CIVITAS CATALIST - A Dissemination and Best Practice Transfer Action
CIVITAS CATALIST is a newcomer in the CIVITAS family, with the aim of validating, exploiting and disseminating the results of the CIVITAS Initiative and, more importantly, of stimulating new cities in the adoption of sustainable, clean and energy efficient urban transport. The project, running between 2007 and 2011, intends to accelerate and facilitate the CIVITAS multiplier effect, a key factor if we are to ensure that the effects of the CIVITAS Initiative are sizeable and durable at the local, national and European level.
The CIVITAS CATALIST consortium consists of CIVITAS I & II cities and research and consulting organisations, altogether 23 partners with considerable CIVITAS experience.The results so far achieved by the CIVITAS Initiative through successive rounds of demonstration projects are highly encouraging. Nevertheless, their effectiveness will be fully visible only in the long run. Both the process of implementation and the effects on a number of sustainability indicators have been extensively documented. Similarly, the level of motivation and commitment of the cities involved has steadily increased. Clearly, many of the cities involved in the CIVITAS Initiative were initially drawn by the availability of EU funding. However, they soon realised that “once you get involved, you find the defining CIVITAS principles of sustainability and integration worthwhile and feasible”.CIVITAS CATALIST thus believes that attracting new cities and, more generally, achieving the advocated “snowball effect”, cannot rely on financial incentives and must be fostered by better understanding and increased awareness of the benefits that can be derived by the CIVITAS approach. In this respect, CIVITAS CATALIST is going to:consolidate, validate and deepen the knowledge of the wider impacts of CIVITAS through an integrated assessment of the CIVITAS measures;promote the results of CIVITAS through a continuing knowledge transfer process; increase the visibility of the CIVITAS policies to the external world of target groups, primarily citizens, institutions, scientists and industry, using innovative means for dissemination and easy to grasp language; maintain and expand the networks for information exchange, extensively resorting to the vast net of alliances available to the project, facilitating and building new alliances, with the ambition to extend the possibility of concrete policy uptake.All of this caters to the core activity of the project, which is essentially to:coach actions for cross-fertilisation, through the promotion of direct exchange and cooperation between cities and the stimulation of partnerships and the kick off of joint initiatives. In doing so, CIVITAS CATALIST will produce publications, organise seminars and conferences, arrange study tours and staff exchanges, and much more. To keep track of these initiatives please stay tuned to the CIVITAS website. Contact:CIVITAS CATALIST Project Co-ordinationMs Loredana MARMORA - ISISlmarmora [at] isis-it [dot] comMr Mario GUALDI - ISISmgualdi [at] isis-it [dot] comPhone: 0039 06 32 12 65 5Fax: 0039 06 32 13 04 9
