conflicts of public space use between transport modes and other use forms in the central area of Turku (FI) and safeguarding good pedestrian connections crossing major natural and artificial barriers?
• How to improve pedestrian conditions facing competing demands from private traffic and last mile deliveries connected to the perception of people that walking is unpleasant and unsafe in Badalona (ES)?

Example on road space design in Serres (EL)

Taken the challenges at hand from there, we aim to provide fitting solutions for each city by exploiting our own knowledge and experiences and investigating what to learn from examples of other cities and how to apply them in our diverse realities. Possible solutions are at hand, such as Arad delivering first ideas on how to solve the parking challenges of Panevėžys in higher density residential areas or Bielefeld demonstrating inclusive design of walking infrastructure that might be of value for Serres. We are excited to dive into the challenge of planning for better public space – a space for people.

UrbSecurity proposes to widen the security and safety application in public spaces and city planning and management of the 9 cities in its network. It aims to address public security policies from different perspectives by exploring their relation to other urban policies, thereby promoting socio-economic development. The idea is to bring safety and security to all levels of governance, preventing social exclusion and anti-social behaviour and, ultimately improve citizens’ quality of life.

The development of synergies among several policies is a key aspect in the project as security has so many variables and stakeholders that have a direct or indirect influence. For example shop owners can highly benefit from a secured environment but in fact they become also agents in the process as shops are themselves a major contributor to the perception of a safe environment. The aim of the project is therefore to work with all stakeholders, test small scale solutions, promote citizens participation and, therefore promote changes in the city.

Urban planning is considered a key element to define the cities’ spatial design which has a direct influence in the spatial segregation of society and in citizen’s perception of urban security and safety. Urban security and safety integrates urban crime prevention principles into safety-conscious urban development interventions which aim to reducing urban vulnerability, promote the integration of cross-cutting safety issues and create a transformative approach into urban intervention by city authorities.

In this context, this network intends to provide a series of innovative tools (practical actions, strategies and methodologies) to the involved cities that can be used by local authorities and stakeholders and provide answers to the following concerns:

1. How can urban planning help reduce urban crime and violence?

2. How can urban planners create safe and healthy places?

3. What tools can be used to monitor and evaluate these actions?

4. How should local stakeholders participate in urban planning regarding city’s security and safety?

The main goal of UrbSecurity is therefore to co-create Integrated Action Plans (IAP’s) on safety and security that promote smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Good practices such as the mix-use of spaces, promotion of activity generators, reliable infrastructures (as proper lightning) or crowdsourcing will be investigated and analysed to assess its transferability into the future IAP of the participating cities.

The partnership

The partnership is led by the Municipality of Leiria and includes eight other cities/regions, namely: Madrid (ES), Parma (IT), Longford (IR), Mechelen (BE), Pella (GR), Michalovce (SK) and the regions of Szabolcs 05 Association of Municipalities (HU) (HR) and Romagna Faentina (IT).

Three of the members of the partnership, Unione della Romagna Faentina, Mechelen and Madrid are also involved in the Urban Agenda on Security in Public Spaces proving a bridge between the Urban Agenda and UrbSecurity.   

The UrbSecurity partnership will look for solutions to tackle the following challenges:

- Improvement of spatial design, urban planning and development of security by design concepts, including better protection of public spaces.

- Improvement of the resilience and efficiency of the public infrastructure;

-  Improvement of public-private cooperation in urban security (public control and private areas), for instance by promoting a wider use of ICT in video surveillance, data exchange, etc.

- Assessment of urban security: building a framework of indicators to assess the evolution of citizens’ perceptions towards safety and security, identifying new and potential vulnerable areas and monitoring changes in their security.

- Creation of effective and easy to use monitoring tools for public safety as a means to establish more information led actions and measurement of their impact;

- Increase citizen participation in security and safety issues – by involving local associations in security policies,  for instance, implementation of crowdsourcing  schemes as the Volunteer Geographic Information (VGI) where users collect and share information voluntarily with the city authorities on safety and security issues using digital platforms.

- Creation of a model for citizen participation and co-creation in the field of crime prevention and building resilience for vulnerable people against criminal involvement;

- Creation of a joint training curriculum for crime prevention officers for setting up the implementation of prevention projects;

- Design and test small-scale interventions on urban design and activity generator to determine their effectiveness;

UrbSecurity and the EU Urban Agenda

Safety is currently seen as one of the aspects that influences the quality of living in the EU. The framework developed by Eurostat proposes different methods of measuring safety, namely income, living conditions, education or health, and, equally important, subjective measures such as an individual’s appreciation of their living environment, whether they can rely on friends/family and how safe citizen’s feel.

Safety is currently seen as one of the aspects that influences the quality of life in the EU. As set in the framework developed by Eurostat, that includes objective measures like income, living conditions, education or health, and subjective measures such as an individual’s appreciation of their living environment, whether they can rely on friends/family, how safe citizens feel is one of the measurements taken into consideration.

The notion of urban security has just recently been introduced in the international political debate and it is now each government’s obligation to integrate this concept within its policies. Protecting public spaces poses particular challenges for the EU due to the “the broad variety of public places that have been or could be targeted, their different characteristics ranging from fully open spaces to areas with some form of protection, the variety of actors involved in the protection of such sites, the risk of mass casualties and, importantly, the imperative to strike a balance between improving security and preserving the open nature of public spaces, ensuring that citizens can continue their daily lives”, as stated in the Communication of the Commission to the EU parliament “Action Plan to improve protection of public spaces” (Brussels, 18.10.2017 COM(2017) 612 final). This Communication highlights the importance of increasing awareness of local urban authorities to the vulnerability of public spaces, enhancing knowledge and the spread of good practices in promoting security by design.

Wrap-up

The design of urban public spaces and urban planning are constantly challenged by how cities are used and how citizens occupy and make use of its spaces. The introduction of new trends and necessities and the increase in problems and conflicts among users brings rapid changes on the local urban authorities’ procedures regarding the design and the management of a city. It is therefore essential that the “user’s experience” is considered as a main input on the analysis of how the spaces are used and what conflicts or are taking place.

Urban safety and security are fundamental components of the modern democracies of the EU. It is therefore urgent that European local urban authorities begin to accept their role in designing and implementing security policies. UrbSecurity intends to make sound contributions to these policies and provide guidelines for other EU cities to pursue their strategies in safety and security in an integrated and participative way.

Groups of people or geographical areas can face barriers to accessing culture; existing cultural offers may not include the stories or cultural forms which reach out to current populations. To address these challenges, eight European capital cities have come together through URBACT to form the ACCESS network. Each participating city has committed to working together to include more people in and through culture and to adapting their approach to policymaking to make this happen.

Amsterdam [NL], Dublin [IE], Lisbon [PT], London [UK], Sofia [BG], Talinn [EE], Riga [LV] and Vilnius [LT] each have rich and vibrant cultural offers but have each identified challenges specific to their cities in making their cultural offers more inclusive. In Riga, for example, 70% of all cultural institutions are concentrated in just two of 58 of the city’s neighbourhoods. Amsterdam, now a ‘majority minority’ city (ie most of the population is from a minority ethnic group), culture has not fully adapted to the demographic change. Tallinn has identified a knowledge gap such that they have no qualitative evidence that the city’s cultural offer is actually meeting people’s needs and contributing to wellbeing. Each city found resonance in the others’ challenges. Collectively, the network has therefore identified three areas of common need: to widen participation, to spread cultural infrastructure more equitably across the city and to improve data collection and use around cultural participation.

They have also identified a new approach to policymaking as a central requirement. As Araf Ahmadali, Senior Policy Advisor for Arts and Culture, City of Amsterdam said, “We have to start with a recognition that as civil servants we don’t know all the answers; we’re not at the head of the table, we’re part of the table.” Work to deliver cultural inclusion needed to be genuinely inclusive: not culture for everyone, but culture with everyone.

“Everything we do is based on conversation” Tracy Geraghty, Dublin City Culture Company

Discussions between the partner cities and invited local stakeholders at the inaugural meeting of the ACCESS network in Amsterdam in September identified five key aspects of an inclusive approach to cultural policymaking:

- an ongoing conversation: discussion about culture in the city should be continuous, not occasional. As Tracy Geraghty explained, this is already the cornerstone of the Dublin City Culture Company’s ‘tea and chat’ model of programme development: “Everything we do is based on conversation; we don’t do anything without having spoken to the communities we serve first.”

- be open and accessible: make it easy for people and organisations to get in touch

- listen and learn: many people and organisations have experience of how to share culture more widely and are keen to share their expertise

- reconsider their city ‘centre’: if a different area was the city centre, what cultural offer would you expect to see there? what institutions and support would it need?

- challenge existing definitions: what is talent? what is quality? what is culture? Policymakers must be open to new and different definitions.

Each city has committed to developing this approach for their own cultural policymaking.

The ACCESS network will continue to collaborate and share ideas and practice over the next two years as each city develops its own Action Plan for ‘culture with everyone.’ More policy and practice ideas from the network will be shared in future blogs.