Networks and cities' news

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.

USE-IT: a new and innovative approach to regeneration

Over the course of the last 30 years, cities across Europe have adopted a relatively orthodox approach to regeneration. By developing their city centres physically and by seeking to attract inward investment, cities have assumed that the benefit of such activities will ‘trickle-down’ to neighbourhoods and communities and will contribute towards addressing local economic, social and environmental challenges. However, this approach has not always worked – whilst city economies have continued to grow in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) terms, levels of inequality within cities have increased, and poverty has also continued to grow. This is not what regeneration should be about.

In 2016, the City of Birmingham (UK) started to think differently to the orthodox approach outlined above and inspired by a desire to change Birmingham’s approach to regeneration and make it more innovative, a small number of individuals came together to develop a successful bid for Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) funding, through a project called USE-IT!. To understand more about USE-IT! and its aims, activities, and impacts, I spoke to some of these key individuals. I also wanted to understand the scope for transfer of USE-IT! to 3 other cities over the coming 18 months as part of the URBACT/UIA USE-IT! Transfer Mechanism (USE-IT! UTM).

Urban Local Group The Hague: the next step towards their resource center

On the 28^th of October the ULG-members (Urban Local Group) of The Hague organized a session to put their vision on the URBACT Resourceful Cities trajectory into writing. The ULG exists of local entrepreneurs, teachers, students, and the municipality of The Hague.