Networks and cities' news

THESSALONIKI TRANSFER STORY

Municipality of Thessaloniki, even though it refers to a city of only 2.5m2 per resident, during the last years supports and hosts in public spaces a vineyard, an orchard, an urban community garden project (Kipos3) and a schoolyard (Triandria school garden). The existence of those productive and “edible” landscapes, within the city center, motivated the Common Benefit Enterprise of the City of Thessaloniki (KEDITH), to participate in the European network Ru:rban of URBACT III. 

Through this experience, the City gained valuable input to structure an institutional tool and a manual in order to multiply its urban gardening initiatives along with the active citizens’ engagement. The rural-urban (“rurban”) blending these initiatives may bring, aims to more cohesive neighborhoods and communities, to more attractive public spaces – especially for the remnant, non accessible and inactive of those -, to a more inclusive, resilient and alive city in the end . Ioanna Kosmopoulou, President of Common Benefit Enterprise City of Thessaloniki "KEDITH"

Quality Brands and Sustainable Food Systems

In April 1957, the BBC broadcasted a short report showing a Swiss family harvesting their spaghetti crop from the family tree. Numerous viewers called the station after the coverage, interested in acquiring their trees. This anecdote, recounted by Carolyn Steel in her revealing essay "Hungry City," reflects the tremendous disconnect that was already beginning to develop between consumers and food production.

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BBC, Panorama (1957)

In recent decades, different individual and collective, public and private, urban and rural initiatives have been promoting the recovery of this lost relationship and re-localizing production under integrated sustainability criteria. Cities and rural territories in the EU are an active part of this process, often around quality brands, considered instruments capable of generating added value and gaining a position in the global market.

In practice, we sometimes find an oversaturated environment of brands that coexist with hardly any articulation between them or any net generation of positive impacts. A reflection on their performance and evaluation seems timely to contribute to the effective development of sustainable food systems.

A Tale of Two Cities. Transfer Stories from East and West.

Two German cities are currently lead partners in the 23 URBACT transfer networks. Altena in North Rhine-Westphalia and Chemnitz in Saxony. Altena shared its best practices on how to develop sustainable initiatives with a minimum of external resource input. In the Re-growCity network, the partner cities were supported in the revitalization of public services and the economy, regenerate the urban fabric and develop civil society in a context of long term decline. Chemnitz shared its good practice of activating vacant buildings in need of refurbishment in the ALT/BAU Network.

Both cities were forced to develop methods to lessen the impact of the severe population loss. Chemnitz, in the east, lost about 25% of its population after German reunification until 2005, most of whom migrated to the west to find employment.  Altena, in the west, has been losing residents since the 1970s. Between 1990 and 2009, the city was subject to a 15% population decline, making it the municipality with the fastest population decline in NRW.

How did the two cities experience the transfer process in the URBACT networks over the past two and a half years? Volker Tzschucke, ULG member in Chemnitz reports about both cities.

Enhancing the care of the city: Naples Transfer Story

In 2018 the city of Naples was awarded by URBACT for its model of “civic uses”, a policy tool that enables communities of citizens to manage and take care of public assets – known as urban commons  –  in a democratic way. Naples has recognised the "Urban Civic Use Regulation" of common goods in the city itself, and thanks to the good practice's governance model, more than 250 projects came to life, breaking down the production costs by using free and shared spaces, resources, knowledge and skills.

During the last decade, the City of Naples has been experimenting with this new governance model to get back in use abandoned or underused buildings subtracted from the life of the city. Conflictual actions of occupation and bottom-up rule-creation were turned into an opportunity.

This legal tool was theorized from the grassroots, claimed by commons activists that revisited the ancient Italian legal institution of “civic use”, encourages the ability of citizens to find innovative solutions for the reuse of public abandoned assets and guarantees autonomy of the communities involved. 

The civic use of empty buildings, in fact, implies a temporary use and represents a starting point for innovative mechanisms of regeneration as a community-managed or a community-managed estate. Therefore, the legal model adopted by the municipality therefore represents an overturn of institutional learning: participatory democracy tools were created by direct civic imagination and implemented by the City Government.

The Civic eState Network gave Naples the possibility to share this experience with other 6 cities – Amsterdam, Barcelona, Gdansk, Ghent, Iasi and Presov –, and learn from them on how to strengthen its “Good Practice”.

Swarming Management as an important part of urban beekeeping

Swarming management and adaptation of citizens to the habits of city bees was the topic of the international round table hosted by the city of Cesena on the 23^rd of March 2021. After an introduction by Dr. Lucija Žvokelj from the National Veterinary Institute from Slovenia participants discussed how swarming is managed in different cities and what needs to be done in the future. 

LOURES TRANSFER STORY

Loures Municipality joined the RU:RBAN project with great enthusiasm because it is a project well adapted to the physical characteristics of its territory, its urban occupation and citizens needs and hopes. It is important to mention that4666, in addition to the dedication of the municipal political leaders, there was also a demand for a project for the future with sustainable, inclusive and healthy ambitions.