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A Table for All: Veszprém’s Long Table Picnic and Biodiversity Festival 2025

On 22 June, the heart of Veszprém transformed into a celebration of nature, community, and conviviality as the city hosted its Long Table Picnic and Biodiversity Festival – a flagship event in Hungary’s European Capital of Culture legacy and a proud initiative of the URBACT-awarded “BiodiverCity” project.

Discover what’s new in MetaCity – Quarterly Report No. 6 is out!

Testing for the urban metaverse: highlights from the Testing Actions of the METACITY network

By Eurico Neves, Lead Expert of the METACITY URBACT APN project, Chairperson of INOVA+ S.A.

Celebrating Europe day in Gozo and Malta!

This May, the URBACT and European Urban Initiative (EUI) Contact Point in Malta took part in national Europe Day events to raise awareness of EU-funded opportunities for local councils, citizens and stakeholders.

The importance of ULGs in the RECUP project

What are ULGs? Why do we need them? We introduce one of the key elements of the RECUP project, the local stakeholder groups that provide the basis of the work and the most insight in every city’s progress.  

BiodiverCity: Mar Menor, the first ecosystem in Europe with legal personhood and rights

Mar Menor, the „small sea”, is not small at all, and it is very different from the Mediterranean Sea, the “Mar Mayor” (the “greater sea”). Mar Menor is the biggest coastal saltwater lagoon in the Iberian Peninsula, located near Cartagena, and La Manga del Mar Menor, occupying most of the 22 km long sandbar separating the lagoon from the sea, is one of the biggest tourist complexes of the so-called Costa Cálida. But Mar Menor has gained worldwide attention recently as the first place in Europe where a complex ecosystem has received legal personhood based on civic activism, following examples in New Zealand, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Can it be the new standard of nature protection? Read the full Case Study of the BiodiverCity URBACT network, prepared based on its network meeting in Cieza, Spain, on 25-27 March 2025