Georgios
Dimarelos
Validated Lead Expert
Generic Skills
B.1. Understanding of integrated and sustainable urban development:
My educational background (Civil/Transport Engineer) provided the basis for the understanding of integrated and sustainable development, as urban development is strongly related with transport issues. This evolved for the first 9 years of my professional career, as I was involved in many projects that had to do with urban development. The last 8 years, being an elected member of the Thessaloniki City Council, I broadened this horizon in almost every parameter that is part of what we call sustainable and resilient urban development. The synergies among different stakeholders towards achieving this goal are under my responsibility in the City of Thessaloniki under the umbrella of our resilient strategy for the year 2030 that was implemented with the aid of the 100 Resilient Cities Network, pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation. Furthermore, this strategy was incorporated in the Strategic and Operational Programme of the Municipality for the years 2014-2019 that I was overseeing as a Deputy Mayor for Urban Resilience and Development Programmes
B.2. Understanding of exchange and learning processes at transnational level:
The nature of my position requires serious exhange of knowledge with many international bodies and organizations. Being the Project Manager of the URBACT Programme "Resilient Europe: for the City of Thessaloniki and later having the overall responsibility for all the European Programmes and Networks of the City of Thessaloniki (including the other URBACT Programme that Thessaloniki was involved, "Arrival Cities") helped me to deeply understand the exchange and learning processes at transnational level.
B.3. Proficiency in English:
Apart of my educational degrees (BEng, MSc, MBA) that were acquired from English-speaking academic institutions, during my career as a Deputy Mayor I have a long list of speeches, presentations and interventions in different international events throughout Europe. Moreover, I represent the City of Thessaloniki in all major events in Brussels and elsewhere, as I have the responsibility for fundraising for the City. I consider my self as bilingual, when it comes to speaking English.
Expertise for the design and delivery of transnational exchange and learning activities:
Summary Expertise for the design and delivery of transnational exchange and learning activities:
The nature of my position as a Chief Resilience Officer for the 100 Resilient Cities Network, has as a main responsibility the design and delivery of transnational exchange and learning activities. Throughout this period, noteably and among others, I had the opportunity to organize a trnasnational lab for transport inverstments that involved participation of international actors and local stakeholders that was used by the Network as a flagship event fot other cities to do the same. This lab involved many high lecel companies like ARUP, IMG Rebel, CISCO and many others. All participants felt that they were participating not only in a transnational meeting but also in a learning activity that led to a report that was the basis for further capitalization from the Municipality, for absorbing funds for project maturity. In addition, the cooperation with World Bank for the production of the Continuity Plan of the City, was another example of learning activity through transnational exchange, as the main challenge was to adopt international procedures and standards. This was achieved with a trial and error method where we simulated past failures to discuss what could be done differently.
Thematic expertise:
Theme / Policy:
Urban Strategic Planning
Summary Thematic expertise:
My role as Deputy Mayor for Urban Resilience and Development Programmes in the City of Thessaloniki was the strategic and operational planning of the City and the implementation of our resilient agenda for the year 2030. This allowed me to be fully involved in the City's strategic urban planning and to have an active role in the decision making process. I had to supervise all the actions that were leading to policy making and awareness, as we had a bottom up approach for this process. The appropriate stakeholder engagement in the problem solving process, was an important aspect for the public acceptance of policy making. The most important factor is not only to have or develop a strategic urban agenda, but also try to connect the implementation of the agenda to possible funding opportunitites. This needs vision and knowledge of how public funding in a european level is working, and my position allowed me to fully understanding the process of how to develop and, most importantly, implement a strategic urban agenda
Theme / Policy:
Sustainable Urban Mobility
Summary Thematic expertise:
My educational and professional background as a civil/transport engineer gave me all the necessary tools to understand how promote from a consulting point of view the sustainable urban mobility meaning. In my professional career I have worked in many SUMP's and restructuring of transport infrastructure organizations. On the other hand, my involvement as an elected city councelor appointed in mobility from 2011 up to 2016, gave me the opportunity to integrate this knowledge and from the public authority point of view and understand the limitations and opportunities of the public sector. At the same time my appointment as member of Board of Directors of the Thessaloniki Urban Transport Authority gave me the opportunity to work on integrated and combined transport operations in a metropolitan level. Finally, my appointment as a member of the Political Advisory Committee of CIVITAS that proposes the EU policy in urban transport, is a very strong proof of the knowledge that is present in promoting sustainable transport in a european level.
Theme / Policy:
Local Governance
Summary Thematic expertise:
Being an elected member of the Thessaloniki City Council from 2011, gave me the opportunity to fully understand the issues that relate with local governance. My specific involvement with policy design and implementation of strategy resulted in a cooperation with the European Investment Bank for an infrastructure loan that is helping the City to capitalize its resilience plan. The City of Thessaloniki was the first Municipality in Greece that capitalized on its strategy with such a development loan. My day by day involvement with the operation of the Municipality gave me the experience on how to design projects and consequently on how to proceed even further and try to realize projects based on the available resources, whether these resources are human or financial.
Expertise support to local authorities and other stakeholders in designing & delivering integrated and participatory policies
E.1. Knowledge on participatory methods and tools for co-production and implementation of local polices :
Being a Deputy Mayor in Urban Resilience, responsible for the stretegic and operational planning of the City and also responsible for the funding of the municipality, on its own and by definition gave me all the necessary expertise on participatory methods and tools for coproduction and implementation of local policies in all themes.
Within the frame of Urbact III Program: Resilient Europe, as the Program Supervisor, I was supervising various participatory activities, such as the Problem Solving tree, a method we developed by joining the Summer University of URBACT in Rotterdam, which we applied during ULG meetings as well as interactive questionnaires during on street events, aiming to harvest citizens’ insights and perceptions regarding the newly designed bike lanes.
Moreover, within the frame of the Resilient Strategy, we coordinated a 5-month policy co-creation process, including participatory mapping, neighbourhood voting and co-designing workshops and e-participation platform for the development of the city’s “public space co-creation policy”
E.2. Knowledge on integrated approach for the design, delivering, monitoring and evaluation of urban strategies/policies:
Within the Thessaloniki Urban Resilience Strategy, we have developed integrated and cross-disciplinary approaches in responding to complex urban challenges. For example, regarding strategy’s objective for reducing air pollution and urban noise, we have designed a holistic approach which includes actions that range from infrastructure interventions to innovative monitoring tools/ systems and citizen awareness. More specifically, in alignment with the Covenant of Mayors that aims for 40% CO2 emissions by 2030, we are expanding the low emission zones in neighborhoods, extending the bike lane network in metropolitan scale, promoting cycling through awareness activities and advancing our existing air quality monitoring system. The city already maintains 7 air quality stations and currently we secured funding through an Interreg – Balkan – MED program to update and support this monitoring system with Ambient Air IoT Smart Sensors, an Open Data Platform
and Smart Applications that enable crowdsourcing data.
Furthermore, as the Deputy Mayor I contributed in securing national funding for the development of the city’s Observatory of Urban Resilience (OUR), which will be measuring and monitoring the implementation of the Resilient Strategy in 4 streams; environmental, social, economic and governance. The indicators of OUR are a combination of the ISO37120 (indicators for sustainable development of communities, city services and quality of life) and the Resilient Strategy indicators
E.3. Awareness of the main policy and funding schemes for sustainable urban development at EU and national level:
My position allows me to travel abroad and participate in all the necessary seminars, congresses, and workshops that are for urban development policies, trends, and funds. I have established a good network of contacts that we cooperating with (EUROCITIES for example), that keeps me up to date not only for regional and national funding opportunitites, but also for international initiatives that are helping cities to improve their capacity and knowledge.
E.4. Ability to understand specific local situations and adapt tools and content to different local realities:
The social inclusion of refugees is very big challenge when it comes to different local realities and perspectives. My role as a Deputy Mayor for Education in 2017, was partially to design inclusion programmes that had to rake care of all the local realities. We had to design for refugees, but at the same time for local ppulation in order not to give the impression that we are not interested for the dificcult situation that many greek households are into because of the financial crisis. Our responsible approach led to different funding opportunities of significant international institutions like the OSF, UNHCR and UNICEF, a proof that we were considered as a reliable partner for designing local policies for different local realities.
Summary Expertise:
Being a Deputy Mayor for Urban Resilience and Development Programmes, responsible for the Strategic and Operational Planning for the City and for the implementation of our resilient agenda for the year 2030, by definition gave me all the experience and knowledge that is needed to develop, implement and monitor integrated participatory methods. The introduction of a long term city plan, needs to take into account the fact that this has to come as a result of a bottom up approach that is independent from a particular city administration. Rhe agenda for the year 2030, was a perfect example of such a participarory method. More than 1400 individuals, NGO's, research centres, universities, unions were actively involved in this participatory process. I have deep knowledge of the difficulties that municipalities face at local level for policies in general and I am capable of sharing this knowledge and experience for helping other cities and networks to proceed accordingly.
Informations
Residence location:
Greece
Languages:
Greek - Mother tongue
Foreign Languages level:
Foreign languages:
Email:
dimarelos@gmail.com