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Irish Cities participate in the URBACT City Festival in Wroclaw

Several local authority staff and other stakeholders from Ireland participated in the URBACT City Festival which occurred in Wroclaw, Poland between the 8^th and 10^th of April. A jam-packed agenda involved a ceremony for the 116 Good Practices, several plenary sessions, a Good Practice marketplace across the two main days, as well as a more in-depth thematic discovery of these URBACT Good Practices. Attendees were also treated to a selection of study visits within Wroclaw, and the Secretariat launched in earnest the associated call for Transfer Networks (TNs) with some testimonials from those involved in TNs in the past, before giving attendees an overview of what is to come in the remainder of the URBACT IV programme.

Six takeaways from the 2nd Hydro-Heritage Cities meeting in Roeselare

On May 8^th and 9^th the Hydro-Heritage Network held its second meeting in the city of Roeselare (Belgium). The meeting was dedicated to “Community Driven Engagement and Regeneration” deepening partners’ understanding of participatory approaches, stakeholder engagement, and cultural event design related to hydro-heritage. Here are our main reflections.

Bosna i Hercegovina na 2025 URBACT City Festivalu: Grad Sarajevo među dobrim evropskim praksama integrisanog i održivog urbanog razvoja

Bosna i Hercegovina učestvovala na 2025 URBACT City Festivalu; Grad Sarajevo nagrađen za projekat urbanog vrta sa senzornim elementima

REMOTE-IT Online Forum: Gender equality, digital nomads and remote workers

Remote but not removed: Embedding gender equality in the future of work

Across the EU, at least in part due to the COVID-19  pandemic, people have changed the way they work. Remote and hybrid working, once seen as quite niche, has exploded, and many cities are also racing to attract a new generation of mobile professionals: digital nomads. However, it is not clear if this new future of work will be equally accessible to everyone. Is there a risk that - without intentional action - the flexibility and freedom that remote work promises could easily replicate, or even worsen, longstanding gender inequalities. As EU cities shape their strategies to welcome and retain remote workers and digital nomads, embedding gender equality from the outset will be key to creating inclusive and resilient urban futures.

This article considers some of these questions. It builds upon the extensive work on gender equal cities which URBACT has pioneered and comes from an Online Forum on the same topic, organised by the Action Planning Network - Remote-IT. 

A look back at the 2025 URBACT City Festival

From 8 to 10 April, the URBACT City Festival welcomed in Wroclaw, Poland, 523 participants, representing 321 cities across 36 countries. So what happened during these three days?