Cities that suffer from congestion, emission loads, social exclusion and, lastly decrease of the quality of life, have gathered in this Action Planning network. The road they have taken to tackle these challenges was the local adoption of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP), a concept for mobility planning that revolutionises traditional planning structures by placing people’s needs, integrated thinking and sustainablility at the centre of future developments. By sharing and addressing challenges of their mobility reality, the cities created a common vision towards identifying suitable measures and actions for the coming years and improving the competencies of all involved stakeholders.
Co-productive development of sustainable urban mobility plans
Becoming more resilient means that a city strives to enhance its ability to bounce back and grow even stronger and better in the face of the chronic stresses and acute shocks. As such, city resilience is a continuous challenge for individuals, communities, institutions, businesses and infrastructure systems to address current trends and future transitions. This Action Planning network looked at the challenges of achieving resilience in and of our cities in a comprehensive and holistic way, by applying the lessons from the innovative governance approach of Transition Management. This approach is a process-oriented and participatory steering that enables social learning through iterations between collective vision development and experimenting.
The focus of this Action Planning network was less about technology solutions per se, but more about governance structures, process and business models. The partner cities are specifically worked together to: develop models of how organisations can adapt their structures to deliver smart cities; effectively finance smart solutions and creating new ways of understanding value with co-investment strategies; develop and support innovation ecosystems within cities; explore the role of regulations and incentives, e.g. the carrot and stick approach; better understand how data integration and urban data platforms can support the smart city.
Cities, people and the promotion of smart, sustainable development
The cities from this network searched for a solution to the following challenge: how can we make existing 20th century urban tissue attractive and qualitative again? How can we add a different urban layer? For the past two decades, urban development and planning practice in European cities and regions have focused on the renewal of metropolitan cores and historic inner cities. This has resulted in numerous success stories, but the wave of urban renewal in centres has generally coincided with strong population growth and demographic changes. Many inner cities have reached their peak in terms of density, population and mobility. At the same time most of the housing in 20th century (sub)urban areas are in need of renovation. The next logical step is a combined solution to these issues by reconverting this areas, to create a more sustainable and attractive environment.
This Transfer network learned from the good practice of the Riga NGO House, which was opened in 2013, in line with the wishes of residents and civil society actors, to support NGOs and to increase citizen awareness of local affairs and participation in municipality-related activities. Set in a refurbished school building, the NGO House offers resources for NGO capacity building, exchange of information, experience and best practices, networking and leadership training. It promotes society integration, active social inclusion and citizen's participation.
The ALT/BAU Transfer Network focuses on alternative strategies in central and historic districts of European cities to activate unused and decaying housing stock resulting from demographic, economic and social change. Based on the experiences from Chemnitz’ URBACT Good Practice “Housing Agency for Shrinking Cities” (Agentur StadtWohnen Chemnitz), the network transfers experiences that proved successful to proactively connect administrations, owners, investors and users to initiate sustainable and resource saving development.
BEE PATH Good Practice logic is very simple - bees are the best indicator of healthy environment! BeePathNet Transfer network aims to up-grade and transfer BEE PATH concept, solutions and results from Ljubljana to 5 other EU Cities. It will address urban environmental, biodiversity and food self-sufficiency challenges linked to urban beekeeping through integrated and participative approaches, build key stakeholders’ capacity to influence relevant policies, develop and implement efficient solutions.
BEE PATH good practice logic is very simple - bees are the best indicator of healthy environment! BeePathNet-Expanded project will widen the network of “bee-friendly cities” based on BeePathNet project transfer success. It will address urban environmental, biodiversity and food self-sufficiency
FEBRUARY / "Deep dive into the Piraeus BlueGrowth Initiative" meeting / Kick-off Phase 2 Piraeus, Greece 26-28 Feb 2019
AUGUST / 1st BluAct partners meeting Phase 1 / Piraeus, Greece 25-26 Aug 2018
MAY / "Preparing a Blue Economy Competition" meeting / Mataro, Spain 8-10 May 2019
SEPTEMBER / "Incubation of Blue Economy Startups" meeting / Ostend, Belgium 17-19 Sep 2019
JULY / "Blue Entrepreneurship Competition in a Flowchart" meeting / Galati, Romania 18 July 2019
SEPTEMBER / #SeaZone Blue Entrepreneurship Competition is launched! / Ostend, Belgium 9 Sep 2019
OCTOBER / Burgas Hackathon attracts 60 participants and generates 20 Blue Economy project ideas / Burgas, Bulgaria 15 Oct 2019
JULY / BluAct Salerno is up and running, the first Blue Entrepreneurship competition of BluAct is now reality! / Salerno, Italy 25 Jul 2019
DECEMBER / Salerno organized a successful Hackathon / Salerno, Italy 5-6 Dec 2019
JANUARY / Transnational BluAct Meeting about "Celebrating the success of a Blue Entrepreneurship competition" and Project Mid-term Review / Matosinhos Portugal 27-29 Jan 2020
OCTOBER / Danube Growth Initiative is launched! / Galati, Romania 15 Oct 2019
MARCH / BluAct Matosinhos Startup Demo Day / Matosinhos Portugal 2 Mar 2020
DECEMBER / Galati organized a successful Hackathon / Galati, Romania 20 Dec 2019
JUNE / "Covid can't stop us!" Partners decided that the upcoming Burgas TNM will be substituted by 5 webinars / online 4 June 2020
JUNE / Bluact Salerno Awards Demo Day - 10 winners / Salerno, Italy 5 June 2020
JUNE / Mataro Premis Bluact Awards Demo Day / Mataro, Spain 22 Jun 2020
JULY / The winners of Mataró BluAct Awards, started attending the incubation program at TecnoCampus / Mataro, Spain 3 Jul 2020
SEPTEMBER / Preparation Workshop at BlueLab / Piraeus, Greece, 4 Sep 2020
SEPTEMBER / Blue Growth Piraeus Demo Day - 50 participants - 1400 online viewers / Uni of Piraeus, Greece, 18 Sep 2020
NOVEMBER / Burgas BlueS Camp with 9 blue economy ideas prepared for the upcoming Demo Day / Burgas, Bulgaria 21 Nov 2020
MAY / Final Event / 27 and 28 May / HYBRID (online + 7 venues)
MAY / Ostend SeaZone Competition / Ostend, Belgium, 19 May 2021
BluAct is a Transfer network of 7 European port cities including Piraeus, Mataro, Ostend, Galati, Matosinhos, Burgas and Salerno aiming to share good practices in Blue Economy entrepreneurship. The project follows the success of Piraeus’ Blue Growth Initiative, an entrepreneurship competition that offers incubation services to local businesses boosting innovation and job creation. Through an approach of creating Urbact Local Support Groups and engaging local stakeholders and other interested parties, with the ultimate aim of starting up the blue economy, BluAct aims to deliver far reaching results in the respective partner cities.
Phase 2: Transfer Learning Period. Experiential Learning Stage. Transnational meetings: Antwerp, Suceava, Sassari and Clermont-Ferrand
Phase 1: Kick-off meeting: Jurmala and Transnational Conference: Gijón
Phase 2: Transfer Learning Period. Reflective Learning Stage.
Phase 2: Sharing Period. Contextual Support for Learning. Transnational Meeting: Jurmala. Exchange and Learning Seminar: Aveiro and Final Conference: Gijón
CARD4ALL is a Transfer network focused on the implementation of innovative services and technologies through a Citizen Card System. Cities can gather information to improve their services and use it for participative processes. It can be applied to promote social inclusion, local trade, urban mobility and sustainable living, thus creating a Smart City with Smart Citizens. The technology used allows the transferability and replication in different contexts.
The Civic eState network worked on new models of urban co-governance based on the commons. Two years of EU cooperation for promoting urban co-governance and experimenting public-community partnerships to enable inhabitants and local communities constitutional rights to self-organize and collectively act for the urban commons. The network outputs aim at guaranteeing the collective enjoyment as well as collective management of urban essential facilities, to secure fair and open access, participatory decision-making, sustainability and preservation for the benefit of future generations.