Promoting Soft or Active mobility in the Mediterranean was the topic of the Urban Transports’ pitch session at the European Week of Regions and Cities held the 14 of October online. You can now find the recordings of the session here and all the information related to this event by following #EURegionsWeek.

The session hosted interesting interventions by the cities of Sfax and Larnaca through their municipal representatives. From Sfax, Mme Karoui, head of Works division, shared the vision for a common mobility agency in the city and the work on a road design guide to standardise it in agreement with local and national partners. The lessons learned by both cities in their experience as replicator of the UTC #Mentoring programme were also shared. The Pioneering entities for Larnaca and Sfax are respectively the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona & Misano Adriatico. Mr Andras Karakatsanis, from the municipality of Larnaca, Cyprus, explained how the mentoring process allows for collective thinking and makes it easier to avoid making the same mistakes again and again. 

Prof. Zoi Christoforou recalled the key policy recommendations compiled by the Urban Transport’s first policy brief on the topic of accessible, safe and locally driven cycling policies in the Mediterranean. The brief tackles some of the main challenges of cycling policies’ deployment in our cities and outlines some measures to be taken by local authorities, national governments and even the European Union. You can read it all here : https://bit.ly/2YQgYc4

The Secretary General of MedCities, Josep Canals, also participated in the session “MedCoopAlliance: How multilevel governance fosters green transition”, in which he stressed the importance of the role of the citizens to promote a real change regarding green transition.

MedCities was also present at the CICLO Bcn Conference, a three-in-one congress on cycling policies at the national, European and International level that gathered numerous key stakeholders of the sector. The Urban Transports Community’s tools and findings about soft mobility, and the results of the mentorings, were presented at the session “Building Cycling Communities” held the 8th October in an hybrid format. The community’s policy brief was also presented by selecting some of the key recommendations, and a lot of attention was gained on the document. The City council of Rome was the guest speaker of the second opening session of the same congress, and Ms Tasciotti, local councilor on culture, sports and big events, addressed the challenges of introducing the bike in a busy, densely populated and touristic Mediterranean city like Rome.