What is URBACT?
URBACT is the EU’s funding programme (jointly financed by the European Regional Development Fund), which enables numerous European cities to work together with the aim of promoting integrated sustainable urban development. Through this EU funding programme, cities work together and share good practices and lessons learned in order to be able to develop solutions to major urban challenges.
All exchange and learning projects aim to impact local policies and practices in the perspective of developing sustainable and integrated urban policies. European cities participating in this programme also produce a Local Action Plan which is a concrete and useful tool for the city to solve a local problem and improve a local situation. Each project under URBACT focuses on a specific urban issue, such as tapping into the potential of young people, social housing or taking built heritage into account in urban development.
Why are cities given a priority in this funding programme?
Over the last century Europe is becoming more urbanised and it is in fact estimated that around 70% of the EU population (approximately 350 million) currently live in urban communities of more than 5,000 inhabitants. For this reason, cities play a key role in Europe’s territorial development because cities also play a crucial role as engines of the economy and as the hub of connectivity, creativity and innovation and centres of services.
Who are the beneficiaries of URBACT?
The beneficiaries can be Cities (municipalities/ local councils), Regions and Member States, Universities and Research Centres of the Member and Partner States as far as urban issues are concerned.
What challenges will the cities of tomorrow be facing?
Building on the “Cities for Tomorrow” report published by the European Commission, the focus is on the below six key challenges that focus on strengthening the economies of our cities and on rendering our cities socially and ecologically sustainable.
Demographic decline and shrinking cities
More jobs for better cities
Supporting young people through social innovation
Divided cities in Europe
Motivating mobility mindsets
Energy efficiency in European cities
Currently, six workstreams, which are made up of various stakeholders, have been set up to bring forward concrete knowledge and solutions. In fact, the URBACT Annual Conference of Copenhagen held on 3-4 December 2012 focussed on six workshops linked to the six focus areas with the aim of gathering feedback from the participants. Building an all the work done of the workstreams which has been initiated in early 2012, the aim is to produce 6 thematic reports in early 2013 which will group together the feedback, key findings and recommendations from European cities. The outcome of these workstreams will be the basis for the URBACT programme in the next programming period (2014-2020).
What is MEUSAC’s involvement in URBACT?
MEUSAC provides technical assistance to local councils representing urban regions so that our cities and towns can address particular urban issues through the URBACT programme. MEUSAC strongly believes, that this programme is essential for local councils wishing to address urban issues in their communities because this programme provides the necessary tools to analyse these issues, be able to share good practices and knowledge with other European cities with the final aim of solving these problems. Furthermore, thanks to the Local Action Plan each partner organisation in an URBACT project will produce a targeted and tailor made action plan.
MEUSAC also participated in the Annual Conference of URBACT, which served as a great opportunity since it brought together urban practitioners, policymakers and experts from across the EU. The focus of this conference was to investigate solutions to challenges being currently faced by EU cities and for us this was highly important since we had the possibility to represent local urban issues, put forward our feedback on the 2007-2013 URBACT programme and we also acquired more information on the upcoming 2014-2020 URBACT Programme.
Alison Camilleri is Head, EU Funding within MEUSAC