It is a well-known fact that car-oriented urban development in the second half of the 20^th century led to pollution, congestion and other serious problems, with quality of life deteriorating dramatically in many areas. These unfortunate developments did not occur by themselves, they were brought about by systematic political and planning interventions favouring car use.

In the United States, for example, 44 000 miles of publicly funded motorways were built in the 1950s, interlinking large cities and cross-cutting their city centres. Moreover, the price of oil was kept at an artificially low level and large mortgage subsidies were given to single-family house builders and infrastructure subsidies to suburban settlements.

The outcome of these policies in the US was widespread suburbanisation and urban sprawl. Similar tendencies were also seen in European cities, although in most European countries, the control over land use was stricter and public subsidies for car-oriented development were more limited. Even so, there were lasting visible changes, for example wide streets replaced demolished historic areas in central Stockholm, in northern Brussels, and in a number of British inner cities.

In the 21^st century, cities across the EU started rethinking mobility and public space, attempting to correct earlier mistakes and promoting car alternatives. Their new visions and tools were the focus of URBACT’s latest #WalkAndRollCities webinar. Held on 5 April 2022, the online talks brought leading urban mobility and public space experts together with more than 80 participants from URBACT cities and beyond.

‘Re-humanising’ cities

Reversing the dominance of cars in our cities is not impossible: again, systematic political and planning interventions are needed, this time in the opposite direction from the 1950s. New, parallel and interlinked changes in mobility and public space development must aim to limit car use and support active travel modes, while transforming public spaces in order to benefit residents.

For such a re-humanising agenda, the overarching concept of Levine-Grengs-Merlin (2019) can be taken as one of the starting points. Their book ‘From Mobility to Accessibility: Transforming Urban Transportation and Land-Use Planning’ describes the idea that transportation planning and the transportation dimensions of land-use planning should be strongly connected and based on people's ability to reach destinations, rather than on their ability to travel fast. The primacy of mobility – how far you can go in a given amount of time – should be replaced by a priority given to access – how much you can get in a given amount of time. The new approach should be based on connectivity (being connected to online tools and networks, enabling some activities without physical relocation), proximity (bringing city services closer to one another in space) and innovated mobility (taking an integrated approach to promote public transport as a backbone for the remaining mobility needs).

As described in one of my earlier articles, the #WalkAndRollCities cooperation was launched by three URBACT networks: RiConnect, Space4People and Thriving Streets. Their most recent webinar explored the best ways for cities to plan and implement new public space visions and innovative mobility tools. Here are some highlights…

1. New public space visions

The 15-minute city vision

Figure 1. The 15-minute city, Source: Paris en Commun

Carlos Moreno, Scientific Director of the ETI Chair, Sorbonne University – IAE Paris, is the best-known inspiring person behind the idea. He showed how this vision aims to humanise cities through creating a new urban lifestyle in ‘15-minute neighbourhoods’. As Jane Jacobs suggested: the real capability of a city is to offer multiplicity of choice under all circumstances. Places must be viable, liveable, equitable and most of the necessary functions should be reached within 15 minutes in dense urban areas – or within 30 minutes in the case of less dense territories.

Proximity solutions are based on six basic factors: work, supply, caring, learning, enjoying, living. And in all of these, monofunctional solutions have to be broken up into interrelated wellbeing, sociability, and sustainability factors. There are three rules for mixing uses within proximity: chrono-urbanism (a new rhythm of the city), chronotopia (multipurpose functions of given places), and topophilia (love of the place).

Carlos Moreno is also set to speak at the URBACT City Festival on 14 June 2022. More detailed information about the 15-minute city vision is available here.

The superblock vision

Ariadna Miquel, Director of Urban Strategy at the Chief Architect Office, Barcelona City Council, put the spotlight on Barcelona’s ‘superblock’ programme, a well-known, brave attempt to innovate the city. Actions include the recovery of high-quality public spaces, CO₂ reduction, greening, pedestrianisation, and sustainable mobility. Superblocks, or ‘Superillas’, constitute one of the key ideas in the regeneration of the city. The idea emerged in the 1990s by Salvador Rueda, but it was not until 2016 that it became widely known due to the Superilla implemented in the Poblenou area of Barcelona.

Figure 2. The superblock model, Source: Ajuntament de Barcelona

The basic idea of a superblock is to exclude through-traffic of non-resident cars from a designated area of three-by-three blocks, assigning the inner streets and squares as shared-use space, with priority to walking. This means that everyone in the superblock has access to green and public spaces – and cyclists and pedestrians take over the space previously used by cars. After initial debates, the Publenou superblock became accepted and beloved by residents, particularly when picnic tables were installed in the inner streets (see more details in this article).

Recently, the city has been scaling up the idea: six superblocks are under development in Barcelona, and in the longer run the municipality intends to create over 500 such areas. Also, the ‘Superblock Barcelona’ idea has emerged, with green streets connecting local projects to one another. So far, 21 of these streets have been planned, fully redesigning the streetscape, and changing crossings into liveable squares. The first of these green streets will be developed in summer 2022.

2. New mobility innovations

The Tempo 30 idea

The Brussels region consists of 19 municipalities, where more and more 30 km/hour speed limitations have been introduced since 2010. Presenting the Tempo 30 idea, Kristof De Mesmaeker, Directeur Mobiliteit en Verkeersveiligheid @ Brussel Mobiliteit, said the breakthrough came in 2019, when a new government was elected with the following political programme: “The government will create one big zone of 30 km/h from 1 January 2021, with exceptions on the biggest roads.” This political programme has been implemented in recent years. Of course, initially many actors resisted the idea, however, rather than reacting to everyone, the city focused mainly on the programme’s supporters.

Figure 3. The map of the Brussels Tempo 30 area, Source: Brussels Mobility

Tempo 30 became the new normal, thus the 4 000 ‘zone 30’ signs were removed and new ‘Tempo 50’ signs were put up in specific areas with a higher speed limit. Communication was very important: all public services advertised the idea and information was mailed to 600 000 addresses. The press and social media were full of news about the change. The implementation was carefully steered and speed controlling was strengthened, thanks to 80 invisible new cameras.

As a result, recent monitoring shows that the average speed of cars decreased, even on roads that already had 30 km/hour speed limits earlier. Total car journey times increased, but not much, while the number of accidents dwindled. Noise levels decreased: people even started to complain about the noise of the tram, previously hidden by louder road users. Further materials on the Tempo 30 programme in Brussels are available here.

Parking management

Robert Pressl, mobility expert and consultant, Graz (AT), described powerful tools to free public space from being occupied by cars. Figures from Graz prove the very unjust use of space: parked cars occupy 92% of public space while their share in modal split (traffic) is 47%. The UVAR – Urban Vehicle Access Regulations – method includes onstreet parking space management, using tools such as time limits, restricting access to certain groups, charging fees, or marking areas where parking is prohibited.

One of the innovative tools is multiple parking facilities, in the form of shared parking, for example using theatre parking for offices during the day, or downtown parking for local residents during the night. Copenhagen (DK) is making parking in front of schools available for bike parking between 8:00 and 17:00. In Vienna (AT), the average time to find a parking space, responsible for 30% of traffic flow, was reduced from 9 to 3 minutes in districts 6-9 after implementation of parking space management, and Munich (DE) has achieved similar success. It is important to make complementary improvements, such as improving the pavement when introducing paying parking, as seen in Sofia (BG), or establishing Parking Benefit Districts for the use of extra revenues.

In Amsterdam (NL), parking fees amount to 160 million eur/year, of which 38% funds management of the system, while the rest is spent on improving public spaces in the city. In Lisbon (PT), a programme named ‘Uma Praca em Cada Bairro’ (A square in every neighbourhood) is fostering the car-free rehabilitation of key public squares in the city with the aim of getting people out of cars and turning roads into public space, making the city more people friendly. Further materials on SUMP and parking management are available here.

Figure 4. The effect of parking management in Zürich, Source: CIVITAS, PARK4SUMP

Watch the video recordings of the Walk’n’Roll webinar presentations

URBACT cities share their experiences

The URBACT Walk’n’Roll Cities webinar was a chance for representatives of similarly sized cities to exchange experiences. Representatives of larger cities like Graz (AT), Porto (PT), Thessaloniki (EL) and Krakow (PL) raised the importance of political leadership. If a new city leadership is committed to stepping up against car use, many things can be done, like pedestrian zone extension, increasing parking fees, including cycle highways in new public development projects, or creating a bike network for the whole area. There are, however, also examples of reverse trends, where a period of successful pedestrianisation might be followed by more car-oriented development, reflecting a new leader’s priorities.

Metropolitan cooperation, across administrative borders, is of key importance in communicating new actions widely and getting them accepted. However, if there is no metropolitan political commitment, and no metropolitan authority exists with sufficient responsibilities, each municipality is likely to carry out its own innovative interventions in its own central area, perhaps only coordinating aspects such as the trains and ticketing system with other municipalities. On the other hand, substantial amounts of EU money can help to create cooperation between the city, the metropolitan organisation and the region – as the case of Polish cities shows.

The group of medium-sized cities highlighted the cases of Edinburgh (UK), Debrecen (HU) and Parma (IT). These cities play with many innovative ideas, such as the 30 km speed limit, shared street use, and incentives for biking to work. There are, however, many barriers to making the cities more sustainable. Critical remarks were raised for example about certain national financial subsidies, for example subsidising travel to work by car.

On the topic of implementing innovative ideas, obstacles in governance, institutions, and financing were discussed. Examples ranged from the discontinuation of a biking lane due to complaints from elderly people, to regional level blocking of strict parking regulations in a city, as surrounding municipalities opposed restrictions against car use.

Webinar participants agreed that the public sector should oppose the view that people have unlimited right to use cars. But there was a debate about how far regulatory restrictions can go, if many people do not agree or cannot go along with the changes? For example, progress towards biking solutions is complex in our ageing society.

Tips for a successful shift towards ‘soft’ mobility

It was a common view that the best approach is first to discuss the vision at city or metropolitan level, before introducing any measures affecting residents. Barcelona was identified as a positive example for such systematic policy development efforts, correcting some initial mistakes. The objection bias (the usual fact that citizen groups opposing restrictions are louder than those who would support the changes) can be handled with systematic co-creation efforts from the beginning. It is very important to educate decision-makers, not only about the innovative visions and tools, but also about how to implement such progressive changes.

How to link visions and tools on different territorial levels

The next task for the URBACT Walk’n’Roll Cities partnership is to explore potential links between the visions and tools for developing people-centred urban areas, raising new ideas on the basis of innovative city approaches. Investigations will focus on different territorial levels: metropolitan-wide (integrated system with Park+Ride, metropolitan boulevards); city wide (15-minute city neighbourhoods and superblocks with Tempo 30 and parking management solutions); neighbourhood-based (car-free neighbourhood with circular roads, pedestrianisation, shopping streets, green squares).

All these issues will be discussed at the URBACT Walk’n’Roll Cities final event, a face-to-face seminar in Barcelona, on 6-8 July, hosted by Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona.

Read more on the #WalkandRollCities cooperation and our final event in a LinkedIn discussion group, where you can discover the products of the three URBACT networks dedicated to improving urban mobility and shared space – and join the conversation on #WalkandRollCities!

This article explores how responses at different levels of governance during the height of the Covid-19 crisis reinforce the need for territorially integrated approaches to sustainable urban development. First, we get a snapshot of metropolitan area governance in Europe, before zooming in on the example of Barcelona and their recent experiences during the lockdown. Finally, we consider some of the potential longer-term urban development dilemmas facing metropolitan areas and their potential responses.

In the article we use ‘metropolitan areas’ and ‘functional urban areas’ (FUAs) interchangeably, although the former usually refers to urban areas around larger cities.

Understanding metropolitan governance

The pandemic arrived suddenly and, across the EU, decision-making on the most important health, economic and public security issues was centralised at a national level. Local governments were confronted by an unfavourable ‘scissor effect’: while their social and economic challenges increased dramatically, their capacity to act independently and their revenues decreased sharply.

Local governments also had to cope with major coordination challenges in both sectoral and spatial terms. Responses had to avoid negative sectoral externalities – particularly regarding existing environmental, economic and social crises. They also had to reflect the reality that citizens organise their lives across administrative boundaries and that decisions in one municipality affect all of its neighbours.

All these challenges raise the importance of functional urban area (FUA) coordination among municipalities – as recognised in the new Leipzig Charter. So what does metropolitan governance in Europe currently look like?

According to a 2014 OECD survey of 263 metropolitan areas with over 500 thousand inhabitants, more than two-thirds have some type of governance body formally responsible for coordinating policies. In just over half of these cases, governance is based on informal/soft coordination. In comparison, 24% benefit from an inter-municipal authority, 16% have a supra-municipal authority and only 8% are formal ‘metropolitan cities’.

Metropolitan areas in OECD countries can therefore be classified into three, roughly equal, categories: a) strong coordination by inter-municipal, supra-municipal authorities or metropolitan cities; b) weak informal/soft coordination; and c) no coordination at all.

The experience of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area during lockdown

So, what happened during the lockdown in the case of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), a well-established model of metropolitan cooperation – as presented during the most recent URBACT City Lab. The AMB covers 36 municipalities with a total of 3.2 million inhabitants. While the population of Barcelona is 1.6 million, the ‘real functional urban area’ is above 4 million people.

Xavier Tiana Casablancas, head of International Relations in the AMB, explained recently – during a “Cities on the frontline” global Resilient Cities Network webinar – that the use of public transport decreased dramatically during the pandemic: during lockdown to below 10% and was still at only around 50% of normal use by the end of July. All in all, AMB has had to deal with a 15-20% budget cut in 2020.

Even if benefitting from a strong metropolitan governance system with a strong agency, AMB was totally unprepared for this crisis. After a few weeks, however, metropolitan cooperation proved to be very useful in all areas of competence of AMB.

• Public space: sanitation, closing and opening of parks was jointly decided.
• Waste: there was an overall decrease of waste in the city of Barcelona (despite a 300% increase in hospital waste), but an increase in waste in surrounding residential areas – thus the waste management service had to be modified at metropolitan level.
• Health care is a regional (Catalonian) competence, although there was some re-nationalisation of healthcare management. Despite all this, the exchange of information between the mayors was very important even in this sector.

The most substantial interventions were taken in mobility. Following many temporary measures, the Metropolitan Council (comprising 90 metropolitan councillors, including the 36 mayors and additional councillors in proportion to the demographic weight of the municipalities) adopted in June a new metropolitan mobility strategy, with four main topics:

• more bicycles and pedestrians, 70 km of new bike routes;
• improving public transport, restoring public trust;
• new mobility in the work environment; and
• establishing a metropolitan low-emission zone for clean air.

Regarding the Low-Emission Zone of Barcelona, the system became operational on 1 January, but the introduction of fines, which was scheduled for 1 April, was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, allowing citizens to drive to medical centres. In July, a decision was taken that fines start on 15 September.

In his conclusions on the Barcelona metropolitan experience, Xavier Tiana Casablancas argued for more metropolitan leadership, especially in health, public security and education, which are not metropolitan responsibilities, but would need more coordination at this level.

It is important to emphasise that the coordinated metropolitan responses did not hamper smaller municipalities within the metropolitan area to develop their own rapid responses. For example, Viladecans reacted very quickly and approved a Covid-19 response plan, flexibly adapting the work they were already doing for a plan towards 2030. This plan concentrated on very local issues, such as education, organising the local market place, online ordering service, training app and communication channels - thus, there was a clear difference in topics compared to the AMB interventions.

Experiences in other types of metropolitan areas

More research would be needed to fully map the experiences of other EU metropolitan areas. However, anecdotally, it seems that the experiences of other FUAs with strong metropolitan coordination are not very different from those of Barcelona. Examples of metropolitan area responses collected by Eurocities highlight several such interventions.

Interventions logically concentrate on those sectors where the metropolitan level has competence, such as transport, including initiatives around supporting public transport and bike use, such as those seen in the metropolitan areas of Lille, Bologna, Bordeaux and Nice. There has also been evidence of metropolitan coordination in economic matters such as those in Grenoble and in housing and social issues, as those in Brussels, Nantes and Istanbul.

Unfortunately, much less is known about FUAs with weak or no metropolitan coordination, since these areas are also weaker in communicating about such matters. However, some anecdotal evidence can be seen which suggests that existing problems and conflicts among settlements have been sharpened during the lockdown in areas with no metropolitan coordination; for example regarding rules around the use of public spaces.

It was a relatively common occurrence in municipalities around major cities that recreational areas were shut down to prevent the spreading of the virus by city residents coming into their administrative boundaries. Even the coordination of public transport and waste collection could be a problem in the absence of strong metropolitan governance across municipalities. Special problems were inevitable in even well-developed practices of cross-border cooperation which were suddenly forced to stop due to the closing of national borders.

Longer-term urban development dilemmas and potential answers

For the moment, the longer-term consequences of the pandemic are not yet clear. There are signs, however, that – besides the economic and social problems – a new wave of suburbanisation might result if people become increasingly interested to move to suburbs, avoiding living in the more densely populated urban areas.

If sub-urbanisation becomes unavoidable, the introduction of efficient metropolitan coordination will be critical. The most important tasks on metropolitan level will include to ensure the new conditions for health protection, to deal with the negative effects on climate change (related to increased mobility, individual heating and spread out economic activities), and to address housing needs (with special regard to affordable and social housing). Furthermore, unmanaged sprawl should be avoided by coordinated metropolitan area planning.

URBACT has explored many examples of how more cooperation can be built up on a metropolitan level – see info box on relevant URBACT II networks below. The latest generation of URBACT APNs (Action Planning Networks) is continuing to explore issues of successful FUA coordination and we look forward to following their results.

For example, AMB Barcelona is leading the RiConnect APN which aims to rethink, transform and integrate mobility infrastructures at metropolitan level in order to reconnect people, neighbourhoods, cities and natural spaces. It includes seven other large EU metropolitan areas, including the case of the largest transport project in Europe.

The URBACT Urb-En Pact APN addresses metropolitan cooperation around the ambitious aim of becoming net zero energy (NZE) territories no later than 2050. This important topic is being explored by nine partner cities and organisations looking to unite all stakeholders of the circular economy in and around the metropolitan area, especially the consumers included in the energy loop.

Conclusion

Experiences of metropolitan areas during the pandemic have clearly shown that, whilst healthcare itself is rarely organised at FUA level, the resilience of urban areas to the recent health crisis was heavily impacted by the strength and effectiveness of metropolitan coordination. Strong metropolitan governance was able to support effective responses in particular regarding the use of public space, and the re-organisation of mobility and other public services.

The importance of FUA governance becomes even more evident when discussing the potential longer-term economic, social and urban consequences of the pandemic. There are already signs of new waves of suburbanisation around large cities. It is of prime importance for the goals of sustainable urban development that the eventual spatial spreading of urban living be effectively managed and coordinated across FUAs to avoid the worst consequences of urban sprawl. In this regard, several URBACT networks have already and will continue to provide very useful information on how such governance arrangements can be supported.

The main objective of Action Planning Networks is to bring together between 7 and 10 cities across Europe to exchange their experience in a particular thematic urban development challenge and to share their ideas about possible solutions, during a period of over 2 years. The Phase 1 (from late June 2019 to February 2020) focused on the development of baseline studies, city profiles and the production of the Application Form for Phase 2.

Following the Monitoring Committee's approval of the networks, cities are now ready to focus on the exchange and learning activities using a range of learning tools and approaches in line with the URBACT Method. Every partner city will consolidate an URBACT Local Group, which will co-design Integrated Action Plans for future implementation. The Phase 2 also presents a novelty for the projects, from now on cities are encouraged to undertake pilot actions (Small Scale Actions), to experiment with new ideas for projects gained from other network exchanges and in line with the cities’ network topic.

As a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the URBACT Secretariat will follow up with a series of adapted activities to support these networks and their partners, including the delivery of trainings using online formats and a 3 months extension of the network life-cycle, meaning that projects will run until August 2022. Thus, networks will respect the following calendar:

• Activation Stage (May - December 2020): putting together an Integrated Action Plan roadmap
• Planning Actions (December 2020 - December 2021): drafting the Integrated Action Plan
• Planning Implementation (December 2021 - June 2022): finalising the Integrated Action Plan
• Integrated Action Plans Finale (June - August 2022): sharing knowledge

You can find all approved networks in the table below, the Lead Partner city is indicated is bold. To find out more about each one of the projects, check the network's webpages.
Congratulations to the 23 approved projects!

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Interested in finding more about the approved networks and what they will do? Watch the URBACT Method video and check out the Action Planning Network's infographic!

The fundamental aim of mobility infrastructure has always been to connect people, link settlements and structure the territory. Humanity’s history is the history of mobility infrastructure. Without paths, bridges, tunnels and roads, there are no stories to tell.

But looking at Europe now, where most population lives in urban areas, often surrounded by overused, congested, noisy, and air-polluting mobility infrastructure we must ask ourselves: How did we get here? How should we begin to address this issue?

Metropolis

Cities are growing. Today’s global population is increasingly urban and this trend is expected to continue. Less than 30% of the total human population lived in cities in 1950 and over half of all people do so today. In 2050 the world’s population is expected to increase by 2 billion and it is estimated that 70% of the total will live in urban areas. In the European context, despite the fact that Europe is not expected to grow, the urbanisation process is unstoppable, and almost 85% of the European population will live in cities by 2050, making the reality of the European community majorly urban.

From an urban point of view, when we say cities, we mean urban areas organised around multiple cities; in other words, a complex structure of cities -few or many- that works as a whole; that is, a metropolis.

Flows

If we wonder why cities grow, we can answer that people mainly move to urban areas to access all the opportunities the metropolis has to offer.

Urban area’s appeal resides in the extensive array of services available for their citizenry - everything we need and everything we want - from the most functional to the most spiritual. People will therefore try to access them in the quickest and most comfortable ways.

People move, as they already did in the past, they do today and will continue to do so in the future. From subsistence-driven migration in the past, to the contemporary new-nomadism of our digital and interconnected era, including daily commutes today, people’s movement within the urban area are increasing substantially.

People still move driven by subsistence – food or labour – but also do so to access to knowledge, education, culture, leisure activities and due to social relations.

Regardless of its driving force, movement is a vital element in people’s lives. People don’t move to cities to be isolated, hence the importance of providing and organising mobility and accessibility for everybody and everywhere.

The right to mobility is, in fact, the right to the whole city. And it is not only a functional element but also a fundamental and structural value in the way to an inclusive and non-discriminatory society.

Infrastructure

Paradoxically, not all metropolises today ensure the adequate connectivity of everybody to the places they may need to commute to. This is so because metropolitan mobility infrastructure design and use has mostly revolved around the use of private cars, with the exception of train tracks.

As population increases, the urban area grows, and infrastructures that once lay stretched apart, now are getting closer and closer, especially in the suburbs. Roads and other tracks are not integrated with the city around it. They are not accessible to everyone and their use doesn't adapt to the new mobility requirements arising from the current citizen's contemporary lifestyle.

These mobility infrastructures generate fragmentation, disconnections and other negative externalities. They usually consist in high-speed fenced roads with few traffic-light crossings, separating neighbourhoods and causing discontinuities in green spaces. They are often overused, therefore inefficient even for car mobility, and have no exclusive lanes for public transport or for active mobility, which makes them doubly ineffective.

Also, they produce externalities that directly affect the nearby population, such as low-quality space around them, pollution and noise. Other externalities such as climate change, driven by excessive energy consumption and CO2 production, end up affecting the whole community. Nobody wants to live in such a place!

Better cities

If mobility operating patterns remain based on car use, as they are today, the existing infrastructure will continue to be insufficient, as it is already proving to be on many accounts today. To realise this, we must simply look around and see how congested cities’ connecting roads are or count the hours lost by suburban commuters in daily displacements.

Instead of adapting mobility infrastructure to an increase in car use, what if we betted for optimising infrastructure we already have?

"While metropolises grow, we have two options: to further increase the space allocated to infrastructure, which, in most cases, is unfeasible in many aspects, or to rethink, transform and integrate existing mobility infrastructure with the city around it, making it more efficient, equitable, sustainable and spatially attractive while reducing social segregation among other externalities”. This, says Joan Caba (urban planner at AMB and the project’s coordinator), is the main goal of RiConnect Action Plan Network.

RiConnect is an Urbact III’ Action Planning Network (APN) composed of 8 metropolitan entities: Area Metropolitana do Porto (AMP), Obszar Metropolitalny Gdansk-Gdynia-Sopot (OMG-G-S), Stowarzyszenie Metropolia Krakowska (SMK), Major Development Agency Thessaloniki SA (MDAT), Vervoerregio Amsterdam (VA), Métropole du Grand Paris (MGP) and Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), led by Area Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB).

RiConnect is a network of metropolitan authorities that want to address a particular issue - the right to mobility- that affects all citizens, mending possible disconnections between the centre and peripheral areas and uniting the city as a whole.

Cities that are rethinking the urban mobility infrastructure within them are blooming in Europe. They have already begun to restructure the use of the streets, recovering the space that had been allocated to cars and using it to foster public transport and active mobility.

However, few have done so on a metropolitan scale.

The metropolitan authorities are essential for making future decisions that take into account the interests of all parties. Without their commitment, it would be impossible to achieve the main goal, which requires leadership and management capacity of the benefits for several municipalities.

So far, eight metropolises have already committed to doing so.

The Street-Path-Road-Highway-Street story

It is interesting to observe the dynamics of roads connecting metropolitan cities. This road here started as a path, maybe even a dirt track that stretched away from a street in the town centre. As the city surrounding it started to grow, it became a road at the edge of the city’s centre, but also became the main street for the neighbouring cities. As the cities grew, cars, scooters, trucks and buses started circulating along fresh pavement that covered the dust and cobblestones that once defined it.

This paved road eventually became a fenced highway, but the unbearable traffic transiting along it made the villages decide to build a bypass to divert its traffic, with the intention of recovering the highway-road-path as the city’s main street. However, it continued being a road in the cities’ suburbs. That is why both municipalities agreed to transform the highway into a broad metropolitan avenue connecting both towns, to bring back the concept behind the first paths and roads that connected them.

While cycling, Oriol Ribera, urban planner from the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, showed us a similar metamorphosis: "The C-245 could transform after C-32 construction. It used to be a fenced four-lane road only for cars, and now it will change into a four-lane road, two of them for cars and the other two exclusively for buses and parallel lanes for bikes and pedestrians on both sides. The roundabouts will transform into urban squares. This transformation will increase the surroundings development potentialities instead of reducing them".

The New Year is an opportunity to reflect on what URBACT will be working on in 2020. As the Transfer Networks start to share what they have learned and the latest generation of Action Planning Networks move into full operation, we asked the URBACT Programme Experts what they will be looking out for most closely over the year ahead.

Sally Kneeshaw

Starting in 2020, I am excited about the potential for us to truly enhance our understanding of gender equal cities across a wide range of urban challenges through the new Action Planning Networks. We did a lot of work already in 2019 with the launch of our Gender Equal Cities report. And now we are building on this by asking all the new networks to address gender-equality issues right from the beginning, including in their local stakeholder groups.

No-one has all the answers. But now we have 203 cities in our 23 networks developing new thinking and ideas that will give us invaluable knowledge on how to tackle issues through a gender lens. We will also get particular guidance from the new Gendered Landscape network led by Umea (SE), which will specifically explore how gender inequality is manifested at local level and what cities can do to tackle it.

I am also very much looking forward to the next edition of the URBACT Summer University for the new Action Planning Networks in Dubrovnik in July. It is always a great event, with loads of energy and really useful for building capacity. Together with the team we are busy updating the curriculum to create an interactive and stimulating introduction to integrated and participative action planning the URBACT way.

Ivan Tosics

One of my main topics of interest is metropolitan areas, so I am very much looking forward to seeing the work of RiConnect, an Action Planning Network led by Barcelona (ES) in 2020. Th

I am also interested to see the findings of URBACT networks working on participatory governance and the use of participatory platforms. For example, Active Citizen, led by Agen (FR), is exploring important issues around the balance between representative and participatory democracy. Too many participatory initiatives still only give lip service to real participatory governance, so hopefully the network can show that participation means something more.

I am also intrigued about the findings of the Transfer Networks and the possible relationship between the complexity of a good practice and the ability of cities to transfer it successfully.

Eddy Adams

2020 is an important year for the URBACT Programme, when we will hopefully get some more clarity on what the post-2020 European urban policy framework is going to look like. URBACT has been working through a series of City Labs to feed into the updated Leipzig Charter and we are pushing for more clarity from the European Commission on how we’re going to engage cities directly in the decision-making.

2020 is also the big year for the Transfer Networks to share their results. We will have a series of events where we’ll hear about the content of the good practices and also what cities have learned about how you can transfer them effectively in practice. I am particularly excited to hear more about some of the small-scale innovation that I know has been going on to make ideas work in different contexts.

For the new generation of Action Planning Networks, I also think it is really exciting that they have explicit scope in 2020 for small-scale experimental actions as part of their work. I think this can create some real lessons and inspiration from URBACT on what can be achieved by local-level action in cities.

Laura Colini

I am delighted that URBACT now has for the first time a network on homelessness (ROOF), that I hope to follow really closely in 2020. The ROOF Action Planning Network, led by Ghent (BE), emerged as a result of our work with the EU Urban Agenda Partnership on Urban Poverty and the City Lab we organised in Paris at the end of 2018.

We are also currently working on a joint activity on housing with ‘Urban Innovative Actions’ that aims to share knowledge about municipal schemes for implementing the right to housing. It will be looking at: community-based models (such as cooperatives and community land trusts); ‘no one left behind’ models supporting the most vulnerable members of society; and fair financing schemes.

I am also really keen to see what messages and lessons we can draw out in 2020 on topics of education, migration, anti-discrimination and integration of ethnic minorities, which are present to different degrees in several URBACT Transfer Networks, such as Rumourless Cities, OnStage, ON BOARD and Volunteering Cities.

Marcelline Bonneau

I am particularly excited that the circular economy is going to be such a strong focus for URBACT in 2020. We have two new Action Planning Networks focusing on issues that will support a real reflection on how cities can move further away from a linear economy to more circularity: Resourceful Cities and URGE.

Resourceful Cities led by The Hague (NL) will be promoting ‘next generation’ urban resource centres that recover unwanted materials to create resource loops at local level. We need to see what can be learnt about integrating such resource centres into city strategies covering all aspects, including waste management, citizen involvement and behaviour change. Meanwhile, URGE led by Utrecht (NL) will be focusing specifically on the re-use of materials in the construction industry.

I will also be interested in the ongoing progress of URBACT networks working to transfer good practices that incorporate important aspects of circularity. Tropa Verde aims to transfer a good practice from Santiago de Compostela (ES) on encouraging citizens to re-use and recycle. BioCanteens is working to transfer Mouans-Sartoux’s (FR) good practice on sustainable local food and reducing food waste.

Ania Rok

Marcelline has already talked above about some circular-economy-related networks. I will also be interested to see the progress of the Zero Carbon Cities, Action Planning Network led by Manchester (UK) which is focused on climate action and specifically establishing science-based carbon reduction targets contributing to the EU’s strategic vision for carbon neutrality by 2050.

I also want to mention Tourism Friendly Cities, Action Planning Networkled by Genova (IT), which is a great example of how URBACT can address crucial urban issues that can fall through the cracks between other programmes. It’s about so many social, economic and environmental aspects, including affordability of housing, safety and security, jobs, the local economy and environmental sustainability – with crucial impacts on the sustainable use of local resources and waste management.

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