As tourism opens up again, a group of URBACT cities is supporting efforts to improve short-term holiday rental regulation in the EU. Their experience will feed into a sustainable tourism study for the EU Urban Agenda Partnership on Culture and Cultural Heritage, due for release in November 2021. Laura Colini, URBACT Programme Expert, and Ugo Rossi, from the Grand Sasso Science Institute (IT), share their insights…

Urban tourism is one of those phenomena that, before the outbreak of the pandemic, gave rise to heated debates regarding its sustainability. The post-pandemic transition now represents a unique opportunity for an in-depth reform of the existing pattern of economic development, especially of its most controversial manifestations.

The study is being carried out in collaboration with diverse URBACT cities, in particular those involved in the TOURISM-FRIENDLY CITIES and KAIRÓS networks. Nine cities located in different parts of Europe have been consulted: five small-sized towns, Cáceres (ES), Druskininkai (LT), Dubrovnik (HR), Dún Laoghaire (IE), and Rovaniemi (FI); three medium-sized cities, Braga (PT), Florence (IT), and Kraków (PL); and one large capital city, Berlin (DE). URBACT will present the final results at an open-to-all, peer-learning webinar on 4 November 2021, with speakers from cities, research institutes and the European Commission.  

The risk of hyper-tourism

Over the past ten years, an unregulated hospitality industry has turned urban tourism into a potentially existential threat for a growing number of cities and urban areas. Previously, the risk of hyper-tourism regarded a limited number of small and medium-sized cities, such as those with Unesco-designated old towns (like Venice, Dubrovnik, Rhodes, Plovdiv, Granada in Southern Europe) but, with the advent of platform-mediated Short-Term Rentals (STR), this risk has become generalised, involving all types of cities.

In recent years, local authorities have resorted to active regulation, stringent or mild, of short-term holiday rentals when excessive tourism demand has put pressure on local residents and the urban social fabric. Regulations have been adopted in a reactive manner once cities and other popular tourism destinations have reached their peak, and in some cases already exceeded their tourism’s environmental carrying capacity. For different reasons, regulatory initiatives have been limited in their results. Moreover, existing regulatory initiatives appear to be place-specific: they are locally fragmented and do not always have the support of the central government.

Pandemic as a game changer

Restrictions imposed during the pandemic dramatically impacted cities, and particularly their service-oriented economies, starting with the cultural and entertainment sectors. Museums, theatres, restaurants, and bars suffered heavily from the shutdowns and are now struggling to recover after the re-opening. Moreover, the spread of telework has dealt an almost fatal blow to several business districts, and the retail sector in general, causing the closure of many independent shops, while favouring the expansion of delivery services offered by online commerce giants and multinational retail chains.

In the Northern hemisphere, the summer of 2021 saw some urban tourism getting back to ‘normality’. But the sudden restart of tourism, and the entertainment economy in general, increases the risk of congestion in urban areas that are richly endowed with natural amenities such as access to the seaside, lakes, or mountains. On the other hand, persistent uncertainties about the evolution of the pandemic are still aggravating the crisis in cities whose economies developed around now-quiet office-centric areas and entertainment districts.

Challenges and opportunities in the post-pandemic transition

Despite all the ambivalence of the current moment, the post-pandemic path offers a unique opportunity to experiment with sustainability transition in the tourism sector. For this reason, it is important – and urgent – to think about an innovative approach to the regulation of short-term rentals for tourists and other temporary visitors.

There are important developments in this direction. The European Commission has recently launched a Tourist services – short-term rental initiative involving and consulting with cities and citizens in order to develop a “responsible, fair and trusted growth in short-term rentals, as part of a well-balanced tourist ecosystem”.

The local level is crucial to the successful regulation of urban tourism. In this sense, we believe that an innovative regulation strategy – relying on a mixed, prescriptive and proactive, approach to public policy – has to involve a wide range of co-design techniques and participatory methods, just as URBACT implements across its city networks. The URBACT methodology is adopted here in order to achieve a higher responsibilisation of local communities on urban tourism management.

EU UA study to test community-led rental platforms

The study, launched under the EU Urban Agenda (UA) on Action 1, draws on URBACT’s approach,  observing local practices and experiences in managing tourism flows and their impacts locally. With a survey distributed to cities in the TOURISM-FRIENDLY CITIES and KAIRÓS networks, and the cities in the EU UA partnership, the study will assess and test strategies for place-based, community-led management of the short-term accommodation sector. The selected cities represent different types of urban tourism: while some have not reached their tipping point in urban tourism, others are willing to invest more in containing risks related to an unbridled short-term holiday rental market.

For example, the city of Braga (PT) is experiencing a surge of tourists and is considering strategies to connect local residents better with the temporary presence of tourists. The city of Cáceres (ES) has a selective approach to Short Term Rental, or ‘STR’, because regional legislation allows it to control the rental of touristic apartments. Working alongside Braga and Cáceres in the TOURISM-FRIENDLY CITIES network, the city of Kraków (PL) strives to preserve its community of long-term residents in the historic city centre.

The EU Urban Agenda study is testing the interest and availability of the selected cities to experiment with locally managed, community-led rental platforms. The following three principles are at the heart of this experimentation:

• Anticipatory planning: in tourism policy, an anticipatory approach seeks to prevent the reproduction of a systemic risk like hyper-tourism in the aftermath of a disruptive event, such as the coronavirus pandemic;
• Community engagement: cultivating a sense of belonging to the local community means embracing an approach to tourism that places community needs at the centre of local policy strategies committed to economic diversification and sustainable urban metabolism;
• Municipal empowerment: community-centred tourism requires a novel institutional strategy centred on municipal power. The local scale is crucial not only from the point of view of societal impact and policy implementation, but also in terms of institutional empowerment of local communities.
   

Final remarks

The abrupt halt to tourism imposed during the pandemic has allowed the public to develop a critical distance from the economic development pattern that we now tend to associate with so-called ‘normality’, including urban tourism – and particularly the platform-mediated hospitality sector.

While assessing the diversity of local realities and points of view on urban tourism, the challenge of the EU Urban Agenda Action is to seize the opportunity, as the tourist sector recovers from the coronavirus crisis, to restart the municipal management of STR under a new light. The aim is to give voice to URBACT and EU UA cities in the shaping of better future regulations for the short-term rentals sector in the EU.

Further reading:

• Register for the URBACT webinar ‘Regulating Short Term Rental Platforms in Cities – Challenges and Solutions of the European Cities’, 9:30-12:30 on 4 November 2021
• How to use data analysis for making tourism more sustainable for cities and communities: the solutions of TOURISM-FRIENDLY CITIES
• Urban lessons from the pandemic, by URBACT expert Ivan Tosics
• EU Urban Agenda Partnership on Culture and Cultural Heritage

Authors: Laura Colini, URBACT Programme Expert, and Ugo Rossi, Grand Sasso Science Institute (IT)

Cover photo by Eugene Kuznetsov on Unsplash

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a "blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all". But implementing the SDGs is a major challenge, requiring new ways of working for governments at all levels.

Cities and municipalities are key actors in this context – not as “mere implementers” of a global agenda set elsewhere, but providing a unique scale at which to tackle global challenges from the bottom up. Their task is to ‘localise’ the SDGs – taking these global objectives and turning them into a local reality.

But how do you localise the SDGs in practice? This is the key question for Global Goals for Cities – a new pilot network launched by URBACT in collaboration with the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR); with Tallinn (EE) as the Lead Partner.

“As cities, we have it within our reach to make our future more resilient and sustainable, and better I believe. It is vital to protect our nature and fight against climate change and biodiversity loss.”

Mihhail Kõlvart, Mayor of Tallinn (EE)

In this article, I set out why localisation of the SDGs is so important, why an URBACT network of cities is well-adapted to addressing the challenges this poses for cities, and what we hope to achieve over the next year and a half of working together. I encourage you to follow us on our journey!

Localising the SDGs – a complex but potentially rewarding challenge for cities

In 2015, cities were officially placed at the heart of the 2030 Agenda through SDG11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. But beyond this, organisations like the OECD and UCLG commonly point out that around 65% of the SDGs’ 169 targets will not be reached without the active involvement and contribution by local and regional governments. There is thus lots to think about in terms of what local governments need to know about the SDGs.

The important role of cities and local governments in achieving the SDGs was also recently highlighted by Ricardo Rio, European Committee of the Regions (CoR) rapporteur and Mayor of the Global Goals for Cities network partner Braga (PT) – stressing the need to put the SDGs back at the heart of the EU narrative for sustainable recovery and climate action.   

Lead Partner city Tallinn (EE) aims to be a green and global city. The city has put strong emphasis on building policy coherence into their main strategy Tallinn 2035. Photo credit: Tiina Erik

Localising the SDGs is a demanding task which implies new ways of working for national governments and local authorities alike.

Notably, achieving them is going to require:

• a shared understanding of key challenges and trade-offs between goals and targets when setting the local SDGs agenda;
• significant ambition on the part of both national and local governments, aiming at transformative actions;
• cross-departmental collaboration and alignment across government levels to achieve policy coherence;
• meaningful engagement of multiple stakeholders in the co-creation of a shared vision and local integrated action plans;
• well-informed citizens and an active civil society to hold their local governments accountable and be able to contribute to achieving long-term goals.

In other words, localising the SDGs will mean breaking away from the status quo, making the 2030 Agenda a shared and transformative mission cutting across the political spectrum and sectors of society.

Why an URBACT network on localising the SDGs?

Given the above considerations, addressing the challenges of localising the SDGs fits well with the URBACT Method, which emphasises integrated approaches to sustainable urban development based on local stakeholder engagement and participation. The steps of the action planning process proposed in the URBACT Toolbox can provide a valuable guide here, as well as the (Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities) RFSC online tool proposed by CEMR, which provide step-by-step guidance for analysing the current situation and defining actions to address the SDGs at the local level.

Building capacity for SDG localisation – from working across departments to engaging local stakeholders and experimenting with local actions – was the driving idea behind the creation of the URBACT ‘Global Goals for Cities’ network, where 19 cities from 19 European countries will work on translating the global 2030 Agenda and SDGs into their local realities in the run-up to 2030. Launched in March 2021, the network will run until the end of 2022, and is likely to bring lots of new insights to the field of SDG localisation from a highly diverse range of urban partners.

Tim Kurzbach, Lord Mayor of Solingen (DE), talking to a group of protesters from the Fridays for the Future movement. Photo credit: Daniela Tobias

When asked about what they would be most interested to learn about with regards to SDGs localisation, the three top themes were: i. stakeholder engagement and awareness-raising; ii. new governance models, and iii. local indicators to monitor progress towards the SDGs. This is not surprising, considering the whole-of-society approach needed to address the 2030 Agenda, while making sure we are on the right track. In the remainder of this article, I briefly touch upon each of those priority areas, to give a teaser for what is coming up over the next months.

New ways to engage with local stakeholders

Stakeholder engagement and awareness raising will be central to mobilising wide support for the SDGs in the partner cities. “We want our citizens to talk about the SDGs like they talk about the weather,” said Cllr. David Gilroy, Chairperson of the Meath County Council (IE) when we met virtually during our network 'Roadshow' in May. “That’s how we’ll know we’ve been successful in our efforts to raise awareness and create lasting change in our community.”

	City officials in Trim (IE) raising awareness on the SDGs during the pandemic. Photo credit: Alan Owens

Yet, the pandemic has made this work even more challenging. City officials have had to quickly pivot and learn how to engage with stakeholders online. Examples of both on- and offline initiatives among network partners include online campaigns like “Christmas SDGs” in Trim (IE), the organisation of a youth “SDGs Hackathon” in Klaipeda (LT) and plans to organise a “Transition Night” in Mouscron (BE). In the next network meeting on 28-29 September 2021, these three cities will join forces to lead the network’s peer learning around awareness raising and citizen engagement.

"One of the key challenges is to explain how the SDGs are relevant to people’s everyday lives. Being part of the network will help us learn from other cities on how they approach stakeholder engagement and awareness raising."

Kamen Dimitrov, local coordinator, Veliki Preslav (BG)

Localising the SDGs as an ‘indivisible whole’ – time to experiment!  

One of the core principles of the 2030 Agenda is the interconnectedness and indivisibility of the SDGs. In other words, the goals are not for ‘cherry-picking’ but make up a holistic framework for transformative action.

In their ‘Zero Carbon Territory’ project, there are many considerations to be done to balance the development of the Urban Community of Rochelle (FR) in a sustainable manner. The SDGs help to bring a holistic vision for the territory.  Photo credit: Frédéric Le Lan

This is also one of the real virtues of using the SDGs framework, as highlighted in the 2020 Sustainable Development report by La Rochelle, the main municipality of the network partner La Rochelle Urban Community, (FR): “It is precisely one of the virtues of the SDGs: to show these salient points and interconnections between all the goals. They also help to realise the closeness between some of them, and the common direction of our efforts”. That is why, when implementing its ambitious ‘Zero Carbon Territory’ project, La Rochelle Urban Community wishes to use the SDGs to bring the holistic perspective.

In Solingen (DE), another network partner, localising the SDGs has meant a new way of working for the municipality. Since the adoption of its Sustainability Strategy in 2018, all City Council decisions must now “pass the test” on whether and how they contribute to the city’s strategic goals, which are contextually linked to the SDGs.

Planning holistically for 17 goals – and 169 targets (!) – is no small feat. It requires learning and experimenting with new approaches like goals-based planning, mission-oriented policy road mapping, portfolio approaches, as well as understanding planetary boundaries, SDGs interactions and spill-over effects. Looking at how cities can “live within” Kate Raworth’s doughnut model – as presented during the 2021 URBACT Festival – can provide useful ideas on how to tackle this complexity.

Other city networks’ experiences can also bring inspiration to rethinking city governance models, like the Urban Commons topic dealt with by the URBACT networks Civic eState or Co4Cities, or the EIT Climate-KIC Healthy, Clean Cities Deep Demonstrations.

Investing in a systemic approach to the SDGs can indeed provide competitive advantage for cities, as pointed out by Anna Lisa Boni, Secretary General of EUROCITIES, during the 4^th OECD Roundtable on Cities and Regions for the SDGs. Madrid is an example of a city that has already started working with the SDGs in a systemic and participatory way, which now helps the city to push for its Covid-19 recovery priorities in alignment with the national government’s recovery plan, as well as with EU agendas and programming.

How will we know if we are on the right track?

Stakeholder engagement and governance models aside, perhaps the most important aspect of SDG localisation is to “walk the talk”.

As Keli Yen, the URBACT Local Group coordinator from Gävle (SE) recently put it: “If we want to confidently claim that we are making good progress on the SDGs, then we need to know both: 1) that we are moving in the right direction; and 2) how much distance remains to reach the goal.”  So how can we do this in practice?

This is a complex issue that has exercised minds in some of the leading knowledge organisations concerned, such as the UN SDSN, the EC Joint Research Centre, the OECD, and UN Habitat. Challenges include how to set relevant and realistic targets for cities – matching the global aspirations of the SDGs – and to find indicators that are measurable at local level. With the support of external ad hoc expertise, the network partners will explore these issues head on as part of the planning process.

When it comes to target setting, this is a both political and scientific matter – and not without some controversy. Key principles to follow include the need to be locally relevant, ambitious enough and – as famously espoused by Greta Thunberg – to “listen to the science”. For example, research from the Stockholm Resilience Centre set out the need (in 2018) to halve emissions every decade starting from 2020 – a target which is far being from on track in 2021.

To showcase commitment and progress, a growing number of cities actively working on the SDGs are carrying out so-called Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs), which reports on actions taken to reach the SDGs. In the kick-off survey for the network, 17 out of the 19 cities ranked VLRs amongst their four highest choices for what they want to learn about during the life of the network.

Whether or not we will see any VLRs materialise during the life of the network, the future targets and actions defined by the partners of the Global Goals for Cities network offer a chance to push for an ambitious agenda across government levels… and with less than nine years until 2030, we have no time to waste!

For further information

• UN Sustainable Development Goals
• URBACT Global Goals for Cities network
• The URBACT Method and URBACT Toolbox
• The Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities online tool proposed by CEMR
• The JRC’s European Handbook for SDG Voluntary Local Reviews
• Towards the Localization of the SDGs. Sustainable and Resilient Recovery Driven by Cities and Territories 5th Report of the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments' to the 2021 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF)
• European Territories Localise the SDGs - Continuity and Change in Times of Covid-19, 2021 study by CEMR, PLATFORMA and UCLG

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!

It is not the latest news to tell that our cities are growing. To put it in figures: population forecasts show an increase of population from 72% to 85% in urban areas in 2050. And cities have seen a 50% faster growth in terms of GDP, and saw an increase in jobs of 7%, in comparison to other areas which have stagnated over the last years. Many cities are busied with developing new residential areas, space for businesses or mixed-use districts. Looking in the back-mirror, cities have not just started their growth periods. The facts presented in the future forecasts base themselves on the steady growth history of the past decades.

Nor is it the latest news that traffic in our cities is growing. And this is only the logical consequence of the growth pathways of population, businesses and new building developments – more people and more opportunities result in more traffic needs. The growing traffic figures have been met by supplying enough space to accommodate those traffic needs for over at least five decades. The most prevalent solution followed the most dominant transport mode, which was and still is car traffic.

The consequence of these developments is more space for motorised traffic – for cars. City development dedicated the largest part of public space to accommodate car traffic, through roads and parking facilities alike. The ruling paradigm for traffic planning was to forecast future traffic figures and to prepare for the steady growth of traffic volumes by constructing infrastructure able to meet these growth figures. Consequently, more and more public space was used to cater the needs of motorised transport mainly for cars, which at the same time increased the attractiveness of car use fostering more car traffic. In the end, supply of public space to meet car traffic growth projections and the connected increase of car traffic formed a self-perpetuating process.

The result is that a high share of public space is dedicated to motorised transport. Roads, parking facilities and other traffic infrastructure for motorised means shape the image of our cities. Other use forms of public space such as areas to meet and linger, to take a stroll or to cycle are rather the exception compared to the overall average public space use. Of course, and luckily, some cities are demonstrating how a different public space use can look like, such as in Danish Copenhagen, Spanish Vitoria-Gasteiz or Italian Bolzano. These and further good practise examples give good reason to engage in the reallocation and redesign of public space in our cities.

Is the solution easy and at hand? The argumentation of growth of cities and their traffic volumes alongside the knowledge on past and recent public space use might create the image that both, challenges and solutions are known. But in fact, our cities’ realities are much more diverse and complex to apply a one-fits-all solution.
Differences start with the nature of growth by e.g. population groups, need to face the existence of shrinking cities, have to deal with demands on public space from various sectors, like industry, businesses, retailers, tourism, children, seniors, gender aspects, education, sports, leisure activities, greening and more.

Example from Arad (RO) on traffic loaded streets and pedestrianised solutions

The Space4People approach. Our network is approaching the challenge of public space use from the perspective of its largest “user” – transport. We aim to work for a more fair and valuable use of public space for cities and their stakeholders and inhabitants; striving to contribute to the overall goal of more liveable cities – with people at the centre of future developments.

By this, we are challenging the current “inhuman” main use of public space by transport focusing rather on vehicles than on people’s needs. Among the many aspects connected to urban transport, we chose to focus on three areas where we see most potential, due to their effectiveness and the fact that these potentials have been neglected or underused so far. Our focus areas are:

• Walking: to assess and improve quality and quantity of public space dedicated to pedestrian movement and pedestrianised areas
• Parking: to increase parking management options for higher efficiency of public space use by parking, to re-allocate parking space to more valuable use forms of public space and to use supply of parking and connected conditions as a steering element for transport mode choices
• Intermodal hubs: to improve user experiences at focal transport locations such as public transport interchanges and exploit their potential to work as centres of city development uniting more than just transport functions

Clearly, our selling point is the efficient use of the scarce resource public space. We aim to create a more liveable transport reality by steering modal choices in favour of active modes and reducing the needed space for transport. This tackles the current use forms like infrastructure supply by shifting its purpose to the actual user needs. Space4People consequently puts the diverse user perspectives and stakeholder views at the centre of work, which is an at least twofold challenge: to accommodate the needs of underrepresented population groups in decision making such as seniors, children and youth of women as well as working with the difference in perception of what people want against others’ - like decision makers’ -  views on this.

Reasons for these two aspects are easy to recognise. To quote Jane Jacobs, “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” Jane Jacobs 1916 – 2016, American Canadian journalist, author and activist.

ULG meeting of stakeholders in Serres (EL)

Perception on the other hand can be a trigger for better planning in the case of better understanding of each other, but otherwise as well source for misinterpretation and wrong-guided albeit well-intended actions. The following example from German Leipzig showcases the need to work on perception: taking the opinions of citizens to investing in public transport or car transport, actual opinion and the perception of stakeholders vary greatly (compare illustration below).

Source: Socialdata

Within Space4People, we work with 10 cities and their different challenges:

• How to push sustainable modal choices connected to the inner-city area to mitigate high emission loads and improve high quality public space in Bielefeld (DE)?
• How to meet the reality of a large and disperse municipal area promoting walkability and safeguarding accessibility for locals and tourism at the same time in Guía de Isora (ES)?
• How to cater the needs of locals and tourism connected to accessibility, quality of stay and the topographical challenges at hand in Nazaré (PT)?
• How to design attractive public spaces for creating civic pride in a shrinking town facing a cross-border twinning city reality and the challenge of historical monument protection in Valga (EE)?
• How to deal with the overuse of existing parking spaces and the dominance of car traffic infrastructure in the city centre and provide more pedestrian spaces for people at the same time in Arad (RO)?
• How to push for higher attractiveness of the inner-city area facing major traffic volumes at peak hours, different perceptions of stakeholders as well as overcoming the natural and artificial divide in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (FR)?
• How to cater for the needs of all population groups in walking infrastructure and to supply attractive public spaces facing diverse current use forms in Serres (EL)?
• How to solve the challenge of heavily undersupplied parking options in residential areas leading to misuse of public space as well as high traffic volumes and parking loads at central points of interest in Panevėžys (LT)?
• How to solve the conflicts of public space use between transport modes and other use forms in the central area of Turku (FI) and safeguarding good pedestrian connections crossing major natural and artificial barriers?
• How to improve pedestrian conditions facing competing demands from private traffic and last mile deliveries connected to the perception of people that walking is unpleasant and unsafe in Badalona (ES)?

Example on road space design in Serres (EL)

Taken the challenges at hand from there, we aim to provide fitting solutions for each city by exploiting our own knowledge and experiences and investigating what to learn from examples of other cities and how to apply them in our diverse realities. Possible solutions are at hand, such as Arad delivering first ideas on how to solve the parking challenges of Panevėžys in higher density residential areas or Bielefeld demonstrating inclusive design of walking infrastructure that might be of value for Serres. We are excited to dive into the challenge of planning for better public space – a space for people.

Ten cities have embarked on a new journey to work together on promoting a sustainable impact of tourism into integrated urban development in the URBACT Tourism-friendly cities Action Planning Network. Championing one of the world’s most hot topics, the city of Genoa (IT) has the challenging role of leading this new URBACT network that seeks to harmonize the realities experienced by residents, local authorities, tourism industry and tourists. The ten partners – Genoa (lead partner), Braga (PT), Caceres (ES), Druskininkai (LT), Dubrovnik Development Agency (HR), Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council (IE), Krakow (PL), Rovaniemi (FI), Utrecht (NL) and Venice (IT) – will explore innovative governance and action models to capture the social, environmental and economic dimensions of tourism.

Fausto Cavanna, the owner of the restaurant La Taverna di Colombo in Genoa (Italy) explaining to the Tourism-friendly cities network his aspirations for sustainable tourism. 

Why tourism?

Tourism industry is one of the most important of our era. Tourism, travels and related sectors account for 10,3% of GDP in EU and 11,7% of total employment: at global level, Europe has been hit by the second biggest increase, with 671.1 million international arrivals last year (51% the number of international tourist arrivals at global level), an eight per cent increase year-on-year. A long-term study by the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) forecasts a growth in European tourism, to an estimated 744 million tourists (+1.8%), or 41.1% of the global market, over the period to 2030.

However, this economic outlook does not capture the complexity of the effects that the tourism production system imposes to city life. Rising housing prices, congestion, little regulation power over tech-enabled companies and platforms active at global level on sectors as hospitality and transport, are just some of the consequences that are currently changing neighbourhood life (and city finances) in urban areas all around Europe.

And while the devil is in the details, so is also the solution. Balancing the importance of tourism for local economies with temporary and permanent residents wellbeing, harmonizing present needs with future environmental concerns, adjusting the outdated instruments of local administrations with fast changing business models, requires collective answers and actions.

To do this, the network will employ the URBACT method, taking an integrated and participative approach to urban challenges with a focus on transnational exchange and learning. Peer exchange and co-learning on the network level will be translated into integrated action plans on the local level and contribute to capacity building of key local stakeholders.

The URBACT Tourism-friendly cities Network kick off meeting on 26 & 27 September 2019 in Genoa, Italy.

What exactly is a tourism-friendly city?

Was the question the lead partner Genoa debated with the prospective network partners when they were preparing the application for the last open call of URBACT’s Action Planning Networks. The answer is in the line that local community and tourists should work together for urban sustainability. The city is not something to be taken for granted, a service that somebody is entitled to for paying taxes or a visiting fee. It is a fragile ecosystem, where each stakeholder needs to become aware to the effects’ of each other actions. This is why, while the network is recognizing the key economic importance of tourism, but it is also exploring key questions of the kind of growth that each city aspires to. Rather than pointing a finger on the negative consequences of tourism, the network wants to make the industry and tourists part of the co-design of solutions, alongside residents and local authorities.

Meeting Fairbnb representatives on September 30^th 2019 in Venice, as part of mapping effort of new stakeholders that propose alternative models supporting sustainable tourism.

A sense of urgency to act

One key takeaway from the network’s kick-off meeting in Genoa on 26 & 27 September 2019 was the urgency experienced by each city partner to find a way forward to steward sustainable tourism development at local level. There was also a common aspiration that this current URBACT project could serve as the beginning of a new way of working together at local level, perhaps with the URBACT Local Groups (ULG) becoming a local observatory for monitoring progress on the future actions plans and global practices.

The first step in this process was to analyse what each partner city defined as its most pressing challenge related to sustainable tourism. During the kick-off meeting, the partners used a pitching arena designed for the event to start reflecting on existing implementations plans, lessons learned, aspirations, political commitment and available local resources related to their local realities.  All these elements will be explored in more detail during the partner visits over the coming five months.

We are looking forward to our journey ahead! You can keep up with our network’s and URBACT’s work on sustainable tourism by following the hashtags #sustainabletourism and #tfcities and by subscribing to URBACT’s newsletter.