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The exchange of city practices and knowledge is fundamental to advancing sustainable urban development and inclusion in Europe. Strengthening city-to-city connections through networks is vital to increasing Europe's social and economic resilience and strengthening our cities.

I believe I can provide vital support for these exchange and knowledge-creation processes.  I bring 25 years of professional experience in housing, inclusion, urban governance, just transition and strategic urban planning gained in public and private sectors in over 30 cities in France, Serbia, Spain, the UK and Hungary, in support of 56 countries at the UN and 27 EU member states (EU Commission). I bring extensive experience in urban development practice, including action planning, research policy and foresight, and evaluation and impact assessment at the project, city, regional, national and international levels, as well as demonstrated success in advancing learning and promoting improved policy for EU institutions (eg. EC, EIB), EU programmes (eg. Urban Agenda for the EU, European Urban Initiative, Urban Innovative Actions.). As an executive-level university lecturer in France and the UK I bring practical tools and methods for integrated and participatory approaches and translating ambitions and strategies into action.

Most recently, I have been appointed a team leader of the New European Bauhaus Investment Guidelines expert team operationalising the NEB values for cities. Since 2016, I have been supporting the EU Urban Agenda as an expert for the establishment of the Cities of Equalities Partnership, advising the coordinators of the Partnership on Housing, and leading the assessment of the 14 EU Urban Agenda Partnerships contribution to the implementation of the UN New Urban Agenda and SDGs in Europe. I have also served as the expert for the Urban Innovative Actions and the European Urban Initiative, among other European and international initiatives focused on cities and concrete urban projects.  

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I am an activist, urban planner, researcher and policy adviser. I studied architecture, urbanism and sociology in Budapest and Paris and I taught at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, the Budapest University of Technology and TU Wien. I was visiting fellow at Columbia University and the École nationale supérieure d'architecture Paris-Malaquais and hold a PhD in Sociology from the Central European University. I have worked on urban regeneration projects for the New York, Paris, Rome, Vienna and Budapest municipalities. 

I am editor of Cooperative City, co-founder of Eutropian Research & Action (Vienna-Rome), member of the KÉK - Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre (Budapest) and Board Member of Placemaking Europe. With these organisations, tapping into resources of Horizon, Interreg, JPI and DUT programmes, I have been working on connecting community-driven practices across Europe with each other, with local municipalities as well as EU-level policies and policymakers. 

In the past decade, I have developed specialised expertise on urban regeneration, cultural development, community engagement, local economic development, ecosystem-building and social innovation, with a special focus on building development scenarios on existing resources. Building on this expertise, I have been supporting public administrations and NGOs of various sizes and geographic locations across Europe in creating spatial development projects and new governance models.

Based on these activities, I have worked as an expert in several URBACT networks (Temporary Use as a Tool for Urban Regeneration, Interactive Cities, ACTive NGOs, RiConnect, CO4CITIES) and Urban Innovative Actions projects (Curing the Limbo Athens, DARE Ravenna, CUP 4 Creativity Újbuda, Rock the Block Egaleo), designing learning trajectories and coordinating knowledge exchange projects between municipalities, knowledge institutions and civil society organisations in various countries of Europe.

In the past years, I have been researching new organisational and economic models of community-led urban development projects and methodologies of civic ecosystem-building, co-authoring the books Vacant City: Experiments in Inclusive Urban Regeneration (2015), Civil Város: Lakatlan ingatlanok a közösségek szolgálatában (2016), Funding the Cooperative City: Community Finance and the Economy of Civic Spaces (2017), Il rilancio dei mercati: spazio pubblico, servizi comunitari ed economia circolare (2019), The Power of Civic Ecosystems: How community spaces and their networks make our cities more cooperative, fair and resilient (2021) and Open Heritage. Community-Driven Adaptive Reuse in Europe (2023).  

I am a geographer having a master’s degree in spatial development gained in Eötvös Lorand University of Science, Budapest and a master’s degree in GIS (Geographical Information System) gained in Lund University, Sweden. Following the years of working as spatial planner contributing to regional and integrated urban development strategies of Hungarian cities, I started to work as project manager of interregional and transnational projects (Urbact, Interreg Europe, Central Europe) on behalf of Lead Partner municipalities. In the last 7 years I have been involved in the management of more than 8 projects gaining rich experiences in guiding partners through different learning and cooperation processes. As external expert, I also contributed to the design of urban strategies, concepts, action plans, furthermore manuals, case studies, reports incorporating good practices and policy recommendations for sustainable integrated urban development.

Since 2020, I have been a validated Urbact ad-hoc expert. I contributed to the Health&Greenspace project by implementing an online training on the use of GIS in health-responsive planning of urban green spaces. I also organized a GIS workshop and elaborated a report in the ALT/BAU project about the application areas of GIS for inventory, monitoring, evaluation of vacant places in cities. Moreover, I provided assistance to the Lead Expert of the SIBdev network in applying digital tools and techniques ensuring an interactive learning experience for the partners. Also, I organized a training aiming at improving the skills of partner cities at working with their stakeholders in a digital environment.

I have also contributed to Program level activities by designing and leading a GIS session in the frame of the Urbact City Festival in 2021 June. I was also a lecturer of the Spatial development course of the Geography Master program in the Eötvös Lorand University of Budapest providing knowledge about the Urbact methodology.

In Urbact IV, I am looking forward to being the Lead Expert of networks which targets urban green issues, digital transformation or cultural creative industry. However, I am also interested in other topics as I have experiences in coordinating transnational projects which focuses on urban mobility, social innovation, citizen participation, tourism, energy efficiency and sport innovation. According to the partners from my previous projects, I am quite a strong leader but also a kind, flexible and motivating one who supports all partners in their best and worst moments. I hope to be this person in one of the Urbact networks as well.

I am also available as adhoc expert, especially for these activities:

• to train partners how to apply GIS for their specific urban issue tackled by the network.
• to provide guidance for partners in the process of action planning. I have strong experience gained in my Interreg Europe and Central Europe projects (RuralGrowth, Inno4Sports, WaVE, LAirA, UGB) in supporting partners in transnational knowledge exchange activities and the design of action plans adapting the lesson learnt from other partners to their specific local context.
• to provide support in the application of digital tools which can contribute to knowledge exchange between partners (for instance, online or in-person Miro, Mentimeter or mapping exercises).

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As a dedicated urban and regional development expert with more than 25 years of experience, I believe that cooperation, dialogue and mutual learning can help to create innovative, sustainable and inclusive complex solutions in urban regeneration and local or regional economic development. I have an understanding of the challenges that urban areas are facing, and I am committed to help to address these challenges, creating more equitable and resilient urban environments.

My involvement in a range of successful transnational initiatives capitalizing tangible and intangible cultural heritage elements taught me how to valorize these as drivers of innovation in a regional or local context and to create sustainable operational networks among cities, NGOs and public actors. These included several new European cultural routes, thematic tourism trails, network of urban archeological sites, etc.

Dialogue-based, integrated planning methods, sustainable tourism and mobility, urban design and urban-rural connections are among topics that I covered in recent years, mostly in the framework of INTERREG and URBACT projects. 

 

 

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First and most of all I am devoted to participative urban planning; this is how I work and how I support municipalities or civil organizations in these processes.For me, the essence of participatory planning is that we involve appropriate target groups; like residents, organizations, institutions, retailers in common thinking, in a creative, imaginative way, using the suitable participative and communication tools. Thanks to this, striking, meantime functional urban development strategies and solutions are created.To make the process successful by using the best tools, to make the voices and opinions of the affected groups heard, that is where I can show my true expertise. 

What does participatory planning, this democratic planning method, consist of anyway? To a bit of communication, we add a pinch of social perspective and then spice it up with some strategic management contribution.

I completed my university studies by combining these knowledges, and participatory planning   is an area where I need to skilfully apply all three elements for a given planning project to be successful. Currently I am supporting stakeholder’s involvement and communication as part of the planning of an eco-social farm operating in sustainable spirit in a rural settlement. I feel specially connected to this project because I do deem sustainability and climate-adaptive green space development a major thing and I consider myself a socially sensitive person at the same time.

I was involved with Urbact as an external expert in SURE network on the above topic, participatory planning.Summary of participative planning results and tools in the SURE project:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ki7ZwsW1YtWpy6vcBV-0SQ5cCKdAOc9g/view?usp=drive_link

Since my experience shows that new methods and techniques learned in the Urbact network bring practical benefits indeed to the participating cities, I would be happy to take part again in projects taking place within the framework of Urbact.

I've loved playing games since I was a kid and I've always been passionate about cities. You can guess; SimCity was my favourite game in my twenties. And I kept the same enthusiasm for working on urban development since I started my career 25 years ago, approaching cities primarily from an economics and management perspective. During these years, most of my assignments have been related to urban strategy consulting and international project development. I participated in developing dozens of successful international projects, from URBACT, European Urban Initiative and Interreg Europe to North-West Europe, Central Europe, Danube, Life, Creative Europe, and Horizon. 
In recent years, my interest in urban economics gradually shifted to social innovation, citizen involvement and urban adaptation to climate change. I developed and implemented several projects and performed expert assignments in these areas. During the previous URBACT programme, I was the Lead Expert of the SIBdev Network on social impact bonds, a fascinatingly innovative topic. 
It is often said that "the more we know, the more we know we don't know". And this is also true for cities, especially nowadays when we face so many unprecedented challenges. But the more we don't know, the more we can learn from others: from other cities, other people, other regions of Europe, small towns or big cities. 
I firmly believe URBACT offers an excellent opportunity for cities, stakeholders and experts to get involved in the knowledge exchange and learning process on a European level and provide better answers to the problems that cities must address to satisfy their citizens' needs. And it would be a great pleasure and honour for me to help cities in this learning process as a Lead Expert or Ad-hoc Expert.

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Geographer and urbanist by profession, ecologist and journalist by heart. Since 2009 I have been managing, developing and facilitating knowledge transfer projects across Europe in the field of urban regeneration, environmental protection, nature-based solutions, climate adaptation, cultural heritage and social innovation. I started my career with European cooperation projects working as a volunteer with gipsy youth in Spain and Hungary. I spent four years in the public sector, where first I co-designed the Regional Operational Programme’ ESF priority, then I built up a national network supporting employment partnerships and social economy actors. Since 2008 I have developed and successfully managed dozens of European territorial cooperation projects in various programmes. I was the Lead Expert of the CHANGE! – social design of public services and the “Come in! – Talking Houses / Shared Stories” URBACT networks. As the key expert of Bright Urban Solutions I carried out thematic expert tasks related to nature-based solutions, environmental protection, nature conservation, urban biodiversity, climate adaptation and urban green infrastructure. My key strength is a broad scientific and holistic perspective. As a journalist focusing on solution journalism, I am also committed to spreading knowledge related to above fields, including ecology and mountaineering as well (at the magazine of the Hungarian Geographers' Association and the most important outdoor magazine of Hungary). This led me to found TeAM HUb – the Hungarian Nature-based Solutions Hub, to share knowledge and nudge people and communities towards a more sustainable and fair future.

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Mr. András EKÉS, transport service planning engineer and landscape architect, managing director of Mobilissimus, a Budapest based mobility planning and consultancy company (mobilissimus.eu) composed of young planners, engineers, and consultants. He has been involved in a wide range of projects focusing on sustainable mobility and urban development. He is committed to a smarter, greener, and socially more inclusive mobility both in planning and implementation. He is participating in SUMPs (Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans) as author or consultant creating the first Hungarian documents in this professional area for several cities. He is committed to help the public transport stakeholders to share experiences and find new solutions during the strongly challenging periods. 

He is a SUMP trainer and participates in the PROPSERITY project (H2020) and contributed to the URBACT “Motivating Mobility Mindsets” workstream and he was invited as an external expert to the BUMP (Boosting Urban Mobility Plans) project. Among others, he is participating in the Magyar CIVINET network as member of the secretariat and trainer under the CIVITAS CAPITAL and the SATELLITE project. András is participating in the Interreg CE project, SHAREPLACE, targeting new and shared solutions for cities both in public transport and in everyday home-to-work mobility chains. András is active now in different newly started, mobility related Interreg CE projects, NXTLVL Parking and DREAM_PACE. 

He is also working on renewal of local public transport services (networks, schedules, public involvement, communication, operation) for several cities in Hungary and abroad. He has been leader of several Budapest-wide traffic and passenger counting and survey projects. András is active on improving the public transport systems in terms of quantitative and qualitative parameters, passenger information systems, ticketing, participatory planning, and communication activities in order to have climate friendly and sustainable mobility frameworks.

András has been speaker in different EU-wide urban and mobility conferences and fora, among others ECOMM, Open Days of the Regions, CIVITAS Forum, POLIS, Calypso Forum, Fast Track Conference. He is invited to hold university lectures and often participates in awareness raising events to share the sustainable mobility knowledge for many stakeholder groups. 

András is working with a wide scope of activities from strategic planning to operational tasks, synthetizing the synergies from all layers of the mobility planning and consultancy. He is an urban and mobility photographer for decades, being author of several illustrations and colourful presentations, planning documents and papers. He is proud to use the bike for home-to-work and for other journeys, and all of his colleagues choose climate friendly modes for their everyday travels due to their high-level sustainability commitment. 

Since 2022 András is also working for FAIRTIQ, the Swiss mobile ticketing company as sales and business development manager for CEE countries.

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