Of the 205 cities involved in URBACT sustainable urban development networks in 2018, 99% would recommend the programme to another city.

Why? Improved urban policymaking and capacity building are big reasons, with over 95% of cities adopting an integrated, participatory approach based on their learning from URBACT. Transnational cooperation is another; 62% of cities took up a good practice from another EU city in their local Integrated Action Plan, or “IAP”.

“URBACT is considered a valuable, enriching and concrete programme which empowers city stakeholders, changes the way cities work and has a real impact at local level – even in remote areas,” says Céline Ethuin, URBACT Project & Finance Officer, who analysed the URBACT III Action Planning Network closure reports. “It’s also a gateway to other EU funds and programmes.”

To hear about these benefits from the cities themselves, we caught up with Athens (EL), Morne-à-l’Eau (FR), Almelo (NL), and Bologna (IT), all of which completed URBACT networks in 2018.

First some introductions…

Athens (EL) investigated the reuse of vacant urban spaces during the URBACT REFILL network. Local coordinator Nicholas Karachalis says the city now links temporary use with social challenges such as immigration or youth unemployment, integrating the approach into mainstream local policies. The recent Athens Resilience strategy includes REFILL’s outcomes as a priority.

Next stop Morne-à-l’Eau (FR), in the ‘ultra-peripheral’ Caribbean. This town is using sustainable urban mobility plans defined during the URBACT CityMobilNet network to improve traffic conditions, air quality and social inclusion. Local project coordinator Linda Docan says despite the challenges of distance, Morne-à-l’Eau embraced URBACT, its methods for co-creation, citizen mobilisation and joined-up policy development. Elected officials and agents are increasingly asked to share their CityMobilNet experiences at home and abroad.

Almelo (NL) and Bologna (IT) were both in the URBACT Procure network on harnessing the power of local public spending. As a result, Almelo’s local project coordinator Maarten Visscher says his city gained new procurement policy guidelines – and a lasting enthusiasm for increasing local spend by involving regional suppliers. Discovering the 5% local spend rate was “an eye-opener for local politicians”. In Bologna, which has a broad URBACT experience, local project manager Marino Cavallo says Procure has brought green and sustainable criteria into the procurement process for local businesses and public administrations.

How about longer term benefits? Are cities adopting and implementing local integrated action plans made under URBACT? Is URBACT a step towards more funding and bigger EU programmes?” The answer: a resounding “Yes”! 

On completing URBACT networks in 2018, more than 80% of cities started implementing the local plans they’d built during the project, with 48% securing at least some financing. URBACT reports show many cities go on to apply to EU programmes such as INTERREG Europe, Horizon 2020, Erasmus Plus, Creative Europe, or Urban Innovative Actions (UIA).

Athens

In Athens, for example, “One of the important next steps already being implemented is a pilot initiative called Polis Square (Polis2) that was partly based on REFILL,” says Nicholas. “Its aim was to test the viability and impact of citizen and culture-led city interventions facilitated by the Athens municipality in specific areas and empty shops. One of the funded projects is the Traces of Commerce project at the ‘Stoa Emporon’ that was already in operation during REFILL, while others, such as the ‘Plateia Theatrou’ project, were new.”

Athens’ UIA project Curing the Limbo also draws on URBACT REFILL methodology and involves local stakeholders who met through URBACT. The project promotes social innovation and the temporary use of buildings, empowering stranded refugees who have been granted asylum. The municipality of Athens is also active in projects funded by other programmes such as Interreg and H2020, including the cultural heritage partnership ROCK.

“URBACT has definitely improved participation in other European programmes such as UIA, but was also a very inspiring journey in terms of transnational exchange,” Nicholas adds.

Morne-à-l'Eau

Morne-à-l’Eau obtained financial support for its IAP in parallel with its development. So, actions linked to creating nature areas, parking places, and e-mobility benefit from designated “ecological transition” funding. Linda says one IAP objective is to improve people’s living environment by encouraging “gentle wandering”. Here the main action is to renovate public lighting, co-financed under ERDF 2014-2020 within a large call for projects launched by the Guadeloupe Region managing authority. Other financial partners are the French state, the Guadeloupe region, and electricity operator EDF.

“Taking part in URBACT increased our awareness of other programmes such as Horizon 2020, BEST and LIFE,” says Linda. “It’s very likely that the work with URBACT and resulting IAP facilitates access to certain funding.”

Morne-à-l’Eau will keep using URBACT’s methodology in new projects. These include: an atlas of communal biodiversity, sharing and improving knowledge on local biodiversity using participatory science actions; and Mornalo Vélo Soleil, experimenting bike-sharing and developing the territory’s bike plan.

Almelo

For Almelo, “URBACT Procure has been really helpful, as it’s a framework which we can refer to in applications for EU funding,” says Maarten. Recently, Almelo highlighted procurement’s ability to unlock local potential in an H2020 call for projects on making cities healthier.

Almelo is seeing a more “integral approach” to new projects, with more awareness of long term effects, and of the power of procurement, especially at strategic, management level. Through their focus on procurement, Almelo also got involved in a large national initiative on conditioned based maintenance of infrastructure, part of their IAP.

“URBACT is a programme we are interested in because it's more about capacity building and policy development, instead of the usual investments subsidies,” explains Maarten. “In particular it’s valuable because it also stimulates the European awareness of our organisation and employees.”

Bologna

As for Bologna, the URBACT Procure network made a “fundamental” contribution to training envisaged in the action plan. For example it enabled dozens of officials from municipalities and public administrations of the Bologna metropolitan area to follow a high-level course by a successful business school. They learned techniques in green procurement and were able to innovate internal organisational processes.

“Thanks to URBACT Procure, the Metropolitan City has been included in a European Union DG Grow pilot group on innovative procurement issues”, reports Marino. Bologna will also focus on public procurement and green procurement in a new H2020 project, Belt, on energy labelling, linking in with local and national institutions and businesses.

Another URBACT network that Bologna completed in 2018 was GEN-Y CITY, bringing local government, scientists, businesses and residents together to develop, attract and retain local, young, creative talent. Encouraged by this experience, and the improvements URBACT was bringing to their city, Bologna went on to join a new URBACT Transfer Network, Urban Regeneration Mix, about bringing life back to historical areas – and citizens back to regenerated areas.

Overall, URBACT’s working methodology has promoted collaboration and integration between partners to draw on better and better good practices – and provides helpful teamwork procedures, says Marino Cavallo. “Every URBACT project brings new pieces to build the future of our metropolitan area, knowledge that brings benefits especially in the long term.”

Has your city seen positive knock-on effects after completing an URBACT network? Share your story with us! Send an e-mail to communication@urbact.eu

For more accounts from cities in URBACT networks read “Cities in Action – Stories of Change”.

The city of Bologna (Italy) showcased their ambitious resilience strategy, looking to prepare the city for the impacts of the changing climate. Raffaela Gueze, responsible for sustainable development in Bologna, explained how the process of developing the strategy, combining long-term planning with quick-win experiments, benefited from broad stakeholder involvement. The audience in Tallinn was especially interested in Bologna’s experience with OpenGAIA, a crowd funding platform that allows citizens to sponsor the planting of new trees in the city.

The platform was an experiment, building on an earlier experience involving private companies as sponsors for new urban green in exchange for carbon offsets. As people behind the most successful initiatives emphasize, the main win of the “crowd-funding” campaign is not necessarily the funding but rather the crowd, in this case a group of people committed to greening the city. It would be interesting to see whether more cities follow in Bologna’s footsteps, inviting citizens to co-sponsor urban greening initiatives, and what the long-term impact of those initiatives is.

A number of cities are currently experimenting with crowd funding tools for sustainability-related initiatives, e.g. the city of Ghent (Belgium) that used its municipal crowd funding platform to support projects addressing climate adaptation, offering match funding from the city to those that were most popular.

However, citizens cannot be the only ones investing in urban nature. In order to build new resilient infrastructure, new financial instruments are needed and also here Bologna’s experience can inspire others. Thanks to its work on the strategy, the city was able to access the Natural Capital Financing Facility technical assistance to prepare a feasibility study for climate resilient infrastructure in the city.

The superpowers of citizen scientists in Guimarães

Guimarães (Portugal) has succeeded in building a strong partnership for biodiversity, involving public authorities, private sector, research institutions and – perhaps most importantly – citizens, especially the youngest inhabitants of Guimarães. How did they manage to do it? According to Carlos Ribeiro, Executive Director of Laboratório da Paisagem, an important element was addressing citizens as co-producers of knowledge thanks to a custom-designed app. Biodiversity GO! allows everyone to document existing species of plants and animals. By inviting people to become so called “citizen scientists”, Guimarães managed to turn the exercise of inventorying local species into a fun, community-based activity.

Citizen science, the idea of involving the public in scientific research, is not new. It has been long used also for environmental projects, e.g. collecting bird migration records or tracking marine debris. However, recent years have seen a surge in its popularity, with new digital tools opening up exciting possibilities to facilitate especially data collection and analysis.

Just as crowd funding is not merely about money, citizen science – as promoted by Guimarães – is about much more than knowledge. In addition to the community building effect of the inventory exercise, playing with the app turns an abstract concept of biodiversity into a personal encounter with local plants and animals. It is also a clever response to our culture’s obsession with digital tools. Instead of complaining that kids spend hours staring into screens of various sizes, why not show them what hidden superpowers their smart phones have?

The value of crowd sourcing it that it allows to look for knowledge beyond that of local administration and academia. For instance, the representative of Sheffield (UK), awarded with an URBACT Good Practice label for their Urban Waterways Strategy and Action Plan, emphasized the contribution of anglers and kayakers, everyday users of Sheffield waterways, to developing a successful strategy.

Ljubljana : A capital of bees

Personal encounters with nature are part of everyday experience of the inhabitants of Ljubljana, the 2016 European Green Capital. The proximity to nature is one of the Slovenian capital’s greatest assets. Rural areas cover 2/3 of Ljubljana’s total area, including 826 active farms. In recognition of this close relationship, the city - as probably the only capital in Europe - employs a special advisor for rural development, Maruška Markovcic who was our guest in Tallinn. The project that Maruška introduced, Bee Path, is an excellent example how nature protection can be a starting point for addressing community cohesion, education, food security, economic development and tourism, as well as urban design and planning.

The initial premise of the project was simple: protect the bees to safeguard biodiversity. However, in a city with a strong commitment to sustainable development and a vibrant beekeeping culture – including approx. 300 active beekeepers! – the idea quickly snowballed. Initiated by the city administration, the project now involves a long (and growing) list of partners: beekeeping associations and other civil society organizations, universities and research institutes, private companies, schools, cultural institutions, as well as individual citizens.

How do you involve museums in biodiversity protection, make beekeeping a tourist attraction and get architects to design open source beehives? The secret to this cooperation is pursuing a common goal of safeguarding Ljubljana’s beekeeping culture, while respecting differing interests of each of the partners. Bee Path is not about involving others in the implementation of a plan, devised by local government or external experts. On the contrary, everyone is invited to contribute their ideas and activities in support of a broadly defined shared goal. The openness, while requiring a lot of facilitation effort from the side of the local government, results in the involvement of unusual suspects and brings about fresh ideas.

Waving the right flag in Strasbourg

The question of mobilizing around a common goal and winning support from others is key. How to convince organizations and people, sometimes those sitting across the corridor from us, that working to protect nature can help them reach their goals, whether it’s social cohesion, better image of the city or new business opportunities?

A good case in point was the story of “All united for biodiversity” charter, initiated by the Eurometropolis Strasbourg (FR) in 2012 and now gathering 75 signatories, mostly from the private sector. Susanne Brolly, project manager for Zero Pesticide Strasbourg and Nature in the City portfolio, recalled that the charter beginnings were not easy. It turned out that biodiversity protection was not high on the agenda of locally based companies producing shoes or chocolate and it was difficult to convince them to sign the charter. However, Brolly quickly learned that what companies appreciated was an opportunity to involve their employees in team building activities and, seen from this perspective, tree planting, nest building or bee keeping were obviously very attractive proposals. Today 88% of signatories involve their staff in biodiversity-related activities which in turn contributes to more people becoming aware of nature-friendly management practices.

The charter signatories are not only companies but also public institutions. For instance, Strasbourg is now embarking on a project with the local prison to offer gardening workshops to women prisoners, providing them with new skills, improving their mental health and wellbeing, as well as contributing to better management of green spaces within the city. This is another illustration of multiple benefits related to nature in the city, easily accessible to cities all over Europe.

These examples provide the opportunity to look at nature in the city from a different perspective, beyond technical solutions, environmental impact assessments or sustainability indicators. These are all important and often addressed by local, national and European projects but I wonder if, by outsourcing environmental debates to experts, we have lost something valuable.

The four cases are all in different ways trying to reclaim nature for citizens (and vice versa), while bringing in scientific expertise to support those efforts. Focusing on crowd funding and crowd sourcing knowledge, as well as on building coalitions where each partner chooses their own path to move towards a common goal, we were reminded of the power that nature has in bringing us together. This power can be harnessed by each and every city, regardless of their size, geographical location or financial capacities, and URBACT Good Practice cities are here to help you.

‘Entrepreneurship eco-systems’ are essentially the ‘building blocks’ for stimulating entrepreneurship which can be adapted in a city to create a stronger or lesser environment for fostering entrepreneurship.

The concept of places needing to think about such eco-systems has been widely developed by Dan Isenberg, the founding executive director of the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Project and a former professor at the Harvard Business School.

In his Forbes Magazine article, Isenberg suggests that the place-based ‘entrepreneurial eco-systems’ are made up of the culture of the city; the business enabling policies; the strength of local leadership; the availability of suitable finance for business; the quality of human capital; venture-friendly markets; and a range of institutional and infrastructural support.

Why ‘entrepreneurship eco-systems’ are becoming increasingly important

Wider structural changes within society are blurring the traditional boundaries between employment, enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Shifts in technology, connectivity and the wants and expectations of both employers and employees are creating significant changes to the nature of work and the formal and informal contracts that exist between employer and worker (see, for example, Preparing for the Future of Work, World Economic Forum, 2016).

These changes are giving rise to a whole new generation of freelancers.

Overlay on top of these changes some of the wider shifts in society – including slow wage growth, the increasing high-cost of living in some of the world’s major Cities and the growth in the freelancer community – and it’s easy to see how these changes can support the future growth of some of Europe’s smaller and more peripheral cities (for an example, see The Four Trends That Will Change the Way We Work By 2021, Fast Company, 2015).

These changes are also giving rise to a whole new vocabulary.  Phrases like the ‘independent workforce’ have emerged to describe the range of different contracting relationships that individuals can have with business. The number of solo-entrepreneurs - or ‘solopreneurs’ – is on the rise. Phrases like side-giggers have emerged to describe individuals who work in the sharing economy, whilst also holding down a traditional job, on a part-time basis.

Udacity, the innovative online education provider that works in partnership with leading tech companies like Google, AT&T, and Facebook has coined the term ‘nano-degree’ and ‘nano-job’ to describe the short-term nature of individuals learning needs and the short-term nature of some work assignments in the tech industry.

Rethinking traditional employment, enterprise and entrepreneurship programmes is necessary

With the blurring of lines between employment, enterprise and entrepreneurship, many forward-thinking cities are having to re-think the traditional employability and entrepreneurship programmes they have previously provided for their residents.

Employability programmes increasingly need to include more content on enterprise and entrepreneurship, to try and support participants to acquire the skills needed to survive in today’s more complex labour market.

Similarly, Entrepreneurship programmes need to adapt to be better suited to the increasing number of freelancers and sole traders joining their programmes, and to take account of innovative new business models that businesses might adopt. You only have to search for ‘Tools for Solopreneurs’ on the internet to see how fundamentally different their support needs are from more ‘traditional’ businesses.

But the changes needed are much more widespread than that.

Ultimately, because of the changing nature of the relationship between employer and individual, cities also need to try to embed a much deeper culture of enterprise in their entire population, to try and ensure that they are equipped with a more independent, resilient and self-reliant outlook and also possess the necessary problem solving, business and creativity skills needed to survive in this new world of work.

The processes for collaborating with young entrepreneurs has had to become more collaborative and ‘experiential’ than ‘traditional’ start-up programmes – to encompass hackathons, service jams and meet-ups, rather than relying solely on classroom-based training courses and advice sessions.  

Tips and Tricks from URBACT Good Practices    

The Good Practices of Glasgow (co-operative entrepreneurship), Bologna (creative entrepreneurship), Piraeus (marine sector based entrepreneurship) and Barcelona (inclusive entrepreneurship) have each taken a different approach to business support, which other cities can take inspiration from.  

•       Establishing a strong ‘generalist’ support system: Barcelona Activa’s Inclusive Entrepreneurship Good Practice offers a ‘universal’ service that is ‘available for all’ in the city which – between 2004 and 2016 - has supported over 100,000 participants, established over 18,000 companies and created over 32,000 jobs. It operates on the basis of being open to everyone and delivers a mix of online, one-to-many and face-to-face support services to anyone looking to start their own business. In addition, they offer specialist support services for particular nice groups they want to encourage, like women entrepreneurs and people from ‘disadvantaged’ backgrounds.
  
  
  
   
•        Stimulating social entrepreneurship: Glasgow’s Co-operative City Good Practice has developed a city-wide approach to co-operative development, which is building new partnerships between public services and local people to foster greater co-design and delivery of local services and giving a wider group of residents of the city a direct experience of running, or being a shareholder in a social enterprise. The scale of the reach that Glasgow’s programme has achieved is impressive, helping local residents think about how social entrepreneurship can support their community to tackle local challenges. Stimulating social entrepreneurship in communities to help people overcome particular challenges can help individuals gain the experience of running a business, without necessarily having to carry all of the risk
  (because they are working in partnership with others).
  
  
  
   
•        Supporting creative & cultural industries: Bologna’s IncrediBOL! Creative Innovation Good Practice programme provides a range of tailored support to creative businesses to support them to start up, has received over 500 applications over the last 7 years, supported over 80 businesses, which have a survival rate of 81%. The methodology for delivering support to businesses that apply to the programme is through a widely publicised business plan competition, which has been particularly successful in stimulating creative business ideas from the market, and investing in successful projects which have built the cultural fabric of the city (further building Bologna’s reputation as a cultural hotspot and attracting more creative talent).
  
  
  
   
•        Building on your cities sector strengths and strategic assets: Piraeus’ Blue Growth Good Practice is a programme, which seeks to stimulate the growth of innovation and entrepreneurship in the marine sector in Piraeus. It seeks to strengthen and build upon some of the sectoral specialisms and strategic (topographic) assets of the city. As a sector based innovation programme, it also works around a business plan competition, supporting successful applicants to start-up.
  
  

The four Good Practices also share a number of key characteristics, that make them stand out as Good Practice entrepreneurship programmes, namely;

•        Their high levels of awareness / deep market reach: All of these programmes have managed to reach deeply into their target communities and create a high level of awareness and interest in their programmes, inspiring and making possible the aspirations of fledgling entrepreneurs. Achieving high-levels of awareness and market reach is important to drive up demand for entrepreneurship and help people understand where they can get support.
  
   
•        Their approach to supporting entrepreneurs to grow their business. All of these programmes offer tailored and bespoke support to the people that go through their programmes, connecting them to the specialist support they need to succeed and/or stimulating other important components of the eco-system of support, to ensure aspiring entrepreneurs have access to the help they need to grow their business;
  
   
•        Their work on stimulating a strong enterprise culture in their city. All 4 Good Practices also focus on trying to stimulate a change in the enterprise culture of their cities, by working in partnership with a range of stakeholders and agencies in their cities to widely promote the benefits of entrepreneurship.

Creating successful entrepreneurial eco-systems requires a whole-system approach

What these four Good Practices demonstrate is how creating a widespread change in the enterprise culture of a city can be a complex and challenging task, that requires strong leadership from city administrations, highly effective partnerships and the stimulation of crowd actions through an ‘ecosystem’ approach (for an explanation of eco-system thinking, see ‘What I Learned from Trying to Innovate at the New York Times’, John Geraci, April 2016) 

A city cannot just focus on delivering one or two great entrepreneurship programmes targeted on a few niche sectors of the community, but needs to ‘conduct’ the market like the conductor in an orchestra - to incentivise behaviour change amongst communities, individuals, agencies, influencers and sub-cultures, to try and achieve an overall change in the macro-culture of the city.

In addition to considering the whole-system, it is also important to think about the way different programmes incentivise people to think about starting their own business and how these programmes work together as part of a coherent customer proposition.

In adopting the approach used by the URBACT Good Practices, other cities can create powerful support ‘systems’, which could work together to inspire and make possible the aspirations of their entrepreneurial residents.