Video about Connective Cities’ learning process II conducted in May 2021 – June 2022 to support municipalities in fine-tuning their project ideas in the fields of energy efficiency and renewable energy and developing them further towards bankable project proposals.
Watch video at YouTube:
More information on the dialogue event in November 2021:
Development of bankable project proposals for sustainable urban energy planning in Southeast Europe
This report summarizes the activities developed under the project “The Development of COVID-19 Recovery Solutions at Municipal Level in the Areas of Digitalization and Crisis Management.” The project covered Southeast Europe and was conducted from September 2021 until December 2021.
The Report describes in detail the capacity-building processes conducted to support municipal resilience within the working groups of digitalization and crisis management over the course of several months, while also highlighting good practices that were identified and small urban initiatives that were developed together during the collaboration with urban practitioners from across the SEE region.
Additionally, the report covers processes and steps undertaken to support the expansion of the Connective Cities Network through encouraging more active and practical involvement of its current and new members.
For presentations and explanatory videos please refer also to
Development of Covid-19 recovery solutions at municipal level in the area of digitalisation
Development of Covid-19 recovery solutions at municipal level in the areas of Crisis Management
The success of sustainable mobility plans and projects often depends on the commitment and acceptance by citizens. Therefore, citizen engagement in planning and implementation of sustainable mobility in municipalities turns out to be a key success factor not only for impactful implementation of new concepts, but also for co-creating smart sustainable mobility measures. This happens when solutions are developed together with stakeholders.
Due to the consequences of the pandemic citizen engagement is limited or impossible. This can endanger the success and/or slowing down necessary sustainable mobility projects. For this reason, the Connective Cities working group «Sustainable Mobility after COVID-19» created a prototype for «Toolbox citizen engagement for sustainable mobility planning and implementation».
The toolbox covers different levels and degrees of participation. It is a collection of successful tools and roadmaps that can be used in different phases of sustainable mobility planning and implementation in and after the pandemic.
From July to December 2020, an initial intensive global programme on ‘municipal response to the pandemic’ was conducted by Connective Cities that has been augmented with the programme ‘municipal recovery from the pandemic’ starting August 2021. The working group “Biodiversity and Environmental Protection” was the first group to be established as part of this programme.
This Guidebook is one result of an extensive exhange. It explains, why Urban Gardening Matters? and guides the reader through all steps of an urban gardening project – from the first situational analysis, over the preparatory and implementation phase up to a final monitoring and evaluation.
To support digitalisation capacity building in cities and municipalities, four intensive workshops were conducted with urban practitioners and relevant representatives throughout SEE. The workshop consisted of two parts: a learning activity, followed by collective work. These events took place online, using Miro and video conference tools, with 2-4 facilitators.
Watch video at YouTube ansehen:
More: Digitalisation: Developing your own ideas based on international practice – Insights into the work of the Digitisation Working Group in South Eastern Europe
In the event 25 urban practitioners and experts from 6 countries exchanged on innovative and efficient financing approaches to build climate resilient and low-carbon cities. They were united by the fact that all of them are working at the forefront of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in their cities. The event was jointly organised by Connective Cities, TURBOCLIC (Transformation – Urban Opportunities – Climate Change), an initiative from GIZ’s sector networks TUEWAS (Transport Environment Energy and Water in Asia) and SNGA (Governance Asia).
Working group of crisis management, consisting of urban practitioners from 14 municipalities across 9 countries: Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and Ukraine, commenced its work on 20th September 2021 with Kick-off meeting.
Considering that this initiative comes as part of Connective Cities COVID-19 Programme and its objective is to support cities’ resilience during and after COVID-19, working group had embarked on a journey of rigorous analysis and discussions on matters and issues most relevant to their realities, worsened due to pandemic.
Process of work for the group consisted of homework being prepared for each session, depicting various scenarios of crises, disasters, their solution schemes as well as plans that could have been internalized by institutions for future preparedness.
During the session’s topics of Disaster Risk Reduction, First Response Mechanisms, Fake News and Crisis Communication were featured as important structures and knowledge basis for participants to take into account in their everyday works.
As work in the sessions continued, group members had jointly worked on the list of challenges, they considered important, such as lack of resources invested in piloting of appropriate technologies, contingency plans or in support of most vulnerable groups or even establishments such as SMEs. After compiling a comprehensive catalogue of challenges, participants were asked to focus on coming up with initiatives that would come as interventions dealing with issues indexed before. Participants were later using S.M.A.R.T. scheme for assessment of initiatives and solutions they have come forward with.
As a consequence of this series of workshops on guided peer-to-peer exchange, involved urban practitioners gained, tremendous experience in coming up with action plans, they learned methods and outlets of effective crisis communications, while also gaining some theoretical practice in potential risk and loss assessment.
Working Group has met on four occasions, allowing members to present their initiatives, projects and thoughts on establishing elaborate crisis response mechanisms in their respective municipalities.
Workshop I: identification of crisis management, resilience and Covid-19 response challenges
Workshop III Crisis Management Southeast Europe (SEE): Prioritisation and solutions scan
Workshop IV Crisis Management in Southeast Europe (SEE): Identification of cities’ future initiative
Prior to the introduction of the Integrated Development Plan in 2015, all departments of Livingstone Municipal Council had their own isolated planning process, resulting in a waste of resources. In 2015, an integrated planning approach was introduced for a 10-year period with broad participation of residents. Stan Mwanakayaya, Director of Urban Planning at Livingstone Municipal Council, describes the experience of the first five years in this podcast.
View podcast at YouTube:
Connective Cities and its partners invite you to the sixth Insight Session, which will be held under the title “The post-COVID City – bringing together urban practitioners to work towards greener cities” virtualy on 18 October, 10:00-11:30 CEST.
The Insight Session will address the question “The city after Corona? When urban planners, climate scientists and health experts work together, the result can only be green”. The session is part of the so-called Urban October. During the month of October, UN-Habitat and partner organisations organise activities and discussions on sustainable urbanisation. The Insight Session will focus on the challenges and lessons learned in designing cities to better resist the spread of disease and redesigning urban planning to adapt to the risks of health crises.
Further information: Insight Session: The post-COVID City – bringing together urban practitioners to work towards greener cities | Connective Cities Network
Event Language: English
The Insight Session will be moderated by Franziska Loibl, Ute Maas and Tino Bosire. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us:
Franziska Loibl (franziska.loibl@giz.de)
Ute Maas (ute.maas@giz.de)
Tino Bosire (tino.bosire@giz.de)
Connective Cities and its partners invite municipal practitioners to a two-day Covid-19 Response Dialogue on Covid-19 and municipal waste management to be held virtually on 9 and 11 November 2021.
The event brings together municipal experts from Germany with international urban practitioners to discuss municipal waste management during and after the pandemic.
Two main aspects of waste management and Covid-19 will be covered during the event:
Both aspects can be better dealt with if gender-sensitive strategies are considered. Therefore, the exchange will give special attention to the gender perspective.
More information: Call for participants [pdf, 3 Seiten, 339 kb]
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us:
Thiago Garcia
thiago.garcia@engagement-global.de
Phone +49 (0)228-20717-2633
Alice Balbo
Alice.Balbo@staedtetag.de
Phone: 49 (0)221-3771-573
