A closer cooperation between culture and tourism at the core of the Tourism Forum in Krakow

On the 15^th of December 2020, another meeting of the Urbact Local Group was held in Krakow in the frame of the Tourism Friendly Cities project. It was a part of a Tourism Forum organized as a partial online meeting at the ICE congress centre in Krakow. The meeting was attended, among others, by the deputy mayor of Kraków, the plenipotentiary of the Mayor of Kraków for culture, the President of the Polish Tourist Organization, the President of the Regional Tourist Organization, the director of the Wawel Royal Castle and several directors and employees of Krakow museums, entrepreneurs and residents.

Case study Utrecht: Circular construction pilot project

In this first case study delivered by the URGE network, the city of Utrecht shares their experiences with circular construction of their pilot project 'De Nieuwe Lunet'. 

ALT/BAU in 2020: Affordable housing, financial & legal tools and the use of GIS for the reactivation of vacant buildings

ALT/BAU was also disrupted by the COVID 19 pandemic - but fortunately not to a stop! The partners continued to discuss and exchange in 2020 about solutions and interesting practices for the reactivation of vacant buildings in their territories. ALT/BAU Lead Expert Nils Scheffler and ALT/BAU communication officer Sabine Hausmann outline give an overview about the main topics:

CARD4ALL NEWSLETTER Nº4

During your Christmas holidays, we would recommend you to read our new newsletter...and we wish you a healthy new year 2021 full of interesting projects!

Families take the floor at the second sessions of Transnational Meeting 5 in Poznan

Families as members of the local Educational Innovation Network. Why they are important and what they can do. Benefits of parental involvement in children’s learning process and school life seem to be widely proved. Parents who monitor their children homework, discuss learning difficulties with the teacher, take part in school projects and praise the child school achievements, positively impact on the results and educational success.

Second City2City: Scaling up urban circular economies, an article by Miguel Rivas

Piloting is usually affordable, but how to scale up?

A recent OECD study on circular economy reports that 10% of surveyed cities and regions defined themselves as “advanced” performers in this field, while 39% as “in progress”, 57% as “newcomers” and 4% described their transition towards the circular economy as “not in place”. Nonetheless, 84% informed they were using pilots and experimentation to foster the circular economy (OECD, 2020).

Piloting and experimenting is usually affordable, but upscaling needs substantial funding and strong political commitment. Hence, upscaling is increasingly seen as a key component of the implementation framework and should therefore be considered in the action planning process, from the beginning. In a study on smart city projects, Willem van Winden and Daniel van den Buuse (2017), from Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, found out that even the pilot stage should be carefully designed with an eye on later upscaling – e.g. getting 360⁰ stakeholder involvement in the pilot experiences sets the basis to successful scale up.

So, what type of enablers or accelerating pipelines to move circular economy from activism and piloting to mainstreaming? In this regard, working at two levels would be advisable. First, at programme level, promoting initiatives with an expanding effect. Second, and maybe most importantly, at the policy level, trying to place circular economy properly into a number of robust and well-funded agendas with a transformation purpose. In particular, the smart specialisation strategies, as the place-based innovation policies par excellence in the European Union, and the upcoming recovery and resilience plans that member states will promote to face the pandemic´s impact, financed by the ad-hoc NextGenerationEU facility.