The CityMobilNet project

“Mobility Planning is a key element to the sustainable development for our city”

The City of Bielefeld is proud to lead the URBACT network CityMobilNet, which tackles one of the most wide-spread problems of European cities today: urban mobility. Bielefeld well recognised that urban mobility planning is a complex but also crucial success factor for the entire city development. Thinking outside the box and thus making use of knowledge and experience as it exists in cities all over Europe is one of the most promising aspects that Bielefeld wants to initiate with CityMobilNet. For this, Bielefeld has joined with four other European cities that face similar but also very own local challenges to encounter the need of sustainable urban mobility planning as a key factor to sustainable city development.

Why did Bielefeld decide to apply for an URBACT action planning network?

URBACT offers Bielefeld an optimal setting to tackle one of the city’s most pressing and publicly discussed challenges: its future urban mobility development.

Bielefeld is keen to improve its mobility planning schemes to take on a comprehensive and integrated approach covering all involved topics and stakeholders of relevance for urban mobility planning. The concept of sustainable urban mobility plans (SUMPs) are an ideal tool to safeguard a sustainable and inclusive planning approach, since SUMPs join all transportation modes, all mobility purposes and all relevant players for creating a mobility plan. However, setting up a SUMP is a complex task and Bielefeld recognises the need for adequate knowledge and experience as existing in European cities to come up to this challenge. Bielefeld and its network partners are convinced that URBACT is offering the perfect framework to gain joint advantages out of working together, learning from each other and benefitting from each other’s experience.

Having reflected on this, in early 2015 Bielefeld started its search for opportunities to collaborate with cities on the development of SUMPs. Prime for the search of a good setting were in-depth cooperation possibilities among cities and suitability of the policy challenge at hand. Bielefeld made use of its European contact network for its search. This resulted in the suggestion to apply for an URBACT action planning network, which was taken up promptly thanks to the high match of the needs at Bielefeld’s side and the URBACT programme offer.

The challenge of sustainable urban mobility development

The improvement of planning and developing its urban mobility system is truly one of the main challenges for the City of Bielefeld. The city expects a further population growth of 2.4 % for the next 20 years and out of it an increasing pressure on its urban mobility system. At the same time, external and internal factors are urging for improvement: Bielefeld needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation as required from national and EU legislation. It needs to reduce the costs from congestions alongside with increasing the reliability of the mobility system. It aims to improve the attractiveness of the city by improving air quality values and providing a setting for healthy living.

Therefore, the City Council of Bielefeld decided in 2015 to develop its SUMP. One of the main aspects for developing such a plan is a strong focus on participation of citizens and stakeholders. Bielefeld is a profound actor in terms of participation. It just recently carried out an intensive participation process on the extension of its light rail network. This process comprised amongst others regular information reports, citizen panels and workshops, online discussion panels and a binding opinion poll for the city council’s final decision. The good experiences from the participation process encouraged Bielefeld for its decision to set up its SUMP. It also perfectly matches with the co-productive nature as requested in URBACT Action Planning Networks.

Bielefeld is looking back at a rich history on transnational project work in terms of urban mobility development. The opportunity to design its SUMP together with other cities sharing similar needs and attitudes towards transnational cooperation convinced Bielefeld to develop its SUMP in the URBACT setting.

What does Bielefeld expect from CityMobilNet?

Expectations are high in Bielefeld as is the will to work hard on them: within CityMobilNet, Bielefeld wants to produce its SUMP as the strategic mobility plan steering urban mobility development for the next 15 years. It will take up existing planning practices and takes into consideration of integration, participation and evaluation principles to satisfy the mobility needs of people today and tomorrow for a better quality of life in the city and its surroundings. To safeguard these goals, Bielefeld places transnational know-how exchange and mutual learning activities directly at the start of each development step for its SUMP. Thus, all partners start well equipped into the respective development steps for creating their SUMP. Anyhow, Bielefeld does not expect to create the CityMobilNet partnership for this single purpose only but for a long lasting working and exchange relationship well beyond the actual URBACT network lifetime.

The rationale behind the partnership of CityMobilNet

The choice of partner cities was based on two main aspects: the need for at least one city providing good experience with setting up a SUMP as well as cities in need for support by an URBACT Action Planning Network. The City of Burgos (ES) takes the role of the main know-how provider having its SUMP well in place already and adapting it for the next planning period during the network lifetime. The Cities of Slatina (RO), Székesfehérvár (HU) and Agii Anargiri-Kamatero (EL) are all facing the situation to be “spared” from support to thoroughly developing a SUMP: either national programmes focus on larger cities or recent national requirements to access major infrastructure funds are pressing cities to press for quickly developed SUMPs. Quickly developed SUMPs however are not able to integrate stakeholders’ and citizens’ needs properly and are thus one of the most important components to develop a SUMP. CityMobilNet takes this approach for the choice of partner as one decisive factor for the partnership enlargement. Another one is geographical coverage of EU-member states to allow the involvement of many different national settings.

By now, the City of Bielefeld already received a high number of applications for CityMobilNet partnership. Interest is coming from all regions of Europe, from small municipalities to large European metropolises. Bielefeld bases the selection of new partners on using a questionnaire on the state of play and expectations from applicant cities followed by interviews to detail further aspects. At the CityMobilNet kick-off meeting mid- November, Bielefeld will present the results to all partners to jointly discuss and decide on the final enlargement.

The first steps of CityMobilNet

Bielefeld places a high value on a sound and co-operative working structure and atmosphere among the network partnership. This is seen as the most important factor to jointly and productively cooperate on the tasks the city partners want to tackle together. In this light, the kick-off meeting in Bielefeld is used to get to know each other in person and in terms of the cities represented alongside with their expectations and starting points. Bielefeld puts high emphasis on a practical working style giving the partner cities good time and space to actually work together and to bring in their knowledge and experience.

The network partnership will mutually decide on the enlargement of the partnership and documents its expectations, learning needs and interests as well as details on their state of play on mobility planning for the network’s baseline study. Each city will set up its Local Action Group, which takes the main responsibility to develop the respective SUMP. The sum of all joint work is the application for phase 2 of the network to carry on the endeavour of providing sustainable urban mobility plans for all network cities.