News of European City Centers

Pedestrian crossings are usually more dangerous than other spots of the urban environment for pedestrians. To tackle this issue, the Spanish citiy of Valencia used high and low-tech technologies to secure them.   On the one hand, Valencia City Council focus on improving pedestrian crossing for people with functional diversity, such as people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The Department of…

Last week, the German parliament approved a bill introducing a €9-a-month ticket scheme for all city and regional transport modes. Inspired by the Austrian “Klimaticket” introduced last year, the measure aims to encourage the use of public transportation instead of cars. First introduced to face the current living cost crisis and save energy in the context of the war in…

In 2018, the city of Brest launched a unique project in France: “Objectif Couleurs“. This device encourages residents to repaint the facade of their houses with bright colors. This scheme is the result of a grassroots process. Indeed, in the 1990s and 2000s, the local association of the Loucheur neighborhood decided to repaint their facades without official approval. Afterward, the…

The benefits of cycling are now not to be proven: exercise, health, traffic, accessibility for all public, quality of life, or noise. Yet despite the beautiful weather conditions, Portuguese cities can have trouble convincing drivers to trade their cars for a bike. Thus the city of Braga, alongside Istanbul (Turkey) and Tallinn (Estonia), took the opportunity offered by the European…

In the heart of the Cypriot capital city lies a peaceful community garden. The story goes that in October 2019, an energetic team called Gardens of the Future presented their project and won the Climathon Nicosia Concours. This award kickstarted the project to makegarden reality. With the help of hundreds of volunteers, the derelict space soon became a flourishing sustainable…

In Hungary, the transport sector accounts for 20% of CO2 emissions. To tackle this issue on a national level, the National Hydrogen Strategy was adopted last June to push the adoption of this new technology. It encompasses the rapid extension of the production capacities, the creation of 40 filling points, and the purchase of almost 5 000 hydrogen-powered buses and…

Situated 60km away from Dublin, the town of Drogheda has seen in the past years an increase in population, boosted by the Covid pandemic and subsequent move of Dubliners looking for more space. Thus the municipality aims to reconnect the newcomers and already inhabitants to their town through culture. In this framework, officials unveiled the first six murals of the…

Switching their energy supply to renewables is central for municipalities to reach their carbon emissions goals. Being one of the most local green energy makes photovoltaic particularly easy to get city dwellers involved. Thus Dornbirn in Austria (50 000 inhabitants) and Burgas in Bulgaria (200 000 inhabitants) are taking two different but complementary paths to reach their goals. In Dornbirn,…

You probably already know the “15 minutes city”. Highlighted by Paris, the concept aims to design the city in order to meet all the basic needs within a 15-minute radius on foot or by bike. But the swedes came to the even more local concept: the One-minute city! The ambition of the concept is to focus on single streets and…

In the old days, prisons were commonly located close to the city centers. Nowadays, the closure of these outdated places creates new challenges and opportunities for the municipalities. Most of them are demolished to make space for modern buildings, but some historical architectures deserve preservation.  It is the case for the Lukiškės Prison in Vilnius, which tells a rich and…