Cultural heritage possesses and represents a great historical and social value of a society and a nation. First of all, it can be said that cultural heritage represents the identity of every nation, society and region-continent.

The whole of Europe is extremely rich in cultural heritage consisting of monasteries, cathedrals, churches (religious buildings), castles, fortresses, remains of ancient cultures (Romans, Greeks, Celts, etc.), monuments, memorial complexes, as well as intangible cultural heritage, which make up history, customs, stories…

The general objective of the project is to raise the visibility of cultural heritage and transparency in order to raise awareness of the importance of preserving cultural heritage and improving tourism potential.

As a part of Europe and the history that happened on the European continent, we want to network and connect states, cities, towns, municipalities and others, with the goal of digitalizing cultural heritage. Where through the digitalization process we will preserve the cultural heritage, provide it with greater transparency, but also network with other partners.

Through the process of digitizing cultural heritage, medieval historical stories that follow certain cities, dynasties, castles, cultures, as well as marriages and love stories of that time, which led to the merging of different cultures, would be presented.

Digitization will lead to greater visibility of cultural heritage, through the revival of history, but also through the promotion of the tourist potential of all partners as well as the whole of Europe. The project and its partnership is focusing on the following objective and tasks – defining: mapping cultural heritage in partner's regions, greater accessibility of cultural heritage throught the digitization proces. The Project takes placethrought 4 phases. They include exchange and learning, events to identify ideas, quarterly reporting, site development, promotion and prezentation. 

The total budget of project is estimated from 600.000-850.000 euros, with possibility of changing it by 20%. The duration of the project is up to 31 months.

According to the Programme, the consortium must consist of 8-10 partners. Therefore, if you know someone willing to participate in this project, please suggest it.

Please confirm your interest in participating in the URBACT project by Friday, March 17. 2023. by email office@kv-rda.org

 

Vladimir Eric

European diversity in administration standarts and languages doesn't facilitate a cross continental approach for innovation on sustainable solutions.

Our intention is to develop a practical approach to share a universal framework to measure effectiveness of sustainable solutions.

Because we must accelerate the transition, find the best tools and replicate

DELATTE SYLVIE

With the pervasive presence of technology throughout our cities, inhabitants and visitors are offered an increasing amount of services that improve their experience, augmenting affordances as also their understanding of surroundings.

This process is led both from public as also private entities entailing risks as also opportunities. Risks that can arise from unclear data management, particularly in respect to privacy, as also risks that projects are cancelled mid execution in the face of unfounded concerns. Opportunities in that people can gather a better understanding of cities as also the varying impacts in accordance with their everyday decisions. Also new businesses and business models can arise if technology is adequately embraced in our public settings.

So as to move forward in an assertive manner, adequate funding must be unlocked both from public and private entities, but it is critical that cities hold a clear and shared understanding of the look and feel of Digital Transparency in Public Spaces.

To that effect it is important that a set of cities collaborate and outline the conditions needed so as to have a framework that can render transparent the collection, processing and usage of data gathered in public spaces.

Jorge G Coelho

Digitalization, accessibility and social inclusion.

Taking into account the "SMART" concept or digitalization of things, a network of 8-9 small European cities (less than 100,000 inhabitants) will work to explore the digital transition in their cities from the point of view of social welfare, accessibility and social inclusion. Small cities are the only ones able to guarantee sustainable development, according to the conclusions drawn from the HABITAT conference organized by the United Nations in Quito in 2016. The demographic challenge posed by the aging of the European population highlights the need to adapt cities to the different generations that inhabit them, with special attention to the elderly population. In this scenario, accessibility is one of the future challenges for the European Union due to demographic changes and the aging of the population, with a special impact on common aspects such as tourism, public services or the day-to-day life of the inhabitants and visitors of the municipality. In addition, the issue of accessibility and the demographic challenge will address other topical issues such as gender equality, the intergenerational approach, disabilities, mental health or the management of social support to vulnerable people during extraordinary periods such as those experienced during the COVID19 pandemic.

Paloma Verdu

Sustainable Mobility Solutions for Rural and Town Dwellers

 

The last green mile-an active research project to identify models for sustainable rural mobility
Leitrim County Council seeks to develop models of sustainable mobility to meet the needs of the highly dispersed populations County Leitrim. This project is the result of project ideas from Leitrim County Council that were  selected by the Department of Transport as priority projects under a call for Sustainable Mobility pathfinder projects. The project will carry out the following actions:
- Stakeholder Engagement-Understanding mobility patterns & behaviour. Quantification of Demand for services (qualitative and quantitative data) using design led co-creation models of engagement
-Data collection & Geo-profiling of demand (in correlation with existing transport infrastructure) to determine optimal locations for mobility hubs, services and pilots.
-Development of models of service delivery that are both economically and environmentally sustainable-a business case will be developed including identification of level of public subvention (where appropriate).
-Integration of model with existing services – Proposals may include the creation of a multimodal mobility solution to allow citizens to access, in one digital place, all the mobility-related infrastructural information they require to carry out their daily activities as a Mobility as a Service model.
-Development of plans for pilots in Leitrim

Profile of County Leitrim: Leitrim is the most sparsely population county in Ireland in terms of population and population density. Population is 35,022 and population density 23.35/km2 (Census 2022 Preliminary Results).

The focus is on six areas:
• Personal mobility: structural improvements to infrastructure; and initiatives to encourage cycling, walking, car-pooling and car-sharing.
• Public transport: expanding and improving the already thriving Local Link service, and using technology to better inform residents and visitors of public transport services and schedules.
• Electric/low-carbon vehicles: making public buses electric, adding charging points for public and private vehicles, encouraging e-scooters and e-bikes, and building on the success of the ESB Networks Dingle Project.
• Marketing: creating a campaign that resonates with local residents, and making people aware of how their transportation choices affect carbon emissions.
• Resourcing: identifying funding/staff needs for future projects.
• Evaluation: monitoring behavioural changes and carbon emission reductions.

 

Sustainable Transport Options for Employees/Commuters

 

This project will develop and pilot an employee carpooling scheme in County Leitrim’s largest employers. Leitrim County Council will provide leadership by implementing this scheme with its 250 staff members and will engage all of the largest employers in County Leitrim to participate. The project will develop an open source app for its roll out to coordinate requests and to incentivise staff to participate.
Its impact will be to:

• Carbon abatement for regular daily commutes-quantifiable by reducing commuter emissions associated with single occupancy commutes
• Will provide each participant with a record of their carbon savings as well as aggregate figures per organisation
• May facilitate households to move from two car to one car ownership

The project will engage all large employers from the project start. This project looks to create car pooling options that reduce employees reliance on individual car journeys and to increase car occupancy.

This will build on the knowledge base developed by the Western Development Commission’s Sustainable Mobility Index which included Carrick-on-Shannon as one of the study towns.

Impacts:
• Reduced car dependency
• Carbon abatement-quantification
• Fuel savings for employees
• Reduced need for car parking

Sustainable mobility options-the project will analyse all options including car sharing, bike sharing, active travel and integration with public and local transport.

Car Dependency
Rural people are more reliant on car transport, they have less available public transport. Rural dwellers’ transport and travel patterns need to be central to our climate action planning. This project specifically focuses on sustainability issues for work related travel. The demographics figure below shows car usage dominant across all rural age groups and increasing with age.
 

Aine Carr

Although most of the technological aspects are already overcome, there are still important barriers for the local administration to implement remote work. This limits in many ways the potential of the administration to be fully digital for the benefit of its citizens.   Society and companies have advanced at much faster pace, and the figure of digital nomads has appeared (creative workers that can work from anywehere in the word, erasing the frontiers between work, and tourism". 

This represent a new source of opportunities and challenges for economic development in different territories and cities need to be prepared. 

Elche City Council would like to work together with other cities to face these processes. Elche City Council could consider working as a LEAD PARTNER, but is preferably looking for more experienced cities that could lead the process. 

 

Jorge Vitores Mas

FOR THE BETTER FUTURE network aim to support the process of finding answers to stop the population outflow of small and medium-sized cities. This network will explore new ways of increasing city attractiveness for inviting new investments and staying remaining residents.

The establishment of the network also concerns developed regions that are looking for a solution to reduce the influx of residents from less developed regions or regions in transition.

Small and medium-sized cities struggle to define digital goals with sustainable solutions that enable green growth and livable conditions for their population. With the post-covid digital era introducing new ways of working, living, and communicating small cities should define and redefine their advantages over big centers through the preparation of a Joint Integrated Action Plan.

Key aspects that we want to explore through this network:

• Digital transformation through sustainable solutions that enable green growth and better livable conditions with focusing on good practices and experiences of project partners;

• Economic diversification – exchange of good practices and experiences with project partners with focusing on the valorization of the potential of the north of Montenegro as a prerequisite for business investments in order to create more favorable socio-economic conditions for life;

• Gender equality and equal opportunities – enhancing the city's image as a city supporting establishment of innovative social services, healthy lifestyle and innovation; In the area of employment with attention to the inclusion of marginalized women into the community activities, and female and male members of marginalized and vulnerable groups.

The municipality of Bijelo Polje located in northeast Montenegro with 46,051 inhabitants, covers an area of 942 km2, is the third largest city in Montenegro and is the the economic, cultural and traffic center of the north of Montenegro.

The Municipality of Bijelo Polje is the first municipality in Montenegro to receive the Business-Friendly Certificate in South East Europe that indicates the municipality's orientation towards improving the business environment and the potential inflow of investments that would ultimately have positive effects on local economic development. Local authority strongly supports any positive initiative aimed at improving socio-economic situation in their territories.

We completely match as a project partner with the project idea with the cross-cutting aspects considered in the URBACT proposals: green transition, gender equality and digital transformation.

 Our advantages are:

• Long experience in the preparation and implementation of EU projects in accordance with EU rules.
• Respecting the principles of partnership;

• Purposeful inclusion of partners from IPA countries in the project proposal, i.e., in the network, will be considered an added value during the project proposals evaluation.

 

Accordingly, we will be happy to cooperate with all interested partners.

Municipality Bijelo Polje

The idea is to use the opportunity of moving the library to a sustainable building to improve the attractiveness of the city center. The new building will be built on a major access road,  there will be a public/private share linked to a commercial surface (for instance a cinema), a conference hall and a residential complex. We intend to use this unique opportunity

- to increase the link from and towards the city center

- to develop a sustainable way of living mixing residence and culture including reduced mobility people

- to use new technologies to create links between citizens, city center shops and cultural events

Martine Cornelis Noel

Looking for: cities with a strong industrial background which seek to find a balance between economic growth and sustainability and are willing to test and implement sustainable policies in their territories from less developed or in transition regions. As we already have partners from Spain, Portugal, Poland, the Netherlands, France and Germany, we are looking for cities located in other countries.

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In the current context, industrial cities face many challenges linked to the green and digital transition and the new objectives recently proposed by the European Union. In accordance with the new EU Industrial Strategy and the EU goal of achieving a zero-emission Europe by 2050, innovation and the development of a sustainable and environmentally friendly industries have become fundamental pillars in modernising and converting the economic and business fabric.

The Action Planning Network led by Avilés will be composed of cities with a solid industrial background with a common aim: to achieve a balance between their industrial activities, which entail a great source of wealth and prosperity in their regions, and their commitment to converting their cities into modern, sustainable and technological communities where citizens’ quality of life is preserved.

Through local and transnational actions, the cities of the network will work on the modernisation of their areas and an Integrated Action Plan will be developed to overcome the main obstacles to achieving sustainable industrial cities. Several topics will be tackled in these activities, such as energy saving, the use of more sustainable energies and green hydrogen, good practices in digitalisation, industrial and technological innovation and the attraction of new investments. In the long term, cities are expected to test and implement brand-new policies that comply with the strategic objectives of the EU in terms of digitalisation and green practices.

Victor Manuel Fernández

The business environment of the Municipality Centar Sarajevo is characterized by continuous growth in the number of small and medium-sized enterprises and the development of the tourism sector, information technology, the construction sector and other service activities.

Intensive cooperation between the municipality and entrepreneurs, as well as a transparent and encouraging policy of local self-government bodies, with emphasis on youth employment.

Džanan Serdarević