Networks and cities' news

#Guimarães4CSR: the portuguese city revolutionasing the dialogue between local businesses and solidarity institutions.

Guimarães is a city located in northern Portugal and one of CITIES4CSR partner city.

Founded in the 10th Century, Guimarães is well known by all Portuguese as the Birth Place of the nation. Early on, Guimarães has attracted people forming a strong local community. Guimarães took frontline in the industrialization of Portugal, making good use of a large number of available workers and local entrepreneurship. In more recent years the city has built upon its heritage, classified as World Heritage Historic Centre, in 2001, and has put cultural and sports activities as a trademark of local development, hosting a European Capital of Culture in 2012 and European City of Sports in 2013. 

CAEN TRANSFER STORY

Once upon a time, in a resilient European Union, 7 cities decided to join forces and adapt Rome’s  good practice of urban gardening. One of them is Caen, a 105,000 inhabitant city located in Normandy, Northern France and here is its story as part of RU:RBAN network.

Battling residential emergencies

“Housing is healthcare”. This sentence popped up in a recent discussion around the Corona mitigation efforts that cities are undertaking to strengthen the livelihoods and well-being of their citizens during and after the pandemic. This notion of housing as a physical and psychological setting for both hardship and relief is opening our view again to the significance that housing has for our local communities.

Come in! An uncomfortable heritage told by its inhabitants

“The 2020 edition will focus on houses built during the 20-year period of Fascism, just to support the vulgate that fascism did good things too!” 

“I would gladly commit myself to the city, but I just can't do it for what was built during Fascism. See you again for the next editions, if the theme changes.” 

These are the first comments posted on the project's FB page. We cannot say we were surprised, so why decide to venture on such delicate ground? Why make a community festival that tells the story of the residential buildings built in Forlì during the twenty-year Fascist period? To answer this question we take a leap back three years when we first heard about the Budapest 100 festival and we decided to venture into an exciting and challenging URBACT project. 

The dream of different living or as Claude Berri said in his 2007 film “Ensemble c´est tout”

Since around 2017, the Housing Agency Chemnitz (URBACT Good Practice) has been increasingly asked about opportunities and houses for housing projects. Some groups of friends had grown the desire to buy a house together and live in it all together. The groups were very different in size, age and ideas about how to live together. There were requests from groups who were looking for something as a multigenerational housing project, those who wanted to live more village-like and grow their own food, and those who wanted to live in the middle of the center. 

Tree of inspirations

Be inspired and act together with your residents!