Ukrainian Towns and Cities Embrace Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning - and CIVITAS
A recent workshop entitled “Sustainable urban mobility planning (SUMP) in Ukrainian cities: partnership of municipality and community” took place mid-November in Vinnytsia, central Ukraine, about two and a half hours from the capital. The event was organized for representatives of city authorities and civil society to initiate new approaches to strategic sustainable urban mobility planning. CIVITAS, represented through Jerome Simpson, coordinator of the CIVITAS VANGUARD support action shared examples of integrated planning from CIVITAS cities as well as case studies on stakeholder consultation and citizen communications, thanks to two books published by VANGUARD on those themes.
CIVITAS gained further visibility during the subsequent press conference and the result was that a good number of the 25 or so cities present expressed a wish to get further involved in the Initiative. Chief among them were Vinnytsia, which has achieved much already in terms of sustainable mobility, including a recently modernised tram fleet (which offers free WIFI) courtesy of its Swiss sister city, allocation of ten percent of its infrastructure budget to cycle paths and a 2020 development strategy under which it is now drafting its first SUMP. The city is supported by a highly capable international team (which includes Swiss and Croatian nationals) under the auspices of its Institute of Urban Development. Vinnytsia, alongside other towns like Lviv, Kiev and Ivano-Frankivsk all showed impressive progress in the field of urban mobility and are active participants of European Mobility Week too.
The event, which included two site visits and a world-cafe, was organized by Forza, a Ukrainian NGO in Uzhgorod, at the border with Hungary. It was funded by the Heinrich Boll Foundation. All presentations are available here on Forza's webpage. An English news item on the event is now available on Vinnytsia City Council's homepage here.
