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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With 15 years of experience in various strategies and projects on urban mobility from the local to the regional, national and European level, I would be happy to support networks of cities in accelerating sustainable urban transformation. Sustainable mobility is a key sector with significant impacts on both climate and urban quality of life.

As an expert at Metropolitan Research institute and from 2015 as founder of Mobilissimus, key topics of my curriculum include Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) and other mobility strategies for several cities on the functional urban area, city, district or neighbourhood level; strategies and plans on soft mobility / active and micromobility, e.g. cycling strategies and network plans, bike sharing and shared micromobility studies; public transport network plans in several countries; feasibility studies and cost-benefit analyses of CF and ERDF funded public transport projects (including infrastructure, vehicle – tram, trolleybus, CNG and electric buses –, traffic management and passenger information etc.); as well as data collection and data management tasks in several mobility-related projects, including GIS and Sustainable Urban Mobility Indicators (SUMI).

I have participated in several European projects (FP6 PLUREL, H2020 CIVITAS CAPITAL, PROSPERITY and SUNRISE, Interreg CE SHAREPLACE, EfficienCE, Dynaxibility, CE4CE, Interreg Europe CATCH_MR, UIA SASMOB Szeged) as expert or work package leader, spoken at various conferences (ECOMM, Velo-City, Veloforum, Radgipfel) and contributed to different kinds of written reports (e.g. ESPON Secondary Growth Poles in Territorial Development, innovation briefs on Regulating Dockless Bike-Sharing Schemes and on Micromobility in Cities, or The Energy Transition in Central and Eastern Europe for by the Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group and the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership). At Mobilissimus I also oversee the Secretariat of the Magyar CIVINET regional CIVITAS network.

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Tamás Kállay is an expert on green spaces, circular economy and air quality. He has been working as an environmental consultant since 2002. He has recently acted as an URBACT Lead Expert of the Health&Greenspace Network that promoted health-oriented planning and management of urban green spaces. He is an UIA Expert of the CLAIRO project, that aims at improving air quality with the use of nature-based solutions. Recently he was also engaged as an UIA Expert providing support to the HOPE project of the City of Helsinki that piloted a next generation of air sensor technology using high-resolution hyperlocal air quality data. He specializes in health-oriented green space design, nature-based solutions, sustainable resource use, circular economy, industrial symbiosis, air quality, climate adaptation with a focus on combating heat stress, and policy analysis. For 10 years he was working at an international organization, the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC), where he was the leader of the Sustainable Resource Use Topic Area. Tamás was acting as a Thematic Expert of the Interreg Europe Policy Learning Platform responsible for resource efficiency and circular economy. In this role he was providing policy support to Interreg Europe projects and to local and regional authorities across Europe. He was for 6 years a contributing expert of the European Topic Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production (ETC/SCP) of the European Environmental Agency (EEA). Tamas was involved in a large number of policy studies for the EC and EEA in the fields of resource use, air quality and industrial emissions.

Some of his key publications include a Guide on health-oriented planning and use of urban green spaces, the final journal of the UIA HOPE project, a journal of the UIA CLAIRO project, a policy brief on circular economy in cities and regions, a study on industrial symbiosis for the EC, an EEA report on resource efficiency, an EEA report on waste prevention, and a study on industrial emissions for the EC. 

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• I am a sustainable and innovation procurement professional with extensive experience in implementing social and environmental due diligence requirements in the organizational value chain. Throughout my career, I have worked as both a practitioner and freelance advisor, supporting public sector entities, cities, SMEs, and businesses across various industries to achieve their sustainability goals, make an impact, and establish international partnerships.
• Throughout my various roles, including positions with the EU Commission, WWF, EIT Climate KiC and other NGOs in the sustainability field, I have gained valuable knowledge in implementing European projects in a multi-stakeholder environment, and have contributed to creating measurable impact. 
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• Specific thematic areas where I have supported the work of public sector entities, cities and businesses:

1. Design and delivery of transnational exchange and learning activities, capacity building materials
2. Sustainable and Innovation Procurement - policies, criteria development, contractual requirements
3. Social and Environmental Due Diligence - design of due diligence processes, social requirements, EU and German Supply Chain Law
4. Circular Economy - Business Model Design, circularity requirements in procurement
5. Sustainability Reporting according to CSRD, ESG impact pathways.

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Communications is quite often seen as only as a "must-have" "get it done" type of duty for project managers, however, in my experience, communication is key to engage the right stakeholders, deliver the right messages on the right channels and multiply the impact of any programme. As a psychologist and a sustainability communication expert, leading my communication agency "Climate Smart Elephant", I am supporting projects both on local, national and EU-level to become visible and successful. Besides a practical approach based on years of marketing and sales experience, I offer both the theoretical and psychological perspective which makes this topic intriguing.

Communications lead experience: URBACT, LIFE, EIT Food

Communications teaching experience: Scuola Superiore Mediatori Linguistici di Pisa

Education is another focus of our agency at Climate Smart Elephant. As a trained facilitator and coach I have designed and led countless of learning experiences from stakeholder meetings to large-scale conferences. I have designed learning materials for Climate-KIC, EIT Food, and Climate-Friendly Municipalities' Association in Hungary. If you need pro facilitated events, design learning materials, let me know.

 

Leo, also as a former mayor, has got a first hand experience in local, regional public management and developments in a wide range of "smart city" domains. 

In recent years, he has originated and (co-)managed projects that involves local stakeholders from all walks of life enabling the development of local ecosystems. He has got some meaningful results in programs like public service digitalisation and horizontal networks - strategic partnerships, local innovation & development funds, co- and community (crowd) funding schemes, as well as EU-policies in energy efficiency & transition and functional design of the digitalisation of  public institution functions and services.

He has been invited as an expert to evaluate and scale up various smart city excellence projects, also outside Europe, and as a research fellow in relevant researches.   

 

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My URBACT journey started over 10 years ago. Working with people from a variety of European cities, learning, being inspired by examples of urban innovations, experiencing the URBACT method in action got me hooked.

Since then I have been involved with URBACT as an ad-hoc expert in AP and TN networks (Romanet, TechRevolution 1 and TechRevolution 2), as a facilitator of National Campus seminars, as a lab manager at URBACT Summer Universities (in Dublin and in Rotterdam), trainer at e-University events. As an LE, I have supported the AP journey of 9 European cities in Thriving Streets network (focusing on sustainable urban mobility for more attractive cities), worked in capitalisation initiatives, even have been an MC at the URBACT City Festival in Lisbon.  

I have seen a number of positive examples (including my own hometown’s) where being part of an URBACT network triggered an important change process in a city. Contributing to such positive changes, helping to solve specific challenges in cities is important for me and URBACT offers this opportunity.