Dún Laoghaire Rathdown is one of 9 European Cities chosen as part of the network, the network is led by the City of Genoa, Italy.

THE TOURISM-FRIENDLY MANIFESTO 10 principles for making the impact of tourism more sustainable on cities has been released and is available here

Dún Laoghaire Rathdown examined Principle number 6: Improving public spaces and civic infrastructures for residents and tourists. Enhancing the level of connectivity between the coastal villages and the neighbouring Dublin was one of the main challenges in terms of sustainable impact of tourism for Dun Laoghaire, which tested the development of the coastal mobility cycle route and the enhancement of Blackrock Village. Residents and business owners were involved in a participatory scheme which led to the creation of new civic infrastructures and to the consolidation of new services and spaces for residents and tourists.

A final output of the network us the development of an Intergrated Sustainable Tourism Action Plan available here

We are calling on local authorities, developers and community groups throughout Ireland to submit entries as there is only ONE MONTH LEFT TO ENTER.

Placemaking is the intangible quality which makes better places to live, work and play. It enhances the public realm and creates places that improve people's health, happiness and well-being. With the importance of compact growth and improved urban living, placemaking has a vital role to play and adds to the long-term value of assets.

Now in their fourth year, the ULI Ireland Excellence In Placemaking Awards, recognise great placemaking projects across the island of Ireland with awards given in two separate categories, Commercial / Large scale projects and Community / Voluntary projects. Private and public sector projects are welcome.

Winning projects receive specially commissioned Awards and the Overall National Award winner receives €5,000 to further enhance their project. Award winners also have the opportunity to promote their project through PR and advertising.

Submitting a project is simple. An application form and criteria are available HERE(link is external). Submissions are now being received and the deadline for submissions is Sunday 4th September.

About the Urban Agenda for the EU

The Urban Agenda for the EU (UAEU) addresses urban challenges by setting up Partnerships between cities, the European Commission, other EU institutions and bodies, national governments and other stakeholders such as non-governmental organisations.

Together they develop action plans to:

• Improve existing regulation with regarding to urban areas and urban challenges
• Support and improve innovative and user-friendly sources of funding for urban areas
• Share and develop knowledge (data, studies, good practices).

The Urban Agenda has previously delivered 14 Thematic Partnerships, on urban themes, which were set forth in the Pact of Amsterdam. 

The renewal of the Urban Agenda for the EU according to parameters adopted through the Ljubljana Agreement in November 2021 proposes the launch of two new Thematic Partnerships in 2022, one on Sustainable Tourism and one on Greening Cities.

About the call for partners

This call is accompanied by a Info Note on call for partners:

Sustainable Tourism
The info note with eligibility criteria and selection process is available here(link is external)
Express your interest using the EU survey here(link is external)
 

Greening Cities
The info note with eligibility criteria and selection process is available here(link is external)
Express your interest using the EU survey here(link is external)

How to apply

Cities, Member States, Partner States, Regions, city consortiums, national city umbrella organisations, and other stakeholders can submit an application by 16 September 2022 at 18:00 (CET).

Application forms:

Application for Thematic Partnership on Greening Cities here(link is external)

Application for Thematic Partnership on Sustainable Tourism here

The United for Ukraine initiative aims to stimulate partnerships between municipalities in Ukraine and in other European countries for short and long term revitalization of institutional, societal, entrepreneurial and physical structures.

The United for Ukraine campaign initiated by SKL International in partnership with Lviv City Institute and Ukrainian Association of Amalgamated Territorial Communities is meant to support the recovery of the Ukrainian communities through peer-to-peer community partnership.

The initiative stimulates partnerships between municipalities in Ukraine and in other European countries for short and long term revitalization of institutional, societal, entrepreneurial and physical structures.

Partnerships are supported through creating and upholding networks, spreading good examples, methods and knowledge. The campaign focuses on those Ukrainian communities who are the most affected by Russian aggression.

European communities are invited to join if they:

- are devoted to developing long term partnership with Ukrainian communities;

- strive to engage not only the municipal organization but the whole local community; civil society, companies, faith-based organization into partnership;

- are ready to work actively to get access to funds and programmes that could be useful for the revitalization and reconstruction.

Visit UnitedforUkraine platform to get a Ukrainian partner https://unitedforua.org/(link is external)

or contact the back office of the initiative for support - info@unitedforua.org

Our meeting centred around the “implementability” of our IAPs. This means getting governance structures ready for the kick-start of implementation. And preparing a wide acceptance of the final product of planning to ease implementation and secure acceptance of the IAP and its measures among stakeholders.

Implementation challenges were subject to the work of the entire first day starting with identifying the top challenges we see at local level: a lack of political support, opposition by stakeholders to the IAP’s actions and resourcing for the delivery of the actions. Amongst many ideas to address these challenges, 3 were present as options for each of them: to use data as evidence to convince stakeholders and political players, to continue applying pilots to showcase the benefits of the actions and to integrate decision makers and stakeholders in the implementation process for a better understanding and a direct influence on the measures’ realisation.

Certainly, all three challenges and main ideas are connected to a good communication strategy starting with the promotion of our 2-year work’s result: the final IAPs. What better to start with than to see what communication and participation measure fits to which stakeholder group for this? Backed by an adapted stakeholder analysis matrix using the dimensions of importance for approval and implementation as well as level of interactivity for promotional measures, 3 main “stakeholder group – promotion activity” couples got identified:

• To address political decision makers with more static measures like official presentations, visualisations, executive brochures, and adoption ceremonies
• To address retailers, gastronomy, businesses with interactive and integrative measures like community councils, pilot activities and participatory projects
• To address citizens and residents as well with interactive and integrative measures like street stalls, citizen projects and exhibitions

But how can these activities look in detail to get to the objective of ownership, acceptance, and adoption of the IAPs? We decided to take a look into the future and employed our own version of the “Newspaper of tomorrow” tool for this. Split up in smaller groups, each agreed on a stakeholder group to address, think on the challenges we might meet with this one, ideate promotional activities to use for counteracting these and finally create an article on how all of this worked out successfully.

Two of our groups focused on retailers and gastronomy as a potential driver to oppose restrictive measures to access by car in their shop’s streets. The main elements how they got convinced to back the measure were

• a visualisation event to showcase possible change scenarios,
• influence on the design changes to the street,
• the use of pilots to allow retail and gastronomy to make their own experiences,
• a well working coordination with administration safeguarding a quick and cooperative implementation without much impact on their business.

A third group selected the target group of pupils and parents as key actors in working for a modal shift from car-based to sustainable school trips. The main elements how to get specifically parents backing the plan used an approach addressing them through their children by e. g.

• school yard design activities with pupils following a tactical urbanism approach
• festivals and games directed to test walking, cycling or PT use to school
• guidance and argumentation on the benefits of a safe and healthy school trip

The results of the work exercise are now used to elaborate promotional activities for the set objectives and planned measures in our efforts to finalise our IAPs!

Neighbourhood was not only at the core of the SSA of Heerlen but has also become a main topic of the meeting: on Wednesday the Heerlen team has presented two different approaches of neighbourhood policy during a bus tour in Heerlen-North and Maastricht. These two cities in the South of the Netherlands had a similar mining industry, after which closure they faced the same challenge of upscaling their cities. Maastricht chose to invest in education and healthcare, thus it became a vibrant university city – this is what Heerlen team wanted to show us. At the same time, Heerlen didn’t invest in society so wisely and unfortunately became a city without rebonding potential. This is what Heerlen is tackling to change since the early 2010s, focusing on the social system.

After the bus tour participants could enjoy a BBQ dinner by ULG-member Evert Hartman at Luciushof, a location offering approachable food for the elderly that has also become an important meeting point and at the same time a pleasant place for tackling loneliness.

The discussions on elderly and the issue of loneliness continued on Thursday, when the Small Scale Action of Heerlen was presented by Mark Weyts general practitioner and representatives of care provider Meander Group: Jack Jansen chairman of the board and neighbourhood connectors, Andrea Heijenrath and Wendy Halbach. In the framework of the SSA GPs connected their elderly patients with non-medical type of problems with neighbourhood connectors who contacted and organised community programs for them which has lead to a decreased number of GP visits. (More information and video of the Small Scale Action coming soon.)

The thematic sessions ended with the presentation of Pernille Randrup-Thomsen about a Danish SIB on labour market inclusion. Their programme “Staircase to staircase” tackles people with a long history of unemployment, approaching it with a complex team. The secret of the successful programme is to put the people in the centre of problemsolving, finding the best employment with a flexible and multidisciplinary team.

After the presentations the SIBdev team was joined by Roel Wever, mayor of Heerlen who gave a welcome speech for the closing lunch.

Besides the IAP peer reviews and thematic sessions, the meeting had a further goal: to summarize the most important highlights of the SIB journey so far in short interviews with all cities’ representatives. The result will be showcased soon, during the Urbact City Festival in Paris.