5 City Center Doctor’s Cities in Tallinn

After Riga in 2015, URBACT City Festival moved to one of the others Baltic Capitals of Europe: Tallinn. And City Centre Doctor was there, with 5 of the 10 cities belonging to the partnership attending the event. Two of them, Naas (IR) and Heerlen (NL) had the occasion to show how they revitalized their city centers and how the URBACT vision had been applied in their countries with very positive results.

In The Netherlands,  Heerlen’s idea was to launch a “STREET ART MURALS FOR URBAN RENEWAL” (http://urbact.eu/street-art-murals-urban-renewal), aiming at revitalizing some parts of the city through art (mural art) performed by means of a community engagement in which citizens, entrepreneurs and artists co-created and took co-ownership in the works. In Ireland instead, the Naas’s initiative is called “MCAULEY PLACE FOR OLDER PEOPLE” (http://urbact.eu/mcauley-place-older-people) and consists in an alternative model to the institutional residential care one, a non-medical, intergenerational and not-for-profit housing association located in the city centre aiming at bringing older people to the heart of the vibrant Naas community.

All the City Centre Doctor’s cities had been inspired during this event. Creativity, innovation, city-oriented solutions and friendship was everywhere in the location. Study visits, posters, workshops, roundtables helped participants to share idea, to collect information and to bring back home a piece of Europe.

In particular, this event inspired the participating cities with relation to the development of the Integrated Action Plans: in fact, the City Centre Doctor partnership is now called to elaborate these plans, moving from Ideas Collection to Action Planning. Touching with hands a great number of solutions concretely applied in several cities in Europe will be more than helpful for them to increase the quality of their final products.