Networks and cities' news

Key to success: efficient ULG engagement

Urbact Local Group in Poznań turned out to be an important platform for cooperation on blue&green infrastructure issues in the City of Poznań.  Engagement in reinforcing of the ULG, facilitating meetings and internal communication based on win-win approach is bringing great results.

Autumn in the allotted gardens of Poznan

City of Poznań is continuing exploring possibilities of sharing already existing greenspace in the city, through opening Familly Allotment Gardens (FAG) to residents of Poznań.

Peer review workshop in Messina

After a year and a half Health & Greenspace partners were lucky enough to organise the first in person meeting and Messina had the honour of holding this event.

URBACT Local Groups? Struggles ahead!

ULG, which stands for URBACT Local Group (ULG), is a key ingredient of the URBACT methodology that can be found in all networks and programmes. But what's an ULG? An URBACT Local Group is a group of local stakeholders who co-produce the city strategies and action plans together with the city administration. To put it in a provocative way, the principle is quite simple: "the idea is to avoid doing policymaking as usual, meaning by the city administration on its own, without any stakeholder consultation". So basically, to "constrain" cities to enter into a minimum level of participatory process. Why? Simply because evidence has shown that policies built in participatory ways are more relevant, more efficient and better designed than those done without any co-creation, participation or at least any consultation. If setting up an ULG is not an insurmountable task, maintaining it active, lively, engaged, dynamic and enthousiastic throughout the life of the network is not an easy task. Especially when you have to compose with a worldwide pandemic...

Children in Breda become nature explorers

First contours of the new Seeligpark in Breda visible: 'We want to give people a sneak preview'

How Arad engages its citizens in creating spaces for people

Arad is home to 176,000 inhabitants and its locations very close to Hungary as well as close to the Serbian border. This setting gives Arad a key position for international road and rail connections including a TEN-T core network corridor directly crossing the city. Arad is currently in the process of implementing its first Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) and simultaneously updates its SUMP for coming years. Recent achievements in urban mobility created Romania’s largest urban cycling network of more than 150 km and ample public transport networks reaching out to the city’s peri-urban areas. Works for a sustainable urban transport service continue and will see further upgrades to its public transport network with new vehicles, new lines, better stops and traffic management as well as an extension of the cycling network and the creation of pedestrian areas.

One of today’s the main objectives is to revitalize its city centre. The idea is to reconsider and redistribute public space from a car-oriented design to a space for people approach. Arad applies an extension of pedestrian spaces, the creation of a pedestrian network and parking management as the main tools to vitalise its city centre.