Many in Heerlen (NL) wanted change, but didn’t know how to effect it. Following a wealth of inspiration, participation and activation through URBACT, things are now looking up.
Located in the far south-east of the Netherlands, close to the cities of Aachen and Maastricht, Heerlen was once a thriving centre for the coal mining industry — but suffered economically after the mines closed. The last few decades, however, have seen cultural sector investment and a growing service industry. Heerlen has been proactive in promoting urban revitalisation: in 2013, it set up Heerlen Mijn Stad (Heerlen My City), bringing various stakeholders together to work on improving the city’s attractiveness.
Heerlen’s goal in joining the URBACT CityCentreDoctor Network was to transform ambition into action, and stimulate greater civic participation. In 2016, drawing members from Heerlen Mijn Stad, the city set up an URBACT Local Group and conducted a thorough place analysis and resident survey. They identified the city’s main challenges and aspirations: citizens felt there was no coherent, compact city centre of activity; vacant units were disliked; improved public realm and green meeting places were desired.
The municipality together with local stakeholders developed 26 ambitions for change, including: transforming vacant real estate for creative industries; redesigning city squares; enhancing greenery; restoring building facades; supporting street art; enabling year-round public events; and investing in a ‘city lab’. The URBACT Local Group was involved in executing the 26 ambitions.
Testing change with the Hotel Park Urbana
With CityCentreDoctor’s support, Heerlen set up short-term prototypes, or beta actions, to test out potential features of its Integrated Action Plan. The most prominent was Hotel Park Urbana in summer 2017. The local group drew public space inspiration from CityCentreDoctor cities including Medina del Campo (ES), Nort-sur-Erdre (FR) and San Donà di Piave (IT), using Nort-sur-Erdre’s ideas market tool for project idea generation.
Hotel Park Urbana was a free, open-air, pop-up hotel and park created in the city centre, on ‘de Vijf Pleintjes’ (the Five Squares). Coordinated by the URBACT Local Group, working with neighbouring businesses, the project drew crowds of people to enjoy extensive greenery, a restaurant, piano bar, nightclub, special tents to stay in, and a wellness spa. Feedback was so positive that an official foundation was formed to organise future activation of public spaces. Residents and businesses gave an ‘ambition document’ to the Alderman (Mayor), asking for more permanent greenery in de Vijf Pleintjes. The Alderman promised that improvements would be addressed and the design phase has now started.
Evaluations show that Heerlen’s city centre has become greener since joining the CityCentreDoctor network — and more people are using public spaces. “This year we focus on possibilities for urban sports in the public space together with the young sporters” says Richard van Beek, Project Manager Urban Experience for Heerlen. Stakeholder engagement and participation has increased, as well as urban pride. Heerlen has presented its experiences at various conferences, and was labelled as an URBACT Good Practice for supporting street art. The challenge now is to maintain community momentum and political will, and secure funds. In addition to regular meetings, the local group plans to have annual inspirational trips to other cities.
Learning from transnational city walks
Visits to cities of the network were vital in informing ideas. “On every visit, we did city walks and looked at the nice things of the partner cities, but also confronted the challenges,” says Yvette Petit, City Centre Liaison for Heerlen Municipality, and URBACT Local Group Coordinator. “Together we were able to find guides for solutions.”
Heerlen learned from network partners like Amarante (PT) that greening public space can make cities both more lively and more climate-resilient. Medina del Campo (ES) gave Heerlen new ideas for hosting creative entrepreneurs in vacant buildings; as a result, 5 000 m2 of vacant real estate in Heerlen had been transformed for creative industries by the end of 2017.
Partner cities’ visits to Heerlen also brought new insights. “The feedback that the visiting cities gave us was a great help in focus and creativity,” explains Douwe Dijkstra local group member, and Heerlen Mijn Stad Business Group Leader.
Klemen Strmšnik shares his enthusiasm for Ljubljana’s (SI) green endeavours and the on going success of the BeePathNet project linking 6 European cities seeking to promote urban beekeeping. He asks: if the awareness and enthusiasm are already there, can urban beekeeping become integral to an urban lifestyle?
Due to intense urbanization and economic growth, European cities are facing increasing pollution, as well as the loss of natural resources and a decrease of biodiversity while citizens’ living conditions worsen, losing the all important bond with nature. Combined with the heavy use of pesticides and insecticides, the numbers of bees and other wild pollinators are dramatically decreasing. Unfortunately, we seem to forget that they provide one of the most important ecosystem services for the food production cycle: pollination.
On the other hand, awareness about importance of locally and ecologically produced food is on the rise. People are increasingly following “healthy living principles” and are actively seeking better living conditions with rising numbers interested in growing their own food –on balconies, gardens or roof-tops.
In Ljubljana – the capital of Slovenia 290,000 citizens and over 180 million bees not only co-exist but also thrive. Three-quarters of its entire territory are covered by native forests, meadows, and fields, 20% of which are designated natural protected areas. In Ljubljana over 800 farms and 350 beekeepers operate, keeping the connection between urban and rural very much alive.
In recent years the efforts to improve the living conditions in urban areas were recognized and Ljubljana won several important awards – including being part of ‘The Global Top 100 Sustainable Destinations’ in 2017, the ‘Friendliest Municipality to bees’ in 2017 and the ‘Green Capital of Europe’ in 2016.
Sounds impressive, right? However, in order to understand the success of its’ “green urban development policy”, we have to look back in Ljubljana’s recent urban development history.
With high-quality living conditions in the hinterland of the city, sub-urbanism was very strong in 80’s and 90’s. As more and more young families moved to suburbs, the city centre and older neighbourhoods inevitably “aged”, slowly deteriorating and in some cases even degrading. But just like in nature, “the old” had to make room for “the new” and Ljubljana entered the new millennium ready for an urban revival.
In search of new development concepts, city administration and decision makers recognized the “green character” of Ljubljana as an advantage and an opportunity. Citizens quickly responded supporting the idea. A key development policy, thanks to the implementation of a new sustainable strategy: “Vision 2050” with a new Spatial Plan, the City of Ljubljana successfully achieved its urban renewal. Proof of its success came in 2014 when Ljubljana won the title of “the Green Capital of Europe 2016”.
This was a clear signal for both, citizens and the City of Ljubljana that they were on the right track. It also provided a supportive and nurturing environment for bolder green urban development ideas and projects. In the following years, the City of Ljubljana encouraged and supported new urban concepts including urban gardening, urban forestry, and urban beekeeping.
In 2015, an employee of the City of Ljubljana, Maruška Markovčič, now the URBACT Local Group Coordinator for the BeePathNet project, introduced the idea of urban beekeeping. She says: “BEE PATH was supposed to be just a small project supporting urban beekeepers and exploring new tourism potentials in Ljubljana. I never expected it to evolve to this level!” But it did and today BEE PATH became the synonym for all activities linked to bees and beekeeping in Ljubljana.
Through two and a half years of its existence it evolved to become:
A NETWORK of partners interested in urban beekeeping – providing a platform for discussion on challenges, searching for solutions and development of new products on a voluntary basis.
A TOURISTIC AND EDUCATIONAL PATH designed to connect urban beekeepers and other bee-related points of interest, thus presenting the importance of bees and urban beekeeping to visitors.
AN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME devoted to raising awareness amongst target audiences.
A “THINK-TANK” AND AN “INCUBATOR" for development of new entrepreneurship ideas.
Maruška further explains: “The logic behind the BEE PATH project was very simple – bees live in a healthy environment. If Ljubljana manages to preserve the natural environment in urban areas, which allows bees and other wild pollinators to thrive, then it is on the right path to environmental protection, preserving the biodiversity, ensuring high-quality living conditions and preservation of food self-sufficiency potentials.”
But such attempts can never be successful if they are developed top-down. Thus, a bottom-up voluntary approach was used: “We started as a small circle of beekeepers, but we always remained open to all interested parties. In time the network grew and today involves educational and cultural institutions, NGOs, entrepreneurs, companies and my other stakeholders. It was not easy, but it was the right way to do it!” she quickly adds.
One could argue that Ljubljana has favourable natural conditions: an uncharacteristically high percentage of green areas and a long tradition of beekeeping. However, the author of this article is also convinced that such favourable conditions exist in many other cities around Europe. Unfortunately, they are still not recognized for their development potential – and this is exactly what the BeePathNet project is all about.
Maruška added: “Receiving the title URBACT good practice for BEE PATH project was really important for us – it proved we were on the right track, it boosted the enthusiasm of existing members, it attracted new members and raised the image of urban beekeeping to a new level. This is why we see the BeePathNet project as a new opportunity – not only to transfer the good practice to other cities but also to explore potential for its up-grade together with our partners.”
Aiming to replicate their success and transfer good practice, BeePathNet partnership now links 6 EU Cities – Ljubljana as the lead partner, Cesena (IT) and Bydgoszcz (POL) as 1st phase partner, Amarante (POR), XII. District of Budapest (HU) and Nea Propontida (GRE) as 2nd phase partners.These partnerships allows the BeePathNet project to cover the majority of climate conditions for beekeeping in EU (Atlantic, Continental, Mediterranean, Alpine), as well as to take into account cultural and social differences between cities. Natural and cultural differences between cities are already starting to emerge, adding to the challenges of the transfer process!
This being said, we have to point out that there are 4 main components of good practice, which will form a universal BeePathNet transfer concept:
Establishing and supporting URBACT local groups in all 5 partner cities – transferring all-inclusive voluntary, bottom-up and proactive approaches with the aim to find synergies.
Creating favourable conditions for urban beekeeping – raising awareness of target audiences about the importance of bees and wild pollinators, reducing the “fear factor” of citizens, as well as overcoming formal and informal obstacles to urban beekeeping in all partner cities.
Developing “bee-paths” as new educational and tourism products in individual cities, as well as platforms for promoting urban beekeepers and a diverse array of bee by-products.
Ensuring long term sustainability for urban beekeeping through development of mid/long-term development plans in individual cities.
Urban beekeeping, in its broader context, gives BeePathNet partners and other European cities numerous possibilities for further development of the BEE PATH concept. This is best proved by the fact that BEE PATH is by no means a “finished project”, but rather a “work in progress” – growing and evolving on a daily basis.
“Wow… Even I am sometimes caught by surprise when BEE PATH members inform me about new ideas or new forms of cooperation between them.” Maruška commented after a BEE PATH event. Having witnessed it, I must say that the commitment and enthusiasm at the events is contagious. I soon found myself thinking: “Hmm, how can I get involved?”
Transferring this level of enthusiasm and passion is one of the key challenges of the BeePathNet project. During our partner city visits, Maruška and I often discussed different approaches, but we always came to the same conclusion: “Beekeeping – urban or rural – is not something that you just do. You have to love it in order to do it!”
Understanding this passion for bee keeping itself is crucial for the successful transfer of the project’s good practice. I can hardly wait to see how the BEE PATH concept will be transferred and modified to “fit the shoe” of other partner cities or how it will further evolve in this new URBACT environment. Are you ready to be surprised?
We can improve public services for local communities and individuals by giving them more control rather than imposing top down governmental programmes on them. This belief has led to a boom in “participative budgets” witnessed across Europe (and the world), as one of the easiest tools putting rights in the hands of communities. However, there has been less attention on the individual level, i.e., personal budget schemes that could activate citizens to make a change in their lives. URBACT CHANGE! partner city Aarhus (DK) was recently awarded the URBACT Good Practice Call label for its pioneering personal budget scheme tackling long-term unemployment. This article gives an overview of this innovative set of policy tools and suggests we might pay more attention to them.
Anne Mette, a graphic designer living in Aarhus, had been out of the job market for a lengthy period, mainly caring for her three young kids and chronically ill husband. Looking to return to work, she found herself in an extremely challenging situation when the local Jobcentre asked her the following question: what could she do with a personal grant of ca. €6725 if she could decide how to spend it in order to get a job. She hesitated but finally took the opportunity. Anne launched a micro-business with the grant. Now she produces hand-made, leather aprons for local restaurants with a great and increasing success. This is still not a big business, but a huge first step for Anne Mette.
Sharing responsibility leads to stronger citizenship
When you are unemployed, “you actually start thinking to yourself that you indeed cannot do anything to change your situation” – Anne Mette says in the short film published on the CHANGE! website by Aarhus. What Aarhus is experimenting now within its “Long-term unemployed take the lead” initiative is to share the responsibility related to public services between the public and the personal level. Participative budgets, already a well-known policy tool at community level seem to be working on a personal level too. So what are the benefits and the potential risks when a city authority intends to revolutionise its governance by sharing responsibility with citizens?
Understanding the power of responsibility sharing by local leaders was one of the main milestones when Porto Alegre in Brazil launched the world’s first participative or as sometimes called citizen budget in 1989. Today we are witnessing the expansion of this tool worldwide. In the URBACT CHANGE! network for example, Gdańsk (PL) and Amarante (PT) have experience on how to capitalise on the vibrant and growing power of direct involvement of people and communities. How to share decision-making, how to enable communities to work with budget holders to define local priorities, identify available resources and allocate these resources accordingly is a key learning point both for the respective councils and local people (see the CHANGE! Baseline Study or the case study on Gdańsk and Amarante).
So what are the benefits of participatory budgeting? Why do hundreds of European cities allocate resources for such initiatives? The story starts with the individuals involved: they feel themselves empowered, listened to and engaged, even if the money allocated for participatory budgets is very small in comparison with the city’s overall budget. More importantly, participatory budgeting can increase the connectedness of those involved, and such a tool also improves the understanding of public services within the local community. In addition, practitioners and leaders feel supported and understood and all of this generates greater trust and community cohesion, even if budget decisions are not specifically linked to local neighbourhoods.
But we also know that there are several challenges regarding participatory budgets, mainly linked to their sustainability. Maintaining the increased, but rather sensitive trust generated by such an action requires strong commitment, especially from political leaders. Participatory budgets are not just an interesting “toy” to offer for the public before elections. It is indeed a challenge not only to maintain the volume of the first initiative in terms of the territories covered, budget and interest, but to increase the potential impact in all senses. Experience shows that it is often hard to maintain the atmosphere of this new engagement – and it is always easy to lose them.
Long-term unemployed take the lead
The Danish city of Aarhus, in cooperation with the Velux Foundation, has been running this ground-breaking social experiment since the beginning of 2016 in the city. Jobcentre Aarhus hosts this pilot in which long-term unemployed persons over 30 years of age who have been on cash benefits for at least one year can prepare their own budgets to finance initiatives aimed at finding employment for them (support is up to DKK 50,000 per participant, ca. €6725€). The pilot involves 100 participants in two years and gets high attention both from national institutions and the press due to its innovative character.
The participants can apply for money for everything ranging from acquiring a driver’s licence and upgrading courses to new suits or electric bicycles. Funds may be disbursed to the project participants for any given purpose as long as the individual participants can account for how this will bring them closer to employment. The vision is that the individual becomes the driving force in their own job performance and that this will increase their chances of getting a job.
Although final assessment is not available yet, based on interviews (Status Report by City of Aarhus) made in January 2017 with a total of 34 participants, some initial, but promising messages can be derived. Initial results show that 14 out of 27 applicants who took part in phases 2 and 3 are no longer on unemployment benefits. In addition, based on the interviews most participants felt:
That someone has confidence in them
A renewed faith in their ability to find a job
A boost to their personal and vocational self-confidence
That the job consultant can finally provide them with assistance that they can use
Participants feel that the project differs from the usual programmes by:
Being tailored to meet their specific needs
Being built on trust from the job consultant, rather than control
Being based on the participant’s own initiative and responsibility
Resulting in marked personal ownership of the process.
Personalising social care
Before launching its initiative Aarhus has analysed some examples in England, where “there is agreement across the social care sector that personalisation, through personal budgets, is the right way forward and that well-implemented, personalised services benefit users and result in better outcomes. England is leading the world in personalising social care but this means that we are breaking new ground” (Personal budgets in social care, Second Report of Session 2016-2017).
In England, personal budgets in social care are sums of money allocated by a local authority to service users to be spent on services to meet their care needs. They can be managed on behalf of users by the authority, or a third party, or given to users as direct payments: money to spend themselves. They enable users to have more choice and control over the services they receive, tailoring their care to their personal circumstances and the outcomes they want to achieve. “When implemented well, personal budgets allow adults to try new ways to meet their social care needs, give them more choice and control over the care they receive and give them the opportunity to achieve the outcomes they want from their care” – states the above report. However, using personal budgets for employment is a relatively new topic in England too. According to the results of the first initiatives regarding employment, where personal budgets for employment support have been experimented with, they can and do work. “We therefore feel it should be the priority to ensure employment support can be accessed through adult social care personal budgets”- recommends the above report.
There are also lots of criticism and risks around implementing personal budget schemes. The most obvious challenge is that more vulnerable users, and those who lack mental capacity, will find it more difficult to take control of their care. They are less likely to be able to make good decisions on their own about how best to meet their care needs. Only a complex system can differentiate such a service to maximise benefits to users. In addition to this, yet in more advanced countries like the UK, the government has not gathered enough evidence yet on what are the best ways to personalise care services to maximise the benefits to users. This is why the above UK report recommends for the central government to set up a robust system to monitor personal budget schemes.
Another core question, which should be answered by the evaluation of Aarhus’ experiment is how to differentiate the system related to the barriers different people face when applying for personalised care. Aarhus’ experiment started on the way that the job consultants themselves selected the most potential participants for self-budgeting, while participants in latter phases were randomly selected through registration numbers on the basis of some predefined criteria. This process resulted in an increase in the number of citizens who declined the offer to participate in that scheme. This is a crucial point here. As some people face more barriers to utilising such a personalised scheme, Aarhus’ experiment and all other similar systems should also evaluate who might be more likely to benefit such an innovative tool.
Aarhus’s experiment also tackled this issue through an organisational method. The pilot offered two different courses for participants: a collective- and an individual one. In the collective courses participants meet with other applicants and thus they can learn from other’s experiences with self-budgeting. In the individual courses participants meet one-on-one with their case manager. The results so far indicate that peer support might have a crucial role: participants strongly prefer collective courses where they can get inspiration from peers, as some find it challenging to figure out what they want to spend the money on. They feel more comfortable discussing ideas with fellow unemployed citizens than with case managers.
The role of cities regarding changing care systems
Local authorities’ role within the public service delivery varies country by country and legislation is set at national or regional level. It seems that cities have a less important role in managing the change required within service delivery. Although it is not yet clear how local authorities can implement personal budgets in different countries, we do hope that in the future more and more municipalities, as the closest level of the public sphere to local communities will come up with solutions targeting public service reform. Also from URBACT cities...
“Creating a united society takes a united effort. In order to maintain and develop a robust social and economic welfare society, politicians, citizens, businesses, associations and municipal employees must rethink how we work together”. This is set by Aarhus in its ‘Active Citizenship Policy’, a general policy framework created in 2016. Following this mind-set and carefully going further with participatory budgets is thus recommended for all municipalities: keep the momentum and improve the existing participative budgets with the involvement of strong community institutions for neighbourhood governance (e.g. neighbourhood councils, installing local innovation brokers) and set up other incentives such as community dividends! Following the first successful steps to share responsibilities with the communities, it is also recommended to experiment the power of responsibility sharing through personal budgets, even though this seems to be a more risky and complex tool!
Welfare 2.0
Last, but not least it is worth mentioning the bigger picture. Personal budget schemes are a great example to test and demonstrate how an ideal public service provision should work. “Welfare State products used to be good solutions for the previous, rather predictable life paths, but, in nowadays’ globalised world, they are simply not good enough anymore and they are also becoming more and more expensive” - said Jeroen Hoenderkamp, strategic advisor of the city of Eindhoven, where a pioneer model, the WeEindhoven is being tested. Due to austerity measures local authorities across Europe must save money in times when demand for social care rises. The most effective response resulting in ‘doing more for less’ is often called as Relational or Preventive Welfare.
Existing top-down services too often reproduce social inequalities, create dependency and cannot efficiently tackle new problems (ageing societies, constant labour market disparities, migration, the scale of inequality, etc). In addition to this, existing services are poor at preventing social problems, and better equipped for reacting to emergencies, which is very expensive. A growing amount of evidence shows that top-down service delivery is too often a rather expensive way of maintaining the status-quo of those disadvantaged families who lack basic skills and are thus not able to break out of the vicious circle of support claiming.
“We are in the middle of a fundamental transformation of the welfare state. We are breaking with the classical conception of welfare as a standard benefit or service, and we are breaking with the time when a case manager could offer a standard product to all citizens. In these years the municipalities are making experiments with new forms of welfare – co-created with citizens and businesses.” – said Anne Eg Jensen from Aarhus in her article about the above personal budget initiative.
At the moment we can witness different experiments on very different scale in Europe. Whatever will be the outcomes of these initiatives, and whatever will be recommended by the first evidence, at the moment it seems that effective services are those that are local, that help people help themselves and focus on people’ capabilities instead of their needs. Personal budgets are pioneering examples of this change.
