The town of Bram, in the Aude department of the south of France, has set up the “Bram by bike” project, in order to develop active mobility through new infrastructures, to raise awareness for all ages, namely the young.
For example, the town has set up new equipment designed to teach bike-riding and road safety to our young citizens. This fun and secure area stretches over 500m2, allowing users to follow a route while sharing public space!
This biking project also includes other measures, such as:
A free bike for all children in their 10th year.
The construction of bike routes connecting the town’s different hubs of activity and the speed limit reduced to 30km/h throughout the whole town.
Bike repair points and workshops.
The rollout of biking etiquette and back-in-the-saddle workshops.
Setting up rental of electric bikes for senior citizens.
The transformation of the streams, the promotion of activities for urban and fluvial renaturalisation and mitigating flood risks, increasing the green structure and the connectivity of green and blue spaces.
The aim of our project is transform the streams into a large linear green corridor that crosses the city from North to South. The objectives are to restore the riverbed, taking into account the risks of flooding and increasing biodiversity; connect streams with peri-urban environments; reduce waterproofing in canalized sections of the stream; implant native species to improve air quality; reduce the barrier effect between neighborhoods; and encourage the participatory process in residential and productive areas adjacent to the riverbed.
The project will tackle the specific challenge raised by the thematic partnership Culture & Cultural Heritage (CCH) of the Urban Agenda for the European Union within the Action 10 “Integrated approach to Dissonant Heritage” (DH). This common EU heritage has been defined by historians, architects and heritage specialists as a “dissonant” one, as it intrinsically conveys the link between the physical elements (buildings, streets, squares, neighbourhoods etc) and the political, historical context and values that produced them in the past. The DH is linked to more or less known and recognized historical events, in some cases linked to a complex and controversial past, which often generates conflicts or claims by different social groups.
The Action Planning Network will face the specific challenge of moving from a research and cultural approach to a concrete approach by building a co-governance process with the local community, addressing the new challenges of EU society related, first of all, to the construction mechanisms of collective memory of the 20th century. Sustainable management of DH in Europe is above all an opportunity to activate urban community labs around the theme of EU identity and common values, using history as a tool for orienting people in the present and imagining the future. An innovative and creative approach to DH will develop processes of, for example, formal and informal education, democracy building and sustainable cultural tourism.
AR.C.H.ETHICS will use a multiperspective approach to make the DH open and accessible to all people. For example, in order to plan a cultural project of adaptive reuse of DH, it can be used either the gaze of a woman, a young migrant, an elderly person, or a tourist. EU cities will become living labs for co-designing, interpreting, managing and exploiting this complexity within urban development policies
AR.C.H.ETHICS is looking for ONE city partner to close the APN composition, from IN TRANSITION or LESS DEVELOPED REGION, small or medium-sized city, better from Portugal, Spain or France (for reasons of geographical balance of the project). Please send urgently your expression of interest!
Founded in 1986, Barcelona Activa is the local development agency of the city council of Barcelona. Its mission is to promote the city's economic competitiveness by boosting quality employment and supporting entrepreneurship and SMEs from an economic, social and environmental perspective.
Short summary:
The project aims at backing the cities’ centers and districts revitalisation by supporting the proximity and social economy with public local policies as a mean to boost economic development and social cohesion.
Political challenge:
City centres face long-term issues that need multidisciplinary and sustained solutions. The radical boost of the e-commerce, the building of huge shopping malls in the cities’ surroundings but also the recent pandemic and successive lockdowns have accelerated a phenomenon shared by different cities that are losing their traditional vitality and proximity economic fabric.
This phenomenon has several disfunctions, to name only a few of them:
-Loss of jobs
-Loss of traditional commences and heritage
-Increasing of the level of insecurity
-Increasing of the inequalities amongst districts
-Lack of services in cities’ centers,
Work hypothesis:
One of the elements that may contribute to revert this phenomenon is the local and proximity economy.
The proximity economy, according to the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs DG of the European Commission, consists of local and short value chains, local production and consumption, human-centric city models and social economy business models. One characteristic vision for the proximity economy is the '15-minute city', where everything a citizen needs is within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.
The benefits of the proximity economy have social, economic development and urban axis.
Integrated Action Plans focus:
The members of the consortium will have the opportunity to work on an Integrated Action plans to assess the economic development tools and policies that have been displayed up to now and to build an integrated action plan to tackle their economic development plan from a holistic perspective to revitalise the centers of their cities. These Integrated Action plan will start with an analysis of the existing policies and tools and eventually develop new ones to better boost the economic fabric of the city centers.
Sharing Urban Solutions Towards Sustainable Mobility for ALL
CONCEPT FRAMEWORK:
Sustainable mobility measures implementation is a challenging and crucial issue in order to transform urban areas into liveable cities for all. Even more is fundamental to ensure to the most vulnerable groups (children, elders, disabled people, disadvantaged groups, etc.) targeted solutions allowing accessibility and transport facilities for all the major daily needs and activities.
Since the publication of the White Paper[1] by the European Commission in 2011 [COM (2011)144 final] and the following uptake of a new paradigm of sustainable urban mobility planning (SUMP[2]) in EU [COM (2013) 913 final – Annex 1], social issues and equity on urban mobility and transport emerging as relevant priorities year after year, as much as the environmental impact of traffic pollution. EU and Member States Policies for urban mobility increasingly focus on social and equity issues, and also in transport policy evaluation play a relevant role to set up “minimum standard of accessibility to key destinations and the extent to which these policies respect individuals’ rights and prioritise disadvantaged groups, reduce inequalities of opportunities, and mitigate transport externalities[3]”. (Pereira et al., 2017)
In the last years several policies and practices have been developed on these specific issues at EU level: e.g. INCLUSION project[4] (H2020), Cities-4-People[5], TUCTE18[6] initiative in Brussels, TUMI[7] in Germany, InnovaSUMP[8] within the Interreg EUROPE approved projects, just to share some relevant examples. At the same time the most important EU Mobility and Transport networks have been implemented and spread several initiatives on equity and mobility for all: e.g. “Cities for everyone[9]” within CIVITAS, POLIS network with the webinar series of “Mobilising Mobility[10]” and the ACCESS working group[11], etc. Above all, lot of cities and local communities started to testing and experiencing concrete solutions based on “mobility for all” principles in their urban areas and neighbourhoods. In December 2022, the EU Commission launched the new “Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy[12]” [COM (2020) 789 final]: on this communication the specific Flagship 9 is focused on “MAKING MOBILITY FAIR AND JUST FOR ALL”, recommending among the others, these important policy principles: “The economic shock has highlighted the need for affordable, accessible and fair mobility for passengers and other users of transport services. Indeed, whereas the single market in transport has increased connectivity, mobility remains expensive for people with low disposable income, and not sufficiently accessible for people with disabilities or reduced mobility, and those with low IT-literacy. In rural, peripheral and remote areas, including the outermost regions and islands, improved public transport links will be essential to guarantee unhindered access to mobility for all. [88] (…) The Commission will therefore ensure that possibilities under the just transition mechanism are fully explored to make this new mobility affordable and accessible in all regions and for all passengers including those with disabilities and reduced mobility [89][13]”
PROJECT IDEA
Based on this specific framework of policies and practices, City of Ferrara (EU policies and projects dept.) has conceived a project idea strictly related to the core focus of “sustainable urban mobility for all” to submit and coordinate on the last call for proposal of the URBACT IV Programme (submission deadline: 31/03/2023 – Terms of References[14]) . The Municipality of Ferrara will take also this opportunity to systemize and sharing within the Urbact project proposal some implementing policies and local projects on this topic: particularly will be considered the initiatives concerning “Implementation of Urban Transformation Agendas for Sustainable Development” related to mobility for all and implemented in the Emilia Romagna Regional Programme 2021-2027, financed by the ESRF on Priority 4 “Attractiveness, Cohesion and Territorial Development”.
The main aim of SMALL project (Sharing Urban Solutions towards Sustainable Mobility for ALL), is to match the 3 most important key-drivers of URBACT IV programme on the topic of Sustainable Urban Mobility (SUM) delivered through the principles of accessibility, equity and fair opportunitiesfor all citizens, starting with the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups: (for
Building up a selected “transnational exchange and learning network to improve the capacity” of a consortium of 8 “European cities” and public bodies to implement and enhancing together SUM policies for children, elders, disabled people, disadvantaged groups, etc.;
Sharing individual strengths (and at the same time improving weaknesses) related to specific sustainable urban mobility actions/experiences for targeted groups of vulnerable people, transferring good practices and lessons learned one each other’s;
Exploiting and disseminating consortium “knowledge and practices” on this SUM topic in order to spread a local, regional and transnational level, enriching EU Urban Initiative and contributing to the Urban Agenda for the EU, adding SUM for All “policies and practices”.
This 3 main key-drivers will be pursued with a common impact strategy targeted on a shared SUM for ALL (S.M.All) Action Plan & learning pilot actions implemented through small scale investment. For these reasons the S.M.ALL Consortium city peers will exchange and test – during the project life cycle – different Mobility for all solutions, just tested in other cities and urban areas. At the same time, they can tailoring different solutions for different urban environments, building up during the project an effective action plan and related tool box, to be transferred and spread at different local levels (small/medium/large cities at different urban mobility local levels).
The SUM for all Measures implemented and exchanged during the S.M.All project will be based and planned on a participatory approach developed with local communities and stakeholders in order to meet the SUMP guidelines (ELTIS – The Urban Mobility Observatory[15]) and at the same time the URBACT Method[16].
The most important output/deliverable will be:
The S.M.ALL Integrated Action Plan & toolbox
(it will provide an integrated action plans focused on Vulnerable Groups Urban Mobility and the results obtained by the Pilot actions implemented at local level, exchanged also through a series of study visits)
Urbact Local Groups – S.M.ALL task force:
the ULG implemented within the project will be tailored on an enlarged committee of city depts., associations, transport providers, social services, all involved on the main targeted vulnerable groups. This in order to propose a model for the Integrated Action Plan.
A better cooperation governance for 2030 – S.M.ALL Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)
(the S.M.ALL MoU will be based on the principle to enlarge the URBACT Network of cities also beyond the project, each city will engage another additional city in order to subscrive a S.M.ALL for 2030 Mobility for All improvement.
CONSORTIUM BUILDING PROCESS
The Consortium building process will be based on develop integrated solutions on the common urban challenge of sustainable urban mobility measures for all.
The consortium cities and other eligible bodies should provide a minum of a Pilot Experience oin sustainable mobility for Vulnerable Groups, exchanging implementation and participatory practices with the other partners of the S.M.ALL Consortium)
The City of Ferrara (Lead Partner) will provide SUM for all experiences, on children initiatives and disabled people, adding the additional issue to enhance sustainable mobility measures in order to improve connections and accessibility between peripheries/suburbs and city centre.
[16] URBACT ToR, Ch. 1.3, p.5 “by applying the URBACT Method cities can develop a participatory culture in policy-making which includes all relevant stakeholders and increases transparency and opportunities for successful implementation” https://urbact.eu/sites/default/files/2023-01/apntor.pdf
Community Urban Gardens are spaces that can be used by everyone. They have a twofold value: on the one hand they may regenerate abandoned urban areas and, on the other hand, they stimulate the social activism. Spaces where people meet and learn to share, establishing their own rules and functioning, self-determining and self-defining themselves as part of a community. It is not only a way of taking care of the environment, but also and above all a space for welcoming and valuing diversity, where active listening and collaboration make the Community Urban Garden a permanent laboratory for experimenting and exchanging ideas and knowledge, for doing things together. It is closely linked to its territory and its community, putting them in value. Community Urban Gardens are consequently considered as commons.
The project proposal GarLIC develops the steps that should be implemented when having active community urban gardens already in place. Its main goals are: 1- identify, measure and evaluate outcomes and impacts; 2- create systemic interactions between community urban gardens of the same city with other socio-cultural actors; and 3- enforcing sustainable opportunities between urban gardens, urban agriculture and citizens.
Siena launches this proposal together with Roma looking for partners ONLY among cities from less developed and transition regions that have active community urban gardens already in place.
Since 2012, 14 EU projects (LPP, ENPI, Erasmus+, URBACT, IURC, EuropeAid,) have focused on urban community garden’s policies, among which the URBACT III initiative RU:RBAN (led by the City of Roma) that had three main aims related to start and manage community urban gardens: 1- governance; 2- capacity building; and 3- training. This last element focused on the idea of Gardeniser (Garden+Organiser), highlighting the function of facilitating social interaction, both inside and outside the Community Urban Garden, making it a hub for public policies related to sustainability (both environmental and social).
Community Urban Gardens’ local impact may become systemic when they act in network and the garden project takes into account also general public policies related to the city. The social impact of Community Urban Gardens may refer to: 1- urban decorum; 2- environment; 3- economy; 4- society; 5- education; and 6- personal well-being.
While the city of Roma saw Community Urban Gardens gathering into a forum named “Orti in Comune”, the city of Siena developed several Community Urban Gardens thanks to the support of the regional initiative “100.000 Orti in Toscana”, and also took part in the trainings promoted by Gardeniser European projects. It can therefore also count on a city network of urban gardens that will soon expand to a regional level.
The two cities have therefore decided to launch a joint initiative within the Urbact IV programme and to jointly focus their efforts on building on what they have been achieved so far in order to reach new goals. With the help of the civil society that is involved in urban community gardens, the common need of the two Italian cities is to create a European network of cities that can work together on studying how to measure and maximise the potential of Community Urban Gardens as a sustainable measure related to public policies.
The project proposal GarLIC is looking for city partners that already have Community Urban Gardens activated, that are interested to: 1- study and define a common grid of impacts of Community Urban Gardens at the local level; 2- experiment a training system (Gardeniser GOV) addressed to public officers dealing with community gardens, aimed at providing supportive governance; 3- experiment a training system (Gardeniser EDU) addressed to teachers and school headmasters, aimed at considering community gardens as learning spaces in the city.
The project plan will include several steps, the first of which will be an intensive training about the best practices developed by EU projects, starting from RU:RBAN and Gardeniser, including updated exchanges of experiences. This revision will be useful to consolidate shared bases. During the project the network will focus jointly on the innovative goals of the project: 1- outcomes and impacts; 2- community gardens and other socio cultural actors; and 3- opportunities for sustainability.
Local environmental and socio educational actors will be the main targets of the project, both from public and third sector entities, taking part as stakeholders in the ULG (Urbact Local Group) and in the transnational meetings, feeding the reflection and the exchanges among partner cities.
Food connects people, it can nourish connections between citizens. Many small- and medium sized cities face challenges of people feeling less connected to the city they live in then before. Connecting citizens, business, education and visitors through a common love for food allows to address many challenges that these cities face.
The partners approach socio-environmental challenges through a ESG (environmental, social, governance) framework focused on food. The ESG framework allows to bring a private sector concept and its principles into the public sector, strengthening the impact through using municipal government roles.[1]
Environmental
A municipal role can be to adopt supply chain management policies - local consumption and sustainable production choices: farm to fork. (GREEN)
Circular approaches to food waste and production/packaging & transport.
Social
The partners aim for healthy affordable and accessible food for all citizens (inclusivity of vulnerable groups).
The partners aim to develop an action plan where the policy topic food allows to connect people. The action plans that will be developed are food strategies as a basis for social and economic cohesion.
Food education allows to connect young students with job perspectives in the sector, ensuring future skilled labour and quality jobs in the city/area. Specific focus will be set on encouraging girls to take up an education in the food processing and agricultural sector. (GENDER)
Governance
An important role of city governments is facilitating partnerships between the actors within the city. This role can be described as ecosystem governance.
This includes economic connections and the stimulation of development and innovation through connecting stakeholders of the quadruple helix. The economic component includes the stimulation of smart and digital solutions in the food production and processing sector (integration of AI/robotics/...) and the translation of these new techniques into the educational system. (DIGITAL)
SHARED GREEN INFRASTRUCTURES THROUGH AN INTEGRATED ECOSYSTEM-BASED APPROACH IN URBAN AREAS- IMPLEMENTING A PLACE BESED APPROACH TO ENHANCE URBAN FORESTRY
As cities continue to expand and change in size and shape, there is a need to protect, restore, design urban ecosystems and make this available for all citizens.
Identify the potential, which urban green infrastructure can offer to increase the resilience of cities to the impacts of climate change, to enhance well-being and quality of life of citizens, and to conserve and manage urban nature and biodiversity together with the community.
Cities are "hotspots" (i.e., a significant reservoir) of biodiversity because of their diverse structure and meso- and micro-climatic characteristics. In general, all forms of urban biodiversity can be subject to conservation and management that can range from the preservation of natural fragments and traditional cultural landscapes to designed parks and gardens to urban-industrial nature. These urban spaces remain under high pressure from construction activities in the process of re-densification.
In order to reach a real green transition we need to explore and adapt the human-centred approach. This approach aimed and still aims to highlight the multiple benefits that humans in general but urban citizens in this case can gain from ecosystems, while highlighting the value and cost-effectiveness compared to conventional technical solutions.
One of the main areas to which urban ecosystem services can be linked is climate change adaptation. Ecosystem-based approaches are increasingly being used to increase the resilience of the urban fabric where the intention behind Nature-Based Solutions (NBS- solutions) is based on the certainty that old-style planning, including soil sealing and ecosystem destruction, has increased the vulnerability of cities to hazards and made them more vulnerable to the effects of events that can no longer be called extraordinary.
Well-being and quality of life are increasingly recognized and sometimes highly valued not only by local governments but also by citizens. Human well-being is increasingly becoming a primary goal of urban sustainability projects, and green spaces play an important role in terms of increasing quality of life.
In addition to the personal health benefits in terms of well-being, urban green space is also a factor in improving the attractiveness of cities competing for specialists and young talent, and this is evidenced by the economic and social growth of those cities that have focused on improving the quality of green areas in the past and are still investing significant amounts of money on large-scale projects.
Since cities are social-ecological systems with the highest density of human population interacting with various types of ecosystems, ranging from natural fragments to new urban ecosystems in relatively small areas, green spaces are crucial for environmental education and knowledge transfer about ecological processes.
On the contrary, to seek sustainable pathways, current developments and different approaches need to be explored together with the communities. The strategic goal is a long-term appreciation of the potential and greater consideration of urban green spaces as nature-based solutions in city planning and development.
Social inclusion in the City of Novi Sad is highly developed through inter-sectoral cooperation of relevant institutions and actors, with the support of the City of Novi Sad, we also believe that there are always opportunities for improvement in order to include and meet the needs of users.
The City Administration for Social and Child Protection, performs tasks related to: provision of social protection services such as daily services in the community, support services for independent living, advisory-therapeutic and social-educational services and accommodation services; provision of other services that support the user's stay in the family and immediate environment, as well as other types of support necessary for the user's active and independent life in society; providing material support in the form of financial assistance, reimbursement of expenses and other types of material assistance; determination of higher standards for providing social protection services than the standards prescribed by the minister responsible for social protection; adoption of the program for the improvement of social protection in the City and ensuring its implementation; monitoring and planning the development of activities and providing funds to meet needs in the field of social and child protection; providing support to programs of associations of interest to the City that contribute to the development of innovative services, improvement of existing services or influence greater inclusion of users in the existing social protection system and monitoring their implementation; providing support to programs of the Red Cross of Novi Sad aimed at alleviating the poverty of socially vulnerable citizens, and monitoring their implementation; ensuring the right to financial support for families with children, such as free meals for children in elementary schools, financial support for families with children of preschool age enrolled in a preschool institution founded by another legal entity and natural person, and other types of financial support for families with children; professional and administrative-technical tasks for the needs of the work of the Interdepartmental Commission for assessing the needs for providing additional educational, health and social support to children, students and adults; determining the fulfillment of the conditions for exercising rights in the field of social protection in accordance with republican and provincial regulations, that is, acts of other city administrations; promoting volunteering and establishing a network of volunteers in the field of social protection. The City Administration carries out entrusted professional and organizational work related to the provision of assistance to refugees, exiles and displaced persons, and returnees from abroad with the aim of their reintegration, by ensuring the participation of the City in the financing of programs in cooperation with the Commissariat for Refugees and Migration of the Republic of Serbia and work for the needs of the professional work body formed by the City Council in accordance with the law.
The City Administration for Social and Child Protection also realizes projects from foreign donations in order to gain experience and provide additional funds for inclusion and improving the quality of life of users. Previous projects have been related to the promotion of supportive parenting, the inclusion of Roma population, people with disabilities, and some of the donors are the EU through IPA funds, GIZ, UNICEF, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and others.
We are looking for leading partner in a collaboration aimed to renovate abandoned public spaces in order to transform them into green areas providing new services and opportunities to improve people's quality of life. Our aim is to regenerate an old defunctionalized civic hall located in Altino, a fraction of Quarto d'Altino, a Municipality of the Città Metropolitana di Venezia.
Once Altinum was an important ancient Roman town, the ancestor of Venice. Now it is a small country village, facing the venetian lagoon, and built over a relevant, now buried, archaeological area. Altino nowaday has a small residual number of inhabitants, however this fascinating place is also characterized not only by an important archaeological national museum, but also by relevant environmental, naturalistic and landscape values. The lagoon water border of Altino is also part of the UNESCO site of the Venetian Lagoon. Here we wish to transform the old civic hall into a modern and advanced hub to provide new facilities letting people enjoy natural beauties, outdoor activities and cultural opportunities.
By involving the community we wish both to protect the environment and to promote its sustainable economic develop by facilitating:
- access to the nearby rivers and channels surrounding Altino and in general to the waterways of and near the Venetian Lagoon.
- access to the cycle routes network surrounding and passing though the village and long the nearby channels and rivers
- creating a green area reconstructing a small portion of the ancient Lowland Forest which covered the Pianura Padana in ancient times
- creating a Land-Art place
- creating a camper area
- creating cultural events according with local volunteer organizations
