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.

Virginie CROCHARD

European diversity in administration standarts and languages doesn't facilitate a cross continental approach for innovation on sustainable solutions.

Our intention is to develop a practical approach to share a universal framework to measure effectiveness of sustainable solutions.

Because we must accelerate the transition, find the best tools and replicate

DELATTE SYLVIE

Society, and in particular urban areas have been strongly challenged these last years.

On the one hand, the different crises have sent out even stronger alarm signals as regards to the environment, social inclusion, equality, and the human behavior urgent need to radically change in favor of local habits…

On the other hand, these disruptions have also been beneficial as they have enhanced the resilience of cities and shown some alternative existed. In this framework, urban policies have proven key to managing the crisis in the short, medium and long runs: deploying defensive tools (short run) to protect citizens, offensive tools to adapt the changes (medium run), and long-term policies to enable a stable normalization of living conditions.

One of the topics which has arisen is the relation between city centres and the outskirts. It encompasses a number of fields necessitating a vision and a strategic planning in terms of location of retail, urban mobility, public spaces with the underlying question: what makes a centrality attractive to users?

Cities@Heart aims at gathering European partners to reflect on these topics with the following goals :

·       Assess the impact of local urban policies through a monitoring tool adapted to each territory

·      Share good practices related to the governance of the city centres (public & private centers)

·       Measure the attractivity of city centres from a user point of view 

We are looking in particular for cities from transition and less developed regions.

Do not hesitate to reach us for more information!

Leonie YANG

Est Ensemble Grand Paris is an urban local authority gathering 9 cities in the north-eastern suburb of Paris and more than 400 000 inhabitants. 180 000 Est Ensemble inhabitants live within 500 meters of a highway. Thus, they are exposed to very high air pollution and noise levels. If the current levels of pollutants were in line with World Health Organization (WHO) recommandations in Est Ensemble, 5 % of premature death could be avoided.

On the national scale, Est Ensemble was a pioneer with the ongoing transformation of the ex A186 Highway in Romainville and Montreuil. Nowadays, Est Ensemble strive to make the A3 and A86 highways evolve : this should allows a profound transformation of « Porte de Bagnolet » and « Pont de Bondy » areas that gather high levels of pollutants and noise.

In order to do that, Est Ensemble would like to integrate a URBACT network gathering local authority working to pacify highways in urban areas. We are not able to be leader, therefore, we are looking for another authority to take the lead.

Antoine Ugolin

Est Ensemble Grand Paris is an urban local authority gathering 9 cities in the north-eastern suburb of Paris and more than 400 000 inhabitants. Its territory is organised in three areas : Plaine de l’Ourcq, Le Parc des Hauteurs and Le Faubourg.

La Plaine de l’Ourcq (Ourcq Plain) gathers local territories located along 7 km of the Canal de l’Ourcq (Ourcq Canal) which was opened to shipping in 1822. The canal area includes several major infrastructures such as Paris Est railway corridor, A3 and A86 highways, an ex-national road (now departmental road) and the canal itself. Historically, this territory was marked by industrial, arts and crafts as well as commercial activities which took place along the canal and the ex-national road.

Nowadays, the municipalities are committed to transforming those sectors into mixed city districts gathering housing, activities, facilities, public services and public green spaces that promotes soft mobility.

Est Ensemble project idea would be to create a consortium of local authorities whose territories comprise a canal, or a river with industrial heritage. The idea is to share good practices in planning similar areas in favor of mixed activities, including the preservation and the development of river ports for goods transportation as well as pleasure-sailing.

Est Ensemble would like to find one partner willing to take the lead.

Antoine Ugolin

Est Ensemble Grand Paris is an urban local authority gathering 9 cities in the north-eastern suburb of Paris. Est Ensemble coordinates a network of cities, institutions, organizations and companies, in favor of women’s employment coming from deprived neighbourhoods. This local policy aims at helping unemployed women to find a job, access to professions that are traditionally male-dominated fields, find solutions for affordable child care, support women victims of violences that undemine their self-confidence, fight gender stereotypes, discriminations and violences, etc. It also experiments new cooperations between local actors (institutions and associations in proximity with these women) by developing innovating ways of acting in favor of women’s economic and social empowerment. For instance, while Paris Region will be hosting Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024, new cooperations are initiated between sports clubs, insertion organizations and employment offices, to promote women’s sport and employment in the Games.

Est Ensemble Grand Paris would be interested to keep working on this topic as part of an URBACT IV Action Planning Network in order to share with other european cities the best practices and imagine new solutions. The network would be composed of 8 to 10 partners to work on the topic of the economic and social empowerment of women coming from deprived neighbourhoods. We are looking for partners including one who would take the lead.

Antoine Ugolin

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Migration is a long-standing phenomenon on the European continent and it will continue in the future, and even increase due to growing crises and climate change. Despite States’ failure to agree on a common European policy to welcome migrants, there are initiatives led by local authorities. Local authorities all over Europe are creating new ways of taking care of migrants with dignity and building inclusive territories. Welcoming migrants and facilitating their inclusion is as much a social issue as it is one of territorial resilience to future global crises.

 

Project proposal:

The County Council of Seine-Saint-Denis proposes to develop a network aiming at designing a global strategy to better welcome and integrate immigrants based on local authorities’ experience and expertise.

The network will cooperate on two specific objectives to meet the needs of migrants who have recently arrived in Europe:

1. Safeguarding migrants’ human rights: welcoming foreigners with dignity and facilitating access to their rights (accommodation, health care and especially mental health care, education, employment, culture and sports, etc.)

2. Facilitating migrants’ integration into the territory: promoting their inclusion and empowering them to develop connections with local residents, improving their skills, promoting their learning of the host country's language, etc.

The objective is to guarantee a dignified reception of foreigners who have recently arrived and to promote their integration and inclusion, in order to improve resilience and inclusion in urban territories.

 

Local context:

Located in the North-East of Paris, the county of Seine-Saint-Denis is a territory on the outskirts of a metropolis, characterized by its post-industrial urban planning.

Over the last decades, Seine-Saint-Denis has been at the forefront of the reception and integration of immigrants in France. As of 2015, 30% of its population was made up of immigrants, compared to the 19% national average, which makes the territory an arrival and starting point for their future integration. The presence of camps and slums is a sign that newcomers are settling on the territory, but it also highlights the pitfalls of current policies in ensuring decent living conditions for all.

The poverty rate in Seine-Saint-Denis was 27.9% in 2019 compared to 14.6% for the rest of France. Welcoming and ensuring the integration of migrants is therefore a challenge in a territory which faces many socio-economical issues. This is why the County Council of Seine-Saint-Denis has the will to collaborate with European stakeholders who share the same ideal of building more inclusive and resilient local territories.

Anne-Lise Stephan

The City of Lyon is currently working on a Transformation and Governance project aimed at redefining Lyon’s proximity model and how to apply the principle of subsidiarity between the central city hall (“mairie centrale”) and the 9 districts halls (“mairies d’arrondissements”) within the city. The project aims to look at and rethink our territorial organisation within the city administration in order to move towards greater efficiency and proximity. Following a first benchmark with European and international cities (in part via the Eurocities network), Lyon would be interested to continue working on this topic for the following 2 to 3 years with other local authorities as part of an URBACT IV Action Planning Network (the call for which is currently open until 31 March). The objective would be to develop and formalise a network of 8 to 10 partners (mainly cities but with the possibility to include two other eligible members such as universities, research centres or other levels of government) to work on the topic of local public action, governance and proximity.

In that context, Lyon is looking for cities which would be interested in forming a consortium to reply to the ongoing URBACT UV Call for Action Planning Networks. However, as Lyon is only launching the process, it is too early to take the lead in building up such a network. Lyon is thus looking for a City which would be ready to take the lead of the consortium as part of this potential EU-funded project.

Amélie Smethurst

The project aims to (re)invent the involvement of citizens to support them to adapt their behaviours regarding the new challenges they have to face. It consists in developing their empowerment to :

• Benefit from and to contribute to the territorial knowledge,
• Understand territorial strategies in the aim to participate to build them.
• Participate in public debates to make the participatory democracy a reality. This participatory democracy has to be seen as a complementary of representative democracy (and not as an opposite).

The idea is to organize some events (exposition, workshops, debates, survey…) to inform, awareness, co-construct and implement the public policies to make the involvement of citizens concrete and to lead them collectively towards a common destiny rather than suffered destiny . This will include:

- To involve the citizen in the story telling of the transformation of his territory for 50 years. The contribution of the citizen in this action must allow him to understand the history past of the territory. The aim is that every citizen feels belonging to the present and is able to write the future of his territory (as of his own life) in a context of adaptation to climate change, loss of biodiversity, etc.

- To reach out to citizens to develop their sense of belonging, to create a space for dialogue between elected citizens and technicians, as well as between categories of citizens who ignore each other. This could be implemented by effective actions on the ground.

- To democratize the access to the datas. We believe that a citizen who knows the stakes of a territory has a better chance to get involved in it. We will be innovative in our way of communicating and making the data generated by our Agency for Urban Planning and development to be easier to understand (e.g. data on home-work, climate-air-energy, housing, etc.)

Sarah Singer