Winners of the CIVITAS Awards 2019 (L to R): Stockholm (Sweden), Vinnytsia (Ukraine), Bremen (Germany), Antwerp (Belgium)
About the CIVITAS Awards
The CIVITAS Awards highlight some of the most ambitious, innovative, and successful sustainable urban mobility work currently being carried out.
They provide a prime platform for towns and cities to demonstrate their excellence in the field, both in terms of policymaking and implemented measures, whilst also having their efforts recognised by the European Commission.
Winners serve as role models to other towns and cities across Europe, inspiring them in their own initiatives to make cleaner and better urban transport.
CIVITAS Awards 2020 winners revealed
The winners of the CIVITAS Awards 2020 were announced as part of a special session at Urban Mobility Days 2020. Sustainable mobility success stories were recognised in two categories this year:
The “CIVITAS Resilience” award, which recognised a city that have introduced (ad-hoc) bold and transformational measures due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The “CIVITAS Legacy” award, which was given to a city that has translated its commitment to the CIVITAS network and sustainable mobility into high-impact, innovative measures.
The winners were chosen from a shortlist of three finalists in each category. Read full details here.
CIVITAS Resilience award
Combining a rapid reaction with a long-term vision, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) was the deserving winner of the “CIVITAS Resilience” award for its extensive ad-hoc initiatives.
These include increased space for pedestrians and cyclists, and car-free access to key roads on weekends – in the context of its “Mobility Plan for the New Normal”, which heralds the scaling up and replication of short-term solutions.
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria set itself apart from other cities by adapting its crisis response as the basis of a new mobility reality.
The runners-up this category were Porto (Portugal) and Rome (Italy).
CIVITAS Legacy award
A CIVITAS member since 2008, Funchal (Portugal) scooped the “CIVITAS Legacy” award with its decision to address traffic head-on by imposing multiple traffic access restrictions and closing city centre streets to vehicles.
This change was driven by involvement in the CIVITAS Initiative, which has also helped Funchal become a testbed for innovative solutions, such as automatic traffic counters. Politicians from the Portuguese city have also served as members of the CIVITAS Political Advisory Committee.
Further plaudits in this category went to Aachen (Germany) and Larissa (Greece).
Urban Mobility Days session recording
The prizes and benefits
Custom acknowledgement
Winners received a custom trophy recognising their city’s commitment to cleaner, more sustainable public transport.
Pan-European visibility
All cities wiere showcased on the CIVITAS website and promotional material and received pan-European media coverage via a press release written about the winners.
Short videos were produced showcasing finalists' mobility achievements.
The Jury Members
Find out more information on the four jury members for the CIVITAS Awards 2020 below.
Doris Wiederwald
Policy Advisor, Department Mobility Transformation & Ecosystems, AustriaTech
Doris Wiederwald holds a Master’s Degree in environmental system sciences and has 20 years of experience in mobility, transport, spatial and regional development. She has worked in numerous national and international projects, programmes, and activities on sustainable mobility. Since 2017, she has worked for AustriaTech, a 100% subsidiary of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology. It was established to accompany mobility innovation processes, advise on the implementation of national and European guidelines, and promote exchange and joint learning between stakeholders. As Policy Advisor in the Department Mobility Transformation and Ecosystems, she works on the strategic integration of different mobility fields and is in charge of urban mobility, works on monitoring and evaluation of system impacts induced by mobility innovation, and supports the Austrian Mobility Labs in their implementation and strategic embedding. Furthermore, she cooperates with different administrative levels to transfer knowledge and support capacity building regarding new mobility services and technologies and their target-oriented implementation in the existing mobility system.
Jaime Ruiz Huescar
Co-Founder, CITIES FORUM
Jaime is co-founder of CITIES FORUM, a global organisation that drives urban sustainable development worldwide. It provides strategic advice to governments and cities and assists them in meeting their sustainability goals. He is an expert in sustainable urban mobility and is an evaluator for European Commission e-mobility and smart mobility projects. He is an industrial engineer and has completed executive education programmes in reputed universities such as Oxford and business schools like IESE. Jaime is a strategic advisor of Latam Mobility, an international organisation devoted to disseminating best practises in Latin America about sustainable urban mobility. He was the e-mobility manager of the city of Murcia, one of the most active and committed cities in Europe in terms of promoting and implementing sustainable mobility initiatives. He also had the role of smart city projects coordinator in the city of Murcia for four years and he became one of the coordinators of RECI, the Spanish network of intelligent cities. Jaime is currently leading the involvement of CITIES FORUM in the “USER CHI” Project. Finally, he has developed relevant strategic consultancy services such as the “The E-mobility Action Plan for the Historic Center of Quito (Ecuador)”, which was commissioned by the Inter-American Development Bank.
Clemence Cavoli
Research and Teaching Fellow, Centre for Transport Studies, UCL
Clemence Cavoli is an academic based at the Centre for Transport Studies, University College London (UCL). She specialises in environmental and transport policies and planning, in particular those linked to urban mobility. Her recent research projects investigate the extent to which growing cities can accelerate their urban development processes to support sustainable mobility. She currently coordinates an international research project, T-SUM, focusing on sustainable urban mobility transitions in sub-Saharan Africa. She holds a PhD from UCL, which assessed the impact European Union laws and programmes, including CIVITAS, had on urban mobility policies. Clemence advises supranational, national and local policymakers and regularly works as an independent expert and consultant for the European Commission.
Dejan Crnek
Vice-Mayor of Ljubljana, Chairperson of the current CIVITAS PAC
Before being elected as a member of the Ljubljana City Council and appointed Vice-Mayor in 2014, he served three terms as President of the District Council of Šmarna Gora. In that role, he dedicated much attention to developing and improving public infrastructure in the district, with a special focus on mobility measures. These included traffic calming and improving public transport accessibility by extending public transport lines and introducing additional bus stop. In his role as Vice-Mayor, he is actively involved in implementing the new traffic policy of the City of Ljubljana; this emphasizes promoting alternative mobility modes and multimodality. In addition, he has participated in activities related to Ljubljana European Green Capital 2016 and in European Mobility Week. His other main fields of activity within the City of Ljubljana are sports and cooperation with city districts.
