City Reflections & Ambitions - Tartu

We have set sustainable development as our goal, to ensure that the natural environment and well-being of the people are in harmony. To this end, we brought environmentally friendly gas buses to Tartu, which have already helped make our city air a little cleaner.

We have also created a hugely popular citywide smart bike share system, which has increased the number of bike riders, helping to make them healthier and happier. Together with residents, we have renovated a number of apartment buildings in the city centre into near-zero energy buildings, and we are now continuing with similar projects in Annelinn. We have decorated the end walls of apartment buildings with eye-catching artwork.

For several summers now, residents of Tartu have been delighted by the Car-Free Avenue, which is making waves across Estonia. We are sharing space previously set aside for cars with cyclists and pedestrians and offering people a new and friendly urban experience.

We realise that we must continue to make an effort, because the trends continue to remain poor: car ownership shows no sign of abating, while pedestrians, cyclists and electrically powered road users are squeezed into a single, confined space. We should be renovating our current homes at a faster pace and making sure that the city does not spread outside its borders. It is hard to make choices when we are subjected to a daily overload of information, but we all want to be as economical as possible – today, tomorrow, and the day after.

Tartu will be the European Capital of Culture in 2024, with the motto "Arts of Survival". We want our city to have a future; we want to survive. That is why, in the year of the Capital of Culture, we are telling stories about the deepening climate crisis, social tensions, and the bonding of communities – all of which are highly relevant today.

We have a strong community, one that has been helping to share the participative budget for the past 10 years, and doing all it can to ensure a better urban space. It was at the request of the community that the latest project, the Harbour Railway, came to fruition – a pleasant environment for pedestrians and cyclists instead of the originally planned road. For the first time, we also held a Climate Assembly, where a number of people from Tartu were highly focused on how to make their home city even more liveable. We see that the community is longing for more – we have received a clear message that the people want environmentally friendly solutions; that they want positive changes.

Tartu has joined the 100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities mission – we are in the company of 100 European cities aiming to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. We have set for ourselves the world’s most ambitious climate target. This is not an easy task – it requires innovation, doing things in a new way.

URBACT networking and Zero Carbon Cities network has given an important input and a boost to Tartu’s climate ambitions. The masterclass framework of creating an integrated climate action plan has raised the quality of the action plan and the qualification of city administration dealing with the issues regarding climate planning and climate implementation.

The partners involved in ZCC project have had great experiences, information, and knowledge to share with other partner cities to boost climate ambitions. Energy Cities has been sharing the vision of EU, it’s climate ambitions, policies and actions. The resulting IAPs can be aligned and takes into account the opportunities from EU policies. Physical and virtual meetings with Energy Cities representatives and Tartu’s policy makers in the framework of ZCC has resulted in prioritizing climate neutrality as a goal for Tartu and an intermediate objective in future becoming a zero emissions city.

The science-based targets methodology used in the project has resulted in Tartu implementing more ambitious climate goals. Tartu’s current goals is to reduce GHG emissions by 50% compared to 2017 and become climate neutral by 2050. The new goal is to become climate neutral by 2030 and to align Tartu with EU mission 100 climate neutral cities by 2030.

One of the largest impacts of the ZCC project and new transnational connections is the example set by City of Manchester with the participative approach to climate change mitigation. One of the most important actions in Tartu’s climate action plan so far is Tartu’s climate community agreement. A voluntary agreement where participants set themselves the goal to reach climate action plan goals. In more technical terms Tartu city will create new public services to supporting Tartu’s stakeholders in climate ambitions and creating accountability and motivations packages along the way.

We thank everyone who has helped prepare Tartu’s participation in such an ambitious undertaking. We thank our Zero Carbon Cities partners from Manchester, Bistrita, Frankfurt, Modena, Vilvoorde, Zadar and Energy Cities. We could not have done it without you.

But the big work still lies ahead.