2023 May

Lw1 University of Camerino (UNICAM), Italy

The “San Benedetto del Tronto” Local Workshop dealt with the Sant’Antonio neighborhood in San Benedetto del Tronto, a city of 45,000 inhabitants on the Adriatic coast, in the Marche Region. 7000 inhabitants live this district characterized by a flat area facing the sea, with medium and high population density with mixed functions (office, residential, tourist, commercial). The neighborhood is also characterized by a low-density residential hilly area, to the west of the SS16 state road which runs along the entire Adriatic coast. It houses numerous facilities on an urban scale: the hospital, a private clinic, a nursing home (RSA); numerous Schools; the Town Hall and the Municipal Library. It is a lively district, with numerous commercial activities that have their privileged location in Viale De Gasperi and along some transversal axes. The traffic is chaotic, the district is in fact divided into sections by the urban and territorial crossing mobility (the railway, the seafront, Viale De Gasperi, the SS16); pedestrian and bicycle mobility is scarce, with the exception of the waterfront. Not all urban planning forecasts have been implemented over time: there are some empty areas of private property; there is an area near the railway that houses a power station serving the railway that will have to be decommissioned. There are some parks that are very popular with the local population. The local community is very active, there is a neighborhood committee that promotes opportunities to get together throughout the year. In summer, due to the important tourist flow (San Benedetto is one of the most popular seaside city of the Region for tourism), the lack of parking and traffic congestion become unsustainable. In the past, the district was affected by numerous flood damages, also due to the presence, on the northern edge, of the Torrente Albula. In recent years following some interventions on the sewage infrastructure, the problem has decreased, with the exception of the underpasses. The municipality has a climate mitigation plan and a joint SECAP plan is also in the process of being approved. Traffic congestion, lack of parking and poor care of public spaces (bumpy sidewalks, poor public lighting), poor connection between green areas and meeting spaces are among the main problems of the neighborhood.

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Lw2 Cyprus Institute (CyI), Cyprus

As part of the Erasmus+ CliCCHE project, the Sustainable Built Environment group of the Cyprus Institute ran a series of workshops titled “Urban Health”, with the participation of Cyprus Institute (CyI) students, colleagues, citizens and public administration representatives. The aim of the workshops was to introduce students and teachers to a novel, non-formal mode of education that builds upon the competences of partakers and promotes the principles of co-participation and co-design focused on mitigating climate change and improving health in cities. While these principles are essential components of any urban regeneration project, we mimicked regeneration values and integrated them in the development of the curriculum. During the workshops, we tested several innovative participative tools (flipped classroom, debate, expert panel, simulation software and on-site mapping activities) to foster shared and conscious experiences among teachers, students and all kinds of stakeholders.

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Lw4 University of Belgrade (UB), Serbia

The “Valjevo” Local Workshop dealt with problems related to mostly the city center of the city of Valjevo. The city of Valjevo is an administrative center of the Kolubara District in western Serbia. Fairly close to the capital of the country, it possesses great significance in urban planning, especially in regard to climate change and health.  According to the data from 2022. The administrative area of Valjevo had 82 169 inhabitants, while 56 145 of them were urban dwellers. The main characteristics of the city consist of its nature, rivers, and hills. Valjevo occupies an area of about 905 square kilometers, and in this area, there are three rivers – Kolubara, Gradac, and Ljubostinja. The inhabitants of the city claim that the biggest problem in Valjevo, and their biggest threat is air pollution. The city also had flooding issues in the past, before the construction of the new embankment of the Kolubara river in the city center. The problem with air pollution most likely lies in the fact that the majority of the city’s population lives in individual housing blocks, which are not connected to the city’s central heating system. During the winter months, these individual houses mostly rely on burning coal in their furnaces.  The residents also suffer from traffic congestion, lack of parking spaces (mostly in the city center), and from numerous heat islands, located in several places in the center of Valjevo.

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Lw3 University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE), Portugal

Local Workshop “How to make Healthier cities” concentrated on putting in practice the tools concerning the topic “Get to know the neighborhood from above and from within”. The tools were: Walking as a research method; Fieldnotes; Interviewing; Photo Elicitation; 15 minutes proximity. The Local Workshop also implemented a tool called Stone Soup Game, which is, shortly, like “Place Standard with climate lens”, though streamlined version. The idea came from the popular Portuguese myth that named the recipe (Sopa da Pedra). In this game, the facilitators use colored post-its instead of the recipe’s ingredients (orange like carrots, pink like ham, green like cabbage, blue like water, and yellow like olive oil). The participants contribute with “an ingredient”, writing in the post-it the solution they understand as better for a specific local challenge, especially considering climate change. Since the post-its will be mixed, the results won’t be selective in relation to the diverse participants.

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