Networks and cities' news

From Understanding to Action: Building Social Cohesion One Neighbourhood at a Time

Across Europe, cities are looking for new ways to strengthen social cohesion in increasingly diverse neighbourhoods. The question is not only how to support newcomers, but how to create places where everyone – long-term residents and new arrivals alike – can learn, connect, develop and contribute. 

In this context, the URBACT Plan Einstein Academy network has been exploring how Utrecht’s innovative social transformation model ‘Plan Einstein’ (Netherlands) can be transferred to five European cities of different sizes and characteristics.

Innovation transfer involves sharing and adapting approaches across cities. But as URBACT’s model anticipates, in Plan Einstein Academy, the partners found that this process went beyond simply reproducing an existing model. The network’s journey has been a story of understanding, experimentation and adaptation.
 

Seeding a new approach to local social cohesion across Europe’s cities

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” So said the American philosopher and futurist Buckminster Fuller. He could have been talking about the city of Utrecht and their innovative social transformation project that has turned traditional models of migrant reception on their head.

Utrecht (NL) has shown an approach that can meet the needs of new arrivals from their first day in the local area at the same time as the needs of the local community already in place. In doing so, they have created positive relationships, overcome distrust and fear and provided an example of local social cohesion that can, and should, inspire other cities across Europe.

This is the starting point of Plan Einstein Academy, a two-year Innovation Transfer Network supported by URBACT that is exploring how to transfer Utrecht’s innovative ‘Plan Einstein’ model to five partner cities in different European countries: Coimbra (PT); Suceava (RO); Thessaloniki (EL); Warsaw (PL); and Zagreb (HR).

Build a Welcoming City - the WELDI Game

WELDI Advocacy Paper

Real People, Real Connections: What Makes Cities Welcoming

Four years ago, when Shaïsta arrived in Fundão from Afghanistan, she found a welcoming and supportive environment at her local school—one that allowed her to continue the education the Taliban had taken away from her. Her dream was to become a doctor. Sharing her story in a vidcast produced by Fundão in cooperation with a local radio brought her one step closer: a medical school contacted her and offered support to help her overcome a key obstacle—a professional language exam.

Shaïsta in her vidcast-interview

WELDI Journal Number 6 (11-2025)