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Learning about Implementation

Understand how this process can successfully take place in cities and how to tackle the challenges ahead

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AS TRANSFER

Bilbao AS Fabrik Transfer Network, UIA-URBACT Transfer Mechanism, seeks to share the experience of Bilbao in the AS FABRIK project (UIA) with three European cities: Timisoara (RO), Tartu (EE) and Bielsko-Biala (PL), that want to meet the ultimate approaches in the field of the smart specialization in Industry 4.0 and digital economy. AS FABRIK was conceived to increase the competitiveness of the local KIBS sector and prepare them to supply the digital transformation demands of the manufacturing sector (Industry 4.0). An strategic alliance based on knowledge and innovation that aims to improve the local ecosystems of cities, with city businesses, universities, local service providers and entrepreneurs hosted in a tailor-made innovative space.
Ongoing

BluAct second wave

The BluAct Network follows the success of the Blue Growth Initiative of the Municipality of Piraeus, an award-winning business plan competition that offers support services to local entrepreneurs in the marine and maritime sector, stimulating innovation and job creation. The BluAct Network aims to inspire the four new partner cities in the Second Wave of the Network to learn from the experience of Piraeus and hold entrepreneurship competitions to support local businesses in the blue economy. Through the approach of setting up local URBACT Support Groups and engaging local stakeholders to support them to organise such a competition, the ultimate goal of the BluAct Network is to stimulate the growth of the blue economy in European cities.
Ongoing

DigiPlace

Digi Place is an Action Planning Network that aims to set up an acceleration mechanism to enable cities to catch up the digitalisation opportunities in hard & soft infrastructure. Remove all the obstacles encountered by mid-sized cities in their digital journey: lack of strategic & global vision lack of technical and engineering capacities difficulties in incorporating the digital innovation. Municipalities need to guaranty the uptake of digital innovation by the local stakeholders: citizen and potential entrepreneurs.
Ongoing

Global Goals for Cities

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 as a universal call of action to protect our planet, end poverty and ensure peace and prosperity for all by 2030. "Global Goals for Cities” is a pilot network and strategic partnership aimed at accelerating progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in 19 cities of the EU, through peer learning and integrated action planning. The partnership is funded through the European Regional Development Fund's URBACT III European Territorial Cooperation program.
Ongoing

iPlace

iPlace is a journey where the partner cities are fellow travellers who are always seeking to find niches appropriate for their cities, while deepening their understanding of the nuances that make their cities special, with the determination to use the knowledge they gained for nesting new ideas that will sprout more sustainable local economic development.
Ongoing

NEXT AGRI

The NEXT AGRI UIA - URBACT Transfer Mechanism pilot network builds from the experience of Milan. The city decided to set up an urban coalition with a series of partners to scale up this positioning in the peri-urban agricultural industry, setting up a stable growth and creating new jobs and skills. The project is mainly an urban policy experimentation that follows the place-based approach, focusing on new skills for new jobs in peri-urban agriculture. The project area can be defined as an “urban fringe”, representing the transition zone between the consolidated part of the city and the agricultural lands.This project aims at transfer to other 3 cities the processes and strategies implemented to create a favorable environment to develop new opportunities in the food system transformation in the urban and per urban agriculture sector.
Ongoing

Tech Revolution 2.0

Medium-sized post-industrial cities in Europe seek ways to grow & diversify their economies to compete with the pull of larger hubs. This is even more important in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Barnsley has been committed to growing higher value jobs, particularly within its tech and digital sectors. The Good Practice comprises 2 main pillars: - Enterprising Barnsley, an award-winning business support programme - The Digital Media Centre, a landmark hub for tech business in the town centre which has recently expanded into a second building as Barnsley expands The Seam - Barnsley's Digital Campus.
Ongoing

BluAct

BluAct is a Transfer network of 7 European port cities including Piraeus, Mataro, Ostend, Galati, Matosinhos, Burgas and Salerno aiming to share good practices in Blue Economy entrepreneurship. The project follows the success of Piraeus’ Blue Growth Initiative, an entrepreneurship competition that offers incubation services to local businesses boosting innovation and job creation. Through an approach of creating Urbact Local Support Groups and engaging local stakeholders and other interested parties, with the ultimate aim of starting up the blue economy, BluAct aims to deliver far reaching results in the respective partner cities.
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BoostInno

The work developed by the cities of this Action Planning network has proven that social innovation is not just a trend, but it could also be qualified as a fundamental change in the management of cities, in the management of impact and in the relations cities uphold and develop with their inhabitants. Some would describe this change as an equivalent of the industrial or the IT revolution: up until now, one of the basic assumptions of urban policy was that citizens were to accept what is decided, planned and built. Recent years have shown that it is often the citizens who make the city, in a collaborative perspective.
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Cities4CSR

The project’s main aim is to unlock opportunities in order to improve our cities. The Action Planning Network of CITIES4CSR has identified in Corporate Social Responsibility actions the opportunities to unlock and improve municipal strategies and local plans, discovering and exploiting the value of partnerships with the private sector and relevant stakeholders at local level. Co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund, CITIES4CSR network involves ten European cities throughout Europe, each of them focusing its activity on specific local challenge and theme of CSR, according to local needs and municipal priorities. At the same time, at network level, the project provides a valuable opportunity of good practices sharing on CSR actions and experiences carried out locally by cities, reaching a common understanding of the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility for municipal development and the improvement of local policies.
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CREATIVE SPIRITS

The partner cities from this Implementation network have a common need to improve the implementation of their existing integrated urban strategies and action plans by including new approaches linked to creative and cultural industries (CCI) – creative places, people, and businesses. The joint policy challenge for the network is to better facilitate the above 'creative ecosystem' to be able to attract (more) creative entrepreneurs and boost creative entrepreneurship in dedicated urban areas, this comprises activities that create economic value through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property. A city is able to mobilise ideas, talents and creative organisations when it knows how to foster a creative milieu by identifying, nurturing, attracting and sustaining talent. Local governments all over the world are increasingly becoming aware of the CCI’s potential to generate jobs, wealth, and cultural engagement.
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Find your Greatness

Find your Greatness is a concept that reflects the most challenges addressed by AIM together with other EU local communities. Why Find your Greatness? Because the challenge is to build on the cities' potential. In the case of the partners of the project the need identified locally and which was built as a sustainable mechanism generating urban development, the need to explore and enhance the potential of the city, combining strategic marketing approach with innovative smart city tools.
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Gen-Y City

Over the last decades, younger people have increasingly chosen to live in urban areas, whilst the share of older residents in cities has generally fallen. Nevertheless, the impact of wage levels and different unemployment rates across Europe has lead youngsters to move mainly to big cities. In this, sense this Action Planning network aimed on developing, attracting and retaining young local talent, particularly, the creative talent from the Generation Y - people who were born between 1980 and 2000 - within cities of all sizes.
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In Focus

By mobilising a significant number of stakeholders, this Action Planning network had the mission to rethink the stakeholders’ agendas on business-led economic development and test how the smart specialisation concept might work as a driver. The network pioneered on how the policy concept of smart specialisation applies to the urban environment, more precisely the Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3).
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Making Spend Matter

Making Spend Matter Transfer network explores how to use spend analysis as an evidence tool to enhance the impact of procurement by public / anchor institutions in order to bring additional economic, social and environmental benefits to the local economy and its citizens. This will be achieved by transferring the Good Practice developed by Preston in this area.
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Procure

The goal of this Action Planning network was to explore how to harness the spending power through procurement of public and anchor institutions in the partner cities to bring about economic, social and environmental benefits for businesses and people which in turn will have a positive impact on the city and its local economy. The topics to be explored include: the regulations and law at both European and national level, and what cities are able to do around innovative procurement; how to analyse procurement spend and develop a procurement strategy; the use of social criteria and environmental criteria in procurement; and how to raise awareness of procurement amongst local businesses and SMEs.
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Tech Revolution

TechRevolution, an URBACT Transfer Network, provides an opportunity for six cities from across the EU to get under the skin of an URBACT Good Practice developed and delivered in Barnsley UK which centres around two main pillars (below) as well as some spin-off activities. • Enterprising Barnsley - a successful business support programme; • The Digital Media Centre (DMC) - a landmark hub for creative and digital business in the town centre. It enables these cities to come together to study every element of the practice in a safe and honest space, to consider their own local contexts and strategic priorities and then to adapt different aspects of what Barnsley has done within their local setting. See the full Tech-Revolution Transferability Study here.
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TechTown

By exploring how small and medium sized cities can maximise the job creation potential of the digital economy, this Action Planning network examined whether there is potential for spillover from stronger city level digital economies; how clusters can work at city level and look collaboratively at what cities can do to support businesses to access the digital skills and innovations they need in order to start, grow and compete. The city partners further explored the role and viability of digital, content creation and technology clusters and how benefit may be gained from major city or national initiatives to benefit job creation and growth in small and medium sized cities. The project was 'of the digital economy' as well as 'for the digital economy' in that it used digital technologies as much as possible throughout management and delivery.
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CTUR

Cruise activity and the recovery of urban and harbour building heritage: Strong elements of the common interest of sea towns to develop and strengthen the urban tourism sector.
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WEED

Identifying and developing integrated local actions that improve women’s situation in employment, entrepreneurship and the knowledge economy are key to this thematic network. In addition, it is clear that the role that women play in terms of local regeneration is crucial, however, urban regeneration has always been a predominantly male affair. This is not surprising as it has been about things as derelict land, planning, property development, employment, and labour market all traditionally male domains. This situation is evolving since women are becoming important actors in social and economic regeneration. In particular the network will focus on the key issues of: women and entrepreneurship, women in research and knowledge economy, gender inequalities in the workplace and the labour market.
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Creative Clusters

The starting assumption of the project is that creativity can act as a driving force for economic development of small urban centres and not only of big cities. Thus, the main value-added that the work of the Creative Clusters network can produce is to transfer the “creative city model” (too much focused on big and middle-sized metropolis) to low density urban areas. In other words, to transfer a range of so far considered urban attributes (accessibility, cultural life, technological facilities, competitive clusters, global networking, etc.) to middle-sized and small towns.
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Creative SpIN

Creative "Spillovers" for Innovation aims to create a Thematic Network across Europe which will address the challenges of how best to connect cultural and creative industries, including sectors such as audiovisual, design, advertising, architecture and video games, with other sectors, to stimulate the effects of "spill over".
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ESIMeC

How medium sized cities can generate new employment opportunities, prepare workers for jobs, and address mismatches between the supply of labour and demand for workers
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ESIMeC II

Explores how demand-led workforce development strategies can be used as instruments of sustainable economic recovery in medium sized cities
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FIN-URB-ACT

FIN-URB-ACT strives for more efficient local support structures for SMEs' development and innovative economies. The rationale is that such structures on local level - where financial instruments meet nonfinancial assistance - are basic prerequisites for fostering start-ups and business growth.
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Gastronomic Cities

Five cities working together to promote gastronomy as a key urban development.
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My Generation at Work

Promoting employability of young people in a changing labour market, with special focus on enterprising skills and attitudes.
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REDIS

REDIS was a network of cities that was focused on how municipalities can re-shape districts into science quarters.
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TUTUR

Temporary Use as a Tool for Urban Regeneration
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UNIC

A strong tradition in the ceramics industry and for two years they shared their experiences and developed local policies adapted to this changing economic context in order to make ceramics an asset for their territory in terms of innovation, cultural dynamism and attractiveness.
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Urban N.O.S.E.

Towards an urban economic system of Social Incubators
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Wood Footprint

Manufacturing and selling big items requires big spaces as factories and large showrooms. During the prosperity years of manufacturing sector in Europe, wood industry dependent cities have witnessed a pop-up of such buildings along the main road axis and suburbs, strongly making urban development. Nowadays the rapid transformation of these sectors led to the abandon of most of these, leaving a giant urban footprint that is a serious challenge to cities that have inherited it and a warning to others. Wood FootPrint, under the banner of URBACT, aims to respond to the challenge to reactivate the economies of participant cities, whose main economic activity is the furniture industry and have suffered as a consequence of the economic crisis and the impact of globalisation. One of the main benefits of the programme "Wood FootPrint" is to offer different tools and policies that will strengthen the furniture sector, but at the same time offer economic diversification by sharing successful methods in sustainable sectors. The project partners include 10 partners from 9 EU countries.
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