News of European City Centers

Milan, the capital of fashion, is at a crossroad concerning pollution. As we are facing more and more issues having to do with climate change, a decision has to be made to reduce emissions. The mayor is choosing to target private traffic within the confines of the city center in order to reduce the pollution from car exhausts. To go…

In this municipality, the initiative consists in gathering several little businesses within the same commercial premises. The main goal is to encourage small businesses to take a chance to open their shops and test out the profitability while enjoying a lower rent. This comes after the realization that there needs to be a change of strategy in order to revitalize…

As it is the case in most city centers across Europe, there is a need to adapt to the changes following the pandemic which fueled the development of e-commerce amongst other things. Germany has understood the challenge, the main take-away being that we need to rethink city centers as an ensemble. It is the whole public space that has to…

Located in Brittany, Saint-Brieuc is a mid-sized city with more than 45 000 inhabitants.Music boxes installed in the streets of Saint-Brieuc surprise passersby! They are the work of the multidisciplinary art collective “The Anomik Nation” which “offers music to passersby”. Since 2018, the concept seduced plenty of European cities while installing more than 250 music boxes in France, Portugal, and…

The Municipality of Coimbra is developing and implementing a strategy to revitalize the historic city center, organizing dynamic and attractive cultural events for all age groups and different audiences. The aim is to attract the city’s inhabitants and visitors to the “heart of the city”, creating new economic, social, and cultural dynamics in a unique area of Coimbra, full of…

What solution to face the scarcity of urban space and climate change? To this question, the city of Rotterdam answered with the Rooftop Walk: a promenade on several rooftops of the city center connected by a 30-meter-long aerial bridge.  This interesting yellow path is a short-lived installation created by the association “Dakendagen.” The course showcases various solutions that use rooftops…

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…