News just in! 23 Action Planning Networks ready for Phase 2!

The 6 Irish Networks are:

Limerick City & County - Find your greatness (marketing and smart city tools), Health and Greenspace (urban green infrastructure)

Dublin – Access (inclusive cultural policies)

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown - Tourism Friendly cities (balancing sustainable tourism and local needs),

Fingal – iPlace (economic development and urban innovation in Balbriggan)

Longford - Urbsecurity (strategies to prevent segregation and antisocial behaviour)

The main objective of Action Planning Networks is to bring together between 7 and 10 cities across Europe to exchange their experience in a particular thematic urban development challenge and to share their ideas about possible solutions, during a period of over 2 years. The Phase 1 (from late June 2019 to February 2020) focused on the development of baseline studies, city profiles and the production of the Application Form for Phase 2.

Following the Monitoring Committee's approval of the networks, cities are now ready to focus on the exchange and learning activities using a range of learning tools and approaches in line with the URBACT Method. Every partner city will consolidate an URBACT Local Group, which will co-design Integrated Action Plans for future implementation. The Phase 2 also presents a novelty for the projects, from now on cities are encouraged to undertake pilot actions (Small Scale Actions), to experiment with new ideas for projects gained from other network exchanges and in line with the cities’ network topic.

As a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, the URBACT Secretariat will follow up with a series of adapted activities to support these networks and their partners, including the delivery of trainings using online formats and a 3 months extension of the network life-cycle, meaning that projects will run until August 2022. Thus, networks will respect the following calendar:

Activation Stage (May - December 2020): putting together an Integrated Action Plan roadmap

Planning Actions (December 2020 - December 2021): drafting the Integrated Action Plan

Planning Implementation (December 2021 - June 2022): finalising the Integrated Action Plan

Integrated Action Plans Finale (June - August 2022): sharing knowledge

To find out more about each one of the projects, check the network's webpages.

Congratulations to the 23 approved projects!