European Mobility Week: This Year under the Slogan “CHOOSE. CHANGE. COMBINE.”

Healthy cities, municipalities and regions are at it again. This year, the “EUROPEAN MOBILILITY WEEK” (16th – 22nd of September) campaign is on the theme of multimodality – with the slogan “Choose. Change. Combine.” 

European Mobility Week and the Do the Right Mix campaign are being combined to support sustainable urban mobility. The aim of the combination is to expand and complement the established format of the European Mobility Week with a year-round activity and create a unified online community aimed at promoting sustainable urban transportation in Europe. The merged campaigns will adopt the name and logo “Do the Right Mix” and the European Mobility Week will remain as an annual highlight of activities.

On the new platform, organizers of Mobility Week, local authorities, non-governmental organizations, citizen groups and many others can meet to showcase their promotional initiatives, find inspirational ideas and an information campaign and also apply for participation in the European Commission contest – Award in the Area of Sustainable Urban Mobility.

Healthy Cities, Municipalities and Regions are joining the campaign this year as well. You can find the list of Healthy Cities that have joined the campaign so far and the links to their most interesting events on the website: https://www.ZdravaMesta.cz/etm.

The list of cities involved and information on the international context of the campaign can be found on the website: http://www.mobilityweek.eu/

Information on EMW (European Mobility Week) is available on the Ministry of Environment website: http://www.mzp.cz/cz/news_etm_2015

The National Network of Healthy Cities of the Czech Republic, together with other professional partners, held a press conference for the commencement of EMW in 2015. The press release is cited below.

“Feeling Maps” – A New Service of the National Network of Healthy Cities

From September of this year, the HCCZ Association offers a new service free of charge to its members – the so-called “feeling map”. It will emerge in cooperation with the Palacký University in Olomouc (PUO) within the framework of the Healthy Cities, Municipalities and Regions public forum. “Feeling maps have enormous power to present spatial information in an understandable and widely accepted form. Feeling maps bring the possibility to actively involve citizens in the collection of information as well as opinions on the locality in which they live. The idea comes from the concept GeoParticipate – a term which describes the utilization of spatial instruments in the involvement of citizens in the decision-making process that concerns them. Most often it involves decision-making about a public space, but it can also involve sharing information or feelings about the neighborhood in which they live,” informs Mgr. Jiří Pánek (PUO) on the PocitoveMapy.cz website.

A given city or region will receive its feeling map, created within the Healthy City Forum, in common office format, or possibly as a GIS layer. For next year, the National Network of Healthy Cities is preparing its own map server, where these maps will be collectively available and where it will be possible to interconnect them with additional information important for planning and monitoring situations in cities, for example in the HCCZ DataPlan. 

The activity is being realized with the financial support of the State Environmental Fund of the Czech Republic (SEF) and the Ministry of Environment (ME) within the framework of the HCCZ project entitled “Awareness raising and education for municipalities, city neighborhoods and the public on sustainable development and the environment”.  

The European Healthy Cities Networks present themselves in a new WHO publication

In the summer months of 2015 a new publication of the World Health Organization (WHO) was published on the topic of national networks of Healthy cities in the European region – National Healthy Cities Networks in the WHO European Region, promoting health and well-being throughout Europe.

The material, on which the individual coordinators of national networks have collaborated over a long period, and which was redacted by WHO and its specialized institutions, summarizes in its introduction the focus, activities and development of the Healthy Cities movement. It focuses on the common features, the directions of development, and the targets of the networks of Healthy Cities in individual countries. The publication also presents selected national networks, listing not only basic information about them regarding the number of members, contacts and the like, but also their main objectives, their history and future plans, as well showcase projects or pilot activities.

Here, on pages 48 to 51, the Czech Republic also has its contribution, which among others also includes the topic of assessing the most advanced Healthy cities in terms of the quality method of the local Agenda 21. 

The publication is in the English language and can be downloaded here

The material is a useful and beneficial inspiration not only to individual Healthy Cities and their partners, but also to other institutions and organization that are actively engaged in the subject of the development of municipalities and regions.

Inspirations from Abroad: Sustainable Development Is a Sign of Quality of Cities in Switzerland

On July 5 to July 7, 2015, representatives of the HCCZ office took part in a study trip to Lausanne, Switzerland, where they exchanged experiences from the implementation of sustainable development of cities and regions in practice with their long-term professional partners from the Equiterre Association. Thanks to support from the Swiss-Czech Cooperation Program, the cooperation that began several years ago is continuing.

During the two-day working meeting, not only did the Czech network of Healthy Cities and the Swiss Equiterre Association make their presentations, but contributions were also presented by representatives of Swiss state administration and at the canton level. 

The Equiterre Association, which is an organization with more than a 30-year history, links municipalities, cities and regions as well as non-profit and private organizations interested in implementing sustainable development. Cooperation with HCCZ is thus self-explanatory. In Lausanne, the Equiterre team presented its current projects and activities. Among the interesting projects that appeared were an assessment of the consequences of policies on health (HIA) in the area of asylum policy and an approach to the designing and building of sites for sustainable living. Another inspiration, for example, were approaches to community gardens in an urban environment and the conception of public space. Community gardens were conceived not only in terms of urban environment quality, but also in terms of fulfilling an inclusive or therapeutic role.  

Cooperating Swiss national and regional organizations were also represented in the meeting. Josianne Maury, an expert from the Swiss ministry “Office of Spatial Development (ARE)”, presented experience from programs and subsidy sources on the federal level. The Ministry supports the implementation of sustainable development projects of cities and cantons in Switzerland, and also the cooperation between municipalities and the private sector. Gael Gillabert, a representative of the Vaud canton, presented the methods with which cities and cantons compare themselves with each other in their implementation of sustainable development.  A set of sustainable development indicators was discussed, as well as the methods of obtaining data and working with outputs. Also inspirational was the manner of assessment of the sustainability of projects being prepared by individual cities and cantons in Switzerland. 

The Swiss party welcomed the Czech experience with all of the topics mentioned. Particularly sustainable development indicators of cities in the Czech Republic will be the object of further cooperation, as well as the HCCZ website and Czech nationwide systems for sharing good practices between municipalities. 

The project has been financed from the Partnership Fund (Czech-Swiss Collaboration Programme).

HCCZ Makes Presentation at the “Northern” European Healthy Cities Conference 2015

The 26th conference of representatives of WHO Healthy Cities from the entire European region was held at the end of June 2015 in the most northern European Healthy City, Finnish Kuopio. 

The central theme this year was the systemic inclusion of the subject of health in all prepared and implemented policies (Health in all Policies – HiaP). Dr. Agis Tsouros, longtime director of the international WHO Healthy Cities Program, said in his introductory speech: “Health is the fundamental condition, indicator and output of a sustainable development of cities.” He further spoke about global challenges in the area of health and its support on the local level. Throughout the meeting, discussions were held on effective partnerships across sectors and levels of public administration and on the best way to integrate health among the key strategic themes of the political leadership of cities and municipalities. Areas such as transportation, urban planning and sustainable tourism and their impact on health did not remain on the sideline. 

An interesting view and inspiration from overseas was presented by Christine McLaren, who presented the concept of “Happy City”, which is successfully developing in Canadian Vancouver. On the very first day of the conference, The Czech National Network of Healthy Cities and the City of Litoměřice presented the system of Czech innovation in sustainable development and health at the local level, for example the assessment of municipalities according to the Criteria of the local Agenda 21, and fresh experience from the audit of category “A” sustainable development, in which Litoměřice reports this year. 

The main point of the HCCZ presentation was a Strategy Database and its usefulness for strategic management of sustainable development and health. The Database is not only a national library of strategic documents, but with its assistance individual topics can be searched across documents on a national, regional and local level – for example, precisely the topic of health and its more detailed subtopics. The Strategy Database is being developed under the auspices of the Ministry for Regional Development, which financially supported international promotion of the Database via presentation by a representative of HCCZ at the pan-European conference. 

Participants of the expert section within the conference appreciated not only the systematic approach and cooperation of HCCZ with government departments at the national level, but also the integrated view on the assessment of the progress of cities and municipalities in the Czech Republic toward sustainable development. It was possible here to compare these experiences with other approaches, for example from the city of Cork in Ireland or the city of Pécs in Hungary, which for assessment and monitoring utilize nationwide surveys in the framework of health plans.

This year’s conference was attended by more than 300 representatives of WHO Healthy Cities in Europe and their national networks. 

A subsidy for the development of the Strategy Database in 2015 was provided from the resources of the Ministry for Regional Development.