Category: Integrated urban development

KOTOR – centuries young town on the map of the rainbow cities

Posted on by erik

A UNESCO-protected small town with a rich history and cultural heritage, Kotor is an attractive destination with a lot to offer.

The name itself, in the Greek variant Decaterum, appears in records from the 7th century and has since been known as a city of multi-harmony, openness and acceptance of differences in all matters.

In 2014, the Municipality of Kotor was the first municipality in Montenegro to sign a cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights to improve the status and rights of LGBTQIA+ persons. Since 2020, it has been a proud member of the Rainbow Cities Network, a global network for LGBTQIA+ equality.

Gender mainstreaming and inclusive governance in municipalities

Posted on by erik

Gender equality has emerged as a critical driver of social progress and inclusive governance, in which municipalities play a crucial planning and implementation role. To strengthen the municipal role in gender mainstreaming and inclusive governance, Connective Cities has co-organised a workshop on 8-10 August 2023 in Amman-Jordan for municipal actors and experts to showcase good practices in this field as well as to support the participating municipalities in developing measures to achieve sustainable, inclusive and gender-equitable development in their respective contexts. The collaboration included other programmes: WoMENA, the Municipal Know-how for Host Communities in the Middle East Programme (IKKN) (German-Jordanian-Lebanese) and PAL (German-Palestinian).

Watch video about the workshop at YouTube: https://youtu.be/JHvDIx2e40k

Dresden and Brazzaville embrace urban gardening

Posted on by erik

For Dresden and Brazzaville, urban gardening is a shared field of interest with future potential. Following a dialogue event by Connective Cities and reciprocal visits, the two cities and their partner institutions made use of a virtual exchange format to explore various possibilities for cooperation in the field of urban gardening – as part of their push for sustainable urban development.

Action for Cool Cities: Pathways for carbon reduction in buildings and improvement of outdoor thermal comfort

Posted on by erik

As the first step of the learning process ‘Action for Cool Cities – Pathways for carbon reduction in buildings and improvement of outdoor thermal comfort’, the virtual kickoff event was held on 30 Nov – 1 Dec 2022. During this event, good practices were showcased on the reduction of carbon emissions in building stock and improving outdoor thermal comfort as well as examples of faltering implementation in these key spheres of action.

As a second module of the learning process, Connective Cities workshop on ideation and prototyping took place in Amman, Jordan on the 7th-9th March 2023. The workshop focused on ideation and prototyping of solutions by the participating municipalities within the following thematic fields:

  1. Designing climate-responsive outdoor public spaces and promoting engagement of citizens
  2. Steering Structure: Interdepartmental Communication framework/platform in municipalities
  3. Optimizing existing building and urban design regulations by introducing key performance indicators and improving in-house capacity to drive change
  4. The role of municipality as a regulator and implementer: budget analysis and strategies for cost recovery of climate action measures

Participation in the second module of the learning process enabled the municipalities to share experiences, develop their capacities, and develop ideas for prototyping in their municipalities. The next stage or third module of the learning process gave a chance to these municipalities to test and optimize the envisioned prototypes in an iterative process that included conducting participatory sessions with stakeholders (including citizens, decision makers, and experts). The process revealed the significance of producing quantitative and qualitative evidence to back up the proposed seven solutions.

Action for Cool Cities: Pathways for carbon reduction in buildings and improvement of outdoor thermal comfort

Posted on by erik

As the first step of the learning process ‘Action for Cool Cities – Pathways for carbon reduction in buildings and improvement of outdoor thermal comfort’, the virtual kickoff event was held on 30 Nov – 1 Dec 2022. During this event, good practices were showcased on the reduction of carbon emissions in building stock and improving outdoor thermal comfort as well as examples of faltering implementation in these key spheres of action.

As a second module of the learning process, Connective Cities workshop on ideation and prototyping took place in Amman, Jordan on the 7th-9th March 2023. The workshop focused on ideation and prototyping of solutions by the participating municipalities within the following thematic fields:

  1. Designing climate-responsive outdoor public spaces and promoting engagement of citizens
  2. Steering Structure: Interdepartmental Communication framework/platform in municipalities
  3. Optimizing existing building and urban design regulations by introducing key performance indicators and improving in-house capacity to drive change
  4. The role of municipality as a regulator and implementer: budget analysis and strategies for cost recovery of climate action measures

Participation in the second module of the learning process enabled the municipalities to share experiences, develop their capacities, and develop ideas for prototyping in their municipalities. The next stage or third module of the learning process gave a chance to these municipalities to test and optimize the envisioned prototypes in an iterative process that included conducting participatory sessions with stakeholders (including citizens, decision makers, and experts). The process revealed the significance of producing quantitative and qualitative evidence to back up the proposed seven solutions.

Cooperative Urban Development – Open Society and Normativity in Urban Development

Posted on by erik

Close cooperation between municipalities and civil society leads to improvements in the quality of the procedures used for planning urban projects and the subsequent outcomes, too. Demonstration areas and model projects create opportunities for further exploring new forms of cooperation in the field of urban development and for making headway in terms of co-designing inclusive and liveable cities.

An international event by Connective Cities and the City of Mannheim has enabled professionals with expertise in bottom-up planning approaches to meet with municipal representatives to discuss matters of cooperative urban development. This exchange was embedded in an urban development symposium dedicated to analysing the demands of a contemporary urban planning culture – an event hosted by the City of Mannheim on the site currently occupied by Germany’s National Garden Show (Bundesgartenschau).

The participants brought with them a wealth of expertise and manifold examples of practical experience from 15 cities worldwide. Municipalities from Central and Latin America, North and West Africa as well as all of Europe sent their representatives along. Presentations by Berlin and Amsterdam raised awareness of the importance of a bottom-up approach. Other issues addressed included the requisite modalities for safeguarding projects for pioneer users in the long term and ways of ensuring socially equitable usage given the backdrop of speculation and gentrification. Examples from projects in Aachen, Freetown and Juárez also conveyed the importance of being sensitive to local conditions and of acknowledging the local population’s concerns.

An E-Mobility HUB in Lviv – Climate Innovations from Ukraine

Posted on by erik

The ECCA is a biennial Conference aiming to inspire climate consultants, climate services developers, and policy deliverers at transnational, national, regional, municipal, and community levels to confidently implement effective measures to adapt to the changing climate, especially in the face of increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as flooding, heatwaves, and wildfire.

The 6th ECCA 2023 was organized by a European-wide collaboration led by influential actors JPI Climate and Climate project, MAGICA, supported by the European Commission. The Conference has been convened by projects that have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Program.

The conference Program

The ECCA conference took place in Dublin, Ireland from 19-21 June covering the following thematic areas:

  1. Stepping Up Climate Action: Support Through Climate Platforms and Services.
  2. Adaptation Responses to Sea Level Rise and Coastal Change.
  3. Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change Adaptation.
  4. Preparing for More Frequent and Severe Climate Extremes.
  5. Reframing Societal Transformation by Challenging Underlying Assumptions.
  6. Climate and Social Resilience of Future Energy Infrastructure and Systems.

Win-win: municipalities and the academic community benefit from more collaboration

Posted on by erik

The report documents the most important results of a virtual networking event with participants from Germany, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia, Indonesia, Tanzania, France, Congo (DRC) and Ukraine on 28 March 2023, with the aim of identifying the potential for cooperation between municipalities and scientific institutions and developing recommendations for action. The event was hosted by the City of Heidelberg in cooperation with Connective Cities.

Closer cooperation between municipalities and academic institutions offers both sides plenty of potential that has often not yet been fully exploited. Scholars can help municipalities find ways to adapt to new challenges – such as the impacts of climate change. It also creates many high-quality jobs. At the same time, academic institutions depend on the cities in which they are located to provide good research and working conditions, and an attractive environment for their employees to live in.

Tree trenches for quality of life in Hagen

Posted on by erik

The German City of Hagen lies on the edge of the Sauerland low mountain range and has a hilly topography. Four rivers – the Ruhr, the Volme, the Lenne and the Ennepe – run through the city. As a result, large parts of the city are at risk of flooding, especially during heavy rainfall events. As part of a pilot project, specially developed innovative tree trenches (or tree drains) are now being planted. These are designed to make the city safer, more climate-resilient and thus more liveable.

Bairro Maravilha – marvellous neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro

Posted on by erik

The Bairro Maravilha programme, which translates as ‘Wonderful Neighbourhood’, has been implemented in more than 90 locations in Brazil’s second largest city, Rio de Janeiro. It is providing urbanisation and infrastructure systems in some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city, especially in the suburbs. The programme includes the asphalting of streets, the creation of safe sidewalks, and the restoration of public lighting with LEDs and the installation of a sewerage and drainage network to prevent flooding. In places where there is no space for orderly urbanization, the program builds new housing to reorder the urban space. It has already urbanised over six million square metres across the city, which has improved drainage and living conditions in all the areas concerned.