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Multicultural reverberations by Anke van Wijck Adán

This summer the streets of the historic upper quarters of Mula reverberated with the still rather unencompassed sounds of cheering drums. In the month of August, four courses on percussion music were organised for local and immigrant children in these neighbourhoods and constitute the first phase of Mula's Small Scale Action in the context of the KAIRÓS Project.

By Anke van Wijck Adán, City of Mula and coordinator of the KAIRÓS project

Jelgava City Municipality Operative Information Center (MOIC)

Jelgava City in Latvia is widely recognised in Baltic region as one of the North European leaders in the practical implementation of Smart City concepts. The Jelgava Smart City programs began with mobile citizen e-cards for transportation and social services for pensioners and school students, smart traffic flow management, lightning sensors, security cameras, energy efficiency, use of renewable energy resources and green transport, energy planning and data management.

One of the key city achievements included the establishment of Municipality Operative Information Centre (MOIC) in 2016 to monitor the city public area and critical infrastructure with the latest technology solutions (27/7 citizens contact centre, video surveillance system, GIS, energy monitoring, flood maps, road traffics accident map, drone images database, etc.)

After extensive experimentation with Smart City Monitor digital transformation technology platform during 2018-2019, the municipality decided to obtain the license for its implementation to support the ambitious city incentives in AI and Big Data - driven digital
transformation. In 2017, the investment research department of the Financial Times, ranked Jelgava 6th among Europeans micro cities in the category “connectivity”.

ServaNet – Regional Open Fiber Network

Miguel Sousa, Urbact Lead Expert developed a Case Study on ServaNet – Regional Open Fiber Network. The Scope of this case study is about municipalities in the same territory sharing the costs of developing a technological infrastructure, like it happens in the Västernorrland county in Sweden that includes Ånge and other 6 rural municipalities. The 7 municipalities are coowners of ServaNet, a regional broadband service provider, that is also implementing other lowcost/ low range solutions for IoT networks, such as LoRa.

ServaNet is a good example of a metropolitan area network, i.e. a broadband network available locally in one or more municipalities. ServaNet, like most other urban networks, is mostly built with fiber optics and is a so-called open net. It supplies fiber networks in the municipalities: Sundsvall, Härnösand, Timrå, Ånge, Strömsund and Ragunda, and is owned by the municipalities, or in some cases by utilities in municipalities, providing its inhabitants with access to the sharpest options in the Internet, television and smart services for the connected home, and ensuring the coordination of the offer across a vast region.

From attractiveness to social cohesion: a path towards the Cesena Integrated Action Plan by Elena Giovannini

What attracts us to Cesena? What do we mean by social cohesion in the area covered by the KAIRÓS model? These are the questions that the Municipality of Cesena dealt with during the two meetings of the URBACT Local Groups (ULG) on attractiveness and social cohesion which took place on 28 September and 19 October 2021.
An article by Elena Giovannini, Comune di Cesena

Vilawatt UTM Learning Webinars - Sharing experiences and learning in order to build future Investment Plan

The Vilawatt URBACT transfer process includes five learning webinars, the mission of which is for the partner cities to deepen their knowledge of the five pillars that make up the Vilawatt Innovative Practice, and thus be able to better address the task of building the future Investment Plan of each city.

Thinking and Acting ‘Green’: How the concern for our climate and the environment helps to galvanise urban CSR-Action

Our current URBACT Action Planning Networks are now moving into full gear. After two years of development, and despite the serious difficulties all municipalities and stakeholders have been facing during the disruptive Covid-19 pandemic, transnational and local action intensifies markedly. This is certainly true for our CITIES4CSR network; the first URBACT-network aiming to create a rich toolbox for civic leaders and administrators in order to engage with local businesses, non-profits and citizens under the ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’-umbrella. On top of the ‘to-do’-lists for our ten partner cities you will find the lesson-drawing from our Small Scale Actions (SSA) and translating these findings directly into local action planning for the Integrated Action Plans (IAP). Yet, which topics have been chosen by the Urban Local Groups that have had the power to not just stimulate interest but truly galvanise SSA-action and cooperation?