Transnational Meeting in Loures, 12-13 September 2019

The venue for the first day was the City’s Municipality, where Mr Tiago Matias, City Councilor for Land Use Planning, welcomed participants with a presentation of the successful green policies the City has in place and their close link to RU:RBAN. The activities planned for the second day took place at the Municipal Library José Saramago. The ULG members and stakeholders were given the opportunity to gather in the gardens of the Municipality to become acquainted and give way to a very fruitful and enriching exchange of experiences and know-how, which turned out to be an excellent ice-breaking session really appreciated by all participants.

In the meantime, partners and city representatives participated in the workshop dedicated to Governance (Element 3 of the project) during which the ad hoc expert described the transfer journey so far regarding the progress of the drafting of all cities’ regulation of the management of urban gardens and thanked the partners for their efforts in this direction. Each city presented their first draft and a very constructive round table discussion took place, where main issues and obstacles were discussed such as land ownership, governance restrictions, financial support, adaptation of Rome’s regulation to local regulation in place, goals, responsibilities and plot assignment procedures. Cities are tackling these aspects and the Network Expert asked partners to focus on this activity in the forthcoming weeks as they will be asked to present an improved draft version of their regulations at the Thessaloniki Transnational Meeting next December.

The ULGs were the real protagonists of this Transnational Meeting, thus a session was dedicated to discuss their role and involvement in the project. They are, in fact, the actors of the transfer journey and their role is paramount for the success of the project. What have they achieved in each city? What are the gaps and difficulties they are encountering in the process of adaptation of the Rome’s regulation? What are the improvements that can be brought into their cities in order to enhance urban agriculture and raise awareness of its benefits? All these aspects were the topic of many discussions throughout the two-day event.

Particularly successful was the session dedicated to Capacity Building (Element 1 of the project) in the afternoon of day 1, where the ad hoc expert asked ULG members of each city to illustrate the posters (prepared in advance) to all the participants on the good practices and urban gardens in their cities. This proved to be an excellent informal introduction for all participants and an extraordinary opportunity of learning, exchanging and sharing of experiences, knowledge, goals and expectations. Some examples of good practices taking place in other cities, such as the “Incredible Edible” initiative in the city of Todmorden (UK), were shown by the ad hoc expert and lessons were learned from these experiences (community engagement, land use, localize food etc). The conclusions reached during this session were the need for Public Administrations to promote a global vision and strategy for cities’ sustainability and coordinate all efforts toward this goal (in other words, passionate administrators are needed!), and the need to keep communities alive through endless activities to be carried out in an urban garden and the enhancement of its multifunctional nature.

Day 2 of the meeting was dedicated to the Gardeniser Training (Element 2 of the project), which was divided in two sessions: all participants (ULGs, stakeholders and city representatives) would take part in the morning training activities while the afternoon session would involve only ULGs and stakeholders since city representatives were to attend the Steering Committee. Once again, the Gardeniser training session turned out to be an interactive, stimulating, useful and enjoyable experience. These were the words most expressed by all participants. The aim of this training session was to raise awareness of the complexity of the role of the Gardeniser in an urban garden as the main coordinator of all social and managerial activities, and to train participants in the process of identification and encouragement of those gardeners that could play this role in their urban gardens. The Gardeniser training sessions were very successful due to the extraordinary number of ULGs and stakeholders present in Loures which, in fact, are considering the possibility to continue these training sessions independently from Transnational Meetings. These are the words of the Mayor of Loures and some of the participants: https://youtu.be/JGGHrudsUaU, https://youtu.be/G5IMbKqlA3w, https://youtu.be/gQF-bwSwGYo 

 A very successful meeting, rich of encounters, experiences, sharing, learning and enthusiasm. A busy autumn awaits with the preparation of the next Transnational Meeting in Thessaloniki next December, which will also host the Mid Term Reflection….work must go on and RU:RBAN is on the right track!