Networks and cities' news

Smart cities, innovation and gender equality

How is smart cities, innovation and technological development connected to gender equality? What are the critical questions we have to ask ourselves?

How BioCanteens accelerated local food initiatives in Liège? 

The particularity of the Transfer of Good Practices, promoted in the URBACT Transfer Networks, is that they play a different role depending on the Partner City. In some cases, it kicks starts a transformation process and helps  set the basis of a resilient project. In other cases, it is an accelerator of a local dynamic with a long history behind it. This is the case of Liège, the civil society and political panorama was already shaping a food policy framework at the local level. "BioCanteens#2 arrived at the perfect moment for us, because we were ready to quickly learn and react to innovation", says the Coordinator of BioCanteens#2 from the City of Liège. 

Telling the story of Gendered Landscapes

Cities are places with inherent power structures and challenges but also places where innovations and solutions arise. How do we communicate the nuances and the complexity of cities in a comprehensive and engaging way? How do we revive the spirit of the physical place and the ownership of integrated strategies for our cities? On our transnational meeting with the Gendered Landscape network in March, we had an afternoon with a focus on how to tell the story of the Gendered Landscape. The workshop was led by Simone D’Antonio, URBACT expert on storytelling.

The case of redesigning the Vabaduse Street in Valga

Our network partner Valga is a municipality of 15,500 inhabitants located at the Estonian border to Latvia. Administrative centre of the municipality is Valga town with 12,000 inhabitants. But Valga is more than just a town in Estonia: Valga is one part of a twin city with Latvian Valka where the city just goes on once crossing the border. Valga/Valka share a common history: they were one city until they got separated when Estonia and Latvia gained independence from the Russian Empire in 1918-1920. During the following decades, both towns developed separately neglecting the common structures and culture. Now, since several years, Valga/Valka follow up their new common slogan “1 City, 2 States” and invest to re-establish themselves as one town. The largest project just finished is the creation of a joint town centre connecting Valga and Valka beyond the border once more.

#2 Small Scale Action | Razlog, Bulgaria

THERE’S A NEW SENSE OF TECHNOLOGY PROGRESS IN THE AIR IN RAZLOG – AND IT’S ALL THANKS TO URBACT

The city of RAZLOG makes possible the monitoring of urban air quality in real time through the test installation of an Air Station with sensing key for air quality indicators along with environmental data. This is possible thanks to the IoTXchange project which is implemented under URBACT Program.

The RFSC a relevant tool for the city partners of the GG4C network

In the course of the life of the Global Goals for Cities (GG4C) network, the 19 city partners used an existing self-assessment tool: the RFSC, or Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities. Based on European principles for sustainable and integrated urban development, the tool available online was used during the diagnosis and visioning phase of the network (as an analytical tool), and partners will use it again in the planning phase (as a planning tool). What is the RFSC? And what did it bring to the network?