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Intergration Learning Exchange

Mapping URBACT Cities

URBACT’s interactive map of EU cities, programs and projects is now online.  This dazzling look at the new Europe ignores regional and jurisdictional divisions in favour of city networks organized around urban issues such as Active Inclusion, Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods, Metropolitan Governance, and Human Capital & Entrepreneurship, to name just a few.  From the URBACT website, click on a city on the map to see associated URBACT projects, or choose one the projects listed in the right column to map the city constellation of its project partners. Lead cities for each project are marked with a star.

Discover, for example, that the mid-sized industrial port city of Duisburg is the City Lead city for the RegGov program which looks at governance issues in the development of deprived urban areas.  The RegGov program prides itself on its integrated approach to urban development but laments that “good practice examples of how to develop, implement and fund such policies are rarely known at a wider European level.”

Good practice and policy is worth sharing. Duisburg is also home to Germany’s largest and least controversial mosque.  Opened in 2008 in the city’s Marxloh District, the Merkez Mosque was planned and built after a broad public consultation using a participatory approach that involved the whole community.  For more about Duisburg city success, see The Miracle of the Marxloh Mosque at Cities of Migration.

What is Urbact?

Established in 2002, and renewed in 2007 with a dynamic slate of work distributed across a network of 255 city partners, URBACTII is a European exchange and learning programme that promotes sustainable urban development, and enables European cities to work together to develop solutions to major urban challenges.

“We help cites to develop pragmatic solutions that are new and sustainable, and that integrate economic, social and environmental dimensions…, reaffirming the key role cities play in facing increasingly complex societal changes.”

URBACT brings together 255 cities and 5,000 active participants with financing from the EU’s European Regional Development Fund and 29 Member States. Visit the URBACT website for more information.