The MedUrbanTools website aims to share case studies of projects in operation in Mediterranean cities. The tool has been presented within the framework of the agreement between MedCities and the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB).

Mr. Oriol Illa, director of the International and Cooperation Area of ​​the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, opened the session by welcoming and explaining the importance of this tool for the AMB in terms of return and benefit. Cities and municipalities in the metropolitan area can extract from it. In addition, he also remarked that presenting it within the public body is one of the priorities in order to make it a useful instrument that can be enriched with more projects: “It will be the use of the tool which will mark its success“.

For his part, the Secretary General of MedCities, Mr. Josep Canals, made a brief presentation of the network of Mediterranean cities to contextualize the reason for the online tool and stressed the importance of making it known both internally, to the departments of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, as in other forums where the transfer of knowledge and the capitalization of results of various projects may be of interest.

Mr. Oriol Barba, the director of MedCities has explained in detail the navigation system of the tool, divided by topics such as sustainable mobility, the environment, waste management, the creation of city strategies and governance, the energy transition, urban planning or climate change, among others. In addition, it has been taught how everything that can be found is arranged in three different formats, depending on whether they are the explanation of case studies detailing the objectives and results of the project, whether they are a methodological tool – in format file- or if they are voices, with interviews with experts in various subjects.

In the words of Mr. Barba: “The MedUrbanTools online platform is a tool and a repository of projects, live and open, that aim to be useful in terms of sharing the knowledge that Mediterranean cities make available to others that may be of interest. -they are for the same topics and most importantly, it allows them to learn from each other in a horizontal and transversal way“.

MedUrbanTools aims to go further and be a reflection of everything that is worked on in Mediterranean projects, which is why it is open to other entities and platforms – and not just MedCities – to publish their content of interest. The short- and medium-term goal is for the tool to be much more than a bank of good practice. According to Mr. Oriol Barba: “We seek to recover those contents that, due to the nature of projects that have a certain duration, could be forgotten on other websites and platforms. We want to regain knowledge and, above all, see who is useful and how cities can capitalize on learning, both from good and successful practices, and from those obstacles that have been encountered throughout the project“.

To end the session, the head of the International Relations Service of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, Xavier Tiana, acknowledged the good work done and the usefulness of the MedUrbanTools portal and closed with a reflection on the need to incorporate even more content from the cities of the northern Mediterranean, as well as experiences and projects of some of the 36 municipalities of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area that reflect the work carried out by the various areas and departments of the institution.