Special Report: Spotlight on Belgian URBACT Cities

Antwerp – My Generation Project
El Hassan Aouraghe, My Generation project leader for the municipality

'Antwerp is a city where a third of the population is under the age of 25, with a high structural unemployment rate in this part of the population. We have an excellent educational system, which ranks among the best in the world in mathematics, for example, but unfortunately migrant children benefit little from this opportunity.

As part of the URBACT project My Generation, we are working on a comprehensive youth policy that covers free time, education and employment. The strong point of this project is that it views young people as a positive and indispensible element in cities by looking to give value to their talents and their passions. Our Local Action Plan consists of developing the three Youth Competence Centres found in Antwerp, by broadening their scope to education and employment.

With the young people who are members of our Local Support Group, we have identified what is missing from the centres and the means to fill those gaps. We are, for example, working on entrepreneurship. In 2011, Antwerp will be the European Youth Capital. This event will also mark the last meeting of the My Generation partner cities and will be an opportunity for us to shine the spotlight on the city's young people and our actions over these three years.'

Ottignies-Louvain-La-Neuve – SURE Project
Cédric du Monceau, municipal councillor in charge of urban planning and city economic affairs

'Brussels has had a large increase in the number of young, multicultural inhabitants with low levels of qualifications, although one should not generalize. We are facing a correlated housing crisis. For the CoNet project, which is working on strengthening communities and neighbourhoods, we have chosen Neder-Over-Hembeck, which has no FEDER financing for lack of integrated projects. We did not choose something easy! That is why we have opted for micro-projects that are financed with existing budgets.

This neighbourhood is very isolated and broken up and is getting ready for 1,000 new homes. It is facing specific challenges: its population tends towards individualism, fears the arrival of the new residents and one notes a lack of connection between the various parts of the neighbourhood.

As part of the CoNet project, we are working on three areas: governance, employment-training, and teaching. This neighbourhood lacks local infrastructures, and we are first of all looking into creating a central place, located in a rather neutral area, that could serve to bond the community. Ideally, it would include a welcome area for new inhabitants, associations and also prevention services.

Neder-Over-hembeck has a large employment basin and the second focus of our project is to bring together the offer and the large demand. To do so, we will capitalise on the "greenness" of the city through training programmes that will promote the development of market gardens and organic butchers. Pilot experiences have already enables reinsertion of unemployed people no longer receiving benefits. Our micro-projects are mobilising the people in the neighbourhood, so the circle is complete.'

Charleroi – ESIMeC Project
Ornella Cencig, municipal councillor for economic affairs for the City of Charleroi

<img style="float: left;" data-cke-saved-src="fileadmin/corporate/image/charleroi.jpg" src="fileadmin/corporate/image/charleroi.jpg" width="141" height="195" alt=" />'Charleroi is facing an exodus of the population and of businesses towards the city outskirts. Over 30 years, our city centre lost 20,000 inhabitants. That is why, since 2007, we have been working on a project to bring a new momentum to the city centre. The first part of the project consists of creating a shopping centre with 67 shops and 9,000 square meters of office space.

Construction on this project will begin in a year, and has €220 million of funding from a private developer. For the municipality, it was also essential to maintain the link with adjacent streets where this same developer will create housing with retail shops on the ground floor for an investment of €20 million. We also obtained €54 million of FEDER funding to rehabilitate the streets. At the same time, the city is launching a feasibility study to modernise our congress centre.

The URBACT ESIMeC network of medium sized cities, which focuses on economic strategies and innovation, gave us the possibility of prolonging the ongoing project by inspiring good practices in business reconversion. The experience of Besançon led us to develop a cultural aspect, and we are going to create &quot;Art Gate&quot; at the entrance of the city.'

Braine l'Alleud – TOGETHER Project
André de Smet, cohesion plan project leader for the municipality

'Braine l'Alleud is located in between Charleroi and Brussels, about twenty kilometres from the capital. This privileged location attracts a fairly well off population looking for green spaces. In 25 years, we went from 30,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, which has created real estate pressure. The population who did not have the means was obliged to leave. Generally speaking, our city is facing several challenges: an ageing population, the presence of numerous single-parent families, a lack of service infrastructures and traffic jams in the city centre linked to the presence of three upper secondary schools.

Under the impetus of the Council of Europe and in partnership with the Walloon Statistics Institute, we launched a participative project with fifteen other Walloon municipalities concerning indicators of well-being. The goal is to determine together what the people need to be happy in order to set up new measures of progress.

To define these indicators, we have brought together groups of inhabitants who are representative of the population. On the basis of similar projects led in Europe, notably in Mulhouse where these indicators have already been objects of targeted actions, the Council of Europe decided to create a European network of cities already involved in this kind of co-responsibility approach. The URBACT TOGETHER project was born.

As far as we are concerned, most of our indicators were validated and we are currently in the phase of summarizing the indicators on the regional Wallonia level. In January, we will begin the phase measuring a panel of 500 to 1,000 people. Certain indicators are obvious, such as mobility and standard of living, but others are more surprising, such as intergenerational relations and everything related to personal balance.

Even though not all the indicators are transposable from one country to another, the goal of TOGETHER is put the indicators together. Software already exists in French and it should be translated into the other TOGETHER partner city languages.'


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