The German MULTIPLY municipalities are ready to get to work. The combination of large cities such as Hamburg, Moenchengladbach, Kiel and Halle and smaller ones like Recklinghausen, Boeblingen and Emmendingen promises interesting insights into their districts and offers plenty of learning opportunities amongst each other and beyond.

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On 26 February 2020, representatives of municipalities participating in the MULTIPLY project met for the first time in Warsaw. The meeting was the formal inauguration of a cooperation and experience exchange programme under which representatives of the precursor cities (Bydgoszcz, Sztum and Piastów) and the cities involved (Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Minsk Mazowiecki, Ostrołęka and Siemianowice Śląskie) will support each other in planning integrated energy, transport and land use solutions.

The two-day meeting was very intense and productive. The topics of the meeting were the following: 

  • Integrated urban planning
  • Financing the energy transition
  • Horizontal interactions between political actors and technical planning staff
  • Data collection, planning, evaluation

We used different working methods during the P2P exchange, for instance, the Disney method to work on visions, challenges and solutions regarding integrated urban planning. The participants were divided into three groups. Each group had one table with a flipchart paper. First, the participants wrote three visions, then they moved on to the next table. There they wrote criticism on the visions and moved further on to the third and last table. On the last table they found the visions and the criticism that had been written down before by other participants, so they had to write realistic solutions in order to reach the visions keeping in mind the criticism.

This method worked very well and the participants were enthusiastic about it, because they could imagine the city of the future without any limits. Afterwards, nonetheless, the participants had to plan these visions in a realistic way.

The next exchange in Austria for technical planning staff will take place in the city of Weiz on 15 and 16 June 2020.

 

TeilnehmerInnen erstes MULTIPLY Treffen Perchtoldsdorf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: The representatives of the participating municipalities of the EU project MULTIPLY at the first P2P exchange meeting in Perchtoldsdorf.

 

At the end of 2019, the selection process for the 7 Italian Municipalities, to participate in the European Multiply project, ended. These municipalities will be able to implement theirknowledge on integrated urban planning, and will also have the opportunity to develop or toincrease their planning, thanks to the new knowledge acquired.

Container Energieraumplanung

The Styrian municipalities can apply for funding at the Energy Agency Styria to finance their integrated urban plans until 8th of May 2020. Integrated urban planning can significantly support the energy transition in terms of energy saving, as well as the availability of renewable energy sources. Compact settlement structures are the basis for energy-optimized supply and climate-friendly mobility services.

Soon we will launch the competition for forerunner and committed cities that are eager to engage in and benefit from our peer-to-peer learning process. Forerunner cities are those who already have some experience in integrated urban planning at district level and would like to share their innovative solutions with the wider audience of EU cities and municipalities. Committed ones are those who lack that experience but want to develop in a smart way, consciously joining elements of sustainable transport, sustainable energy and sustainable spatial development. Both will benefit from the exchanges, taking inspiration for further actions and initiatives that could be implemented locally, as well as for finding long-term vision of their development. If you are interested to get involved with MULTIPLY, either as a forerunner or as a committed city, stay tuned for further information!

At the end of January 2019 the MULTIPLY consortium met for the first time to get to know each other and discuss how to support the uptake of integrated urban planning in European municipalities. Large part of the discussions concerned first important project activities, most importantly the organisation of the city competition to select forerunner and committed cities that will take part in the MULTIPLY peer-to-peer learning programme. We sharpened the definition of a forerunner and committed city and worked on related criteria and indicators. We also discussed how to organise the competition to reach the vastest possible group of potentially interested municipalities. Soon, you will see the results of these debates – the competition will be announced shortly!

With the 1st of December 2018 we have officially started the implementation of MULTIPLY aiming to encourage public authorities to uptake integrated urban planning at district level through a dedicated peer-to-peer learning programme. Within the next months we’re planning to organise a competition for forerunner and committed cities, who will be matched for the knowledge transfer. Committed cities will learn more on the practical implementation of integrated transport, energy and land-use planning solutions, which help to make use of the full energy saving potential of the district and – at the same time – make them comfortable places to live in. As a result of the intensive peer-to-peer exchanges the committed cities will develop plans for the energy efficient development of a model district in their territory. Also, the overall MULTIPLY experience will be widely disseminated (among others in a form of a European guidebook on integrated urban planning) to encourage other EU municipalities to follow and take concerted action towards energy transition.