EUKN - Italy - GRANDS TRAVAUX: towards a friendly impact of urban regeneration projects

GRANDS TRAVAUX: towards a friendly impact of urban regeneration projects - IT.

Introduction

The GRANDS TRAVAUX project, co-financed by INTERREG IIIC, is a European network of Cities dealing with the challenging issue of the promotion of innovative communication strategies able to ensure a more citizen-friendly impact of urban regeneration measures. It is aimed at strengthening acceptability of urban changes during large urban regeneration processes studying the long terms impacts of regeneration projects.

Description

The GRANDS TRAVAUX project’s main aim is the promotion of communication tools for Cities involved in urban renewal processes. It focuses on the enhancement of innovative communication strategies aimed at strengthening citizens’ involvement into urban regeneration processes and promoting their awareness and participation in urban regeneration strategies. The overall objective of GRANDS TRAVAUX is changing the current schemes of institutional communication concerning complex urban projects, towards a new and integrated communication approach. This approach is based on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative, short, medium and long-term information tools. Lessons learnt from the past experiences, with particular regard to citizens’, administrations’ and stakeholders’ involvement are the starting point of the GRANDS TRAVAUX project.

Participants

9 partners from 7 European countries are participating in the project:

ANCI (Italian National Association of Municipalities) - Lead Partner
Florence (Italy)
Rome (Italy)
Leipzig (Germany)
Limassol (Cyprus)
Tallinn (Estonia)
Valencia (Spain)
Warszawa (Poland)
the Development Agency of Athens (Greece).

Network lead

ANCI (Italian National Association of Municipalities).

Objectives

The broad objective of the project is to promote communication strategies and information tools concerning urban development issues, in order to:

raise the proximity for the citizens towards the decision-making process
effectively communicate to the citizens the long term advantages of the urban regeneration programmes and projects
underline the importance of the urban regeneration measures as opportunities for the future growth of the Cities and as an instrument to promote a competitive role of urban areas
address the urban marketing as an opportunity for all the categories of citizens (e.g. economic and social partners)
increase citizens’ awareness towards the dynamism of the urban regeneration strategies.

The network promotes a communication strategy based on a progressive scale of citizens’ involvement consisting in the following steps: information, education, involvement and empowerment.

Products

The GRANDS TRAVAUX project is also aimed at promoting the connexions between a local authority and its citizenship, involving aspects of representative and participative democracy, policy making and capacity building of local public actors. At the beginning of the project implementation, the issue was the communication of urban works at the road planning level, while at the end the project reached higher level of urban governance concerning strategic planning and economic growth. Some of the results obtained are:

City of Rome: the Tiburtina Station has been renewed and the sourrounding neighbourhood has been regenerated with a great consensus of inhabitants
City of Florence: the urban renewal project about the tramway has been an occasion to work on the issue of public opinion and to compare the local experience with the one of other European cities.

EU involvement

The INTERREG IIIC GRANDS TRAVAUX project is co-financed by the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund).

Contact info

ANCI IDEALI
Maria Baroni (Secretary general of the Foundation ANCI IDEALI)

Links

Grands Travaux Project Anci Ideali

Document type

network

Themes

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Community development

Keywords

Citizens' participation