New Urban Agenda for the EU Partnerships on Greening Cities and Sustainable Tourism: Call for partners closes 16 September 2022

Two Thematic Partnerships are being formed under the Urban Agenda for the EU(link is external) (UAEU): Sustainable Tourism and Greening Cities.

The aim of the Partnerships is to addresses these urban challenges by making multi-level governance tangible through close cooperation between cities, the European Commission, other EU institutions and bodies, national governments and other stakeholders such as non-governmental organisations.

Together they develop action plans to:

• Improve existing regulation with regards to urban areas and urban challenges;
• Support and improve innovative and user-friendly sources of funding for urban areas;
• Share and develop knowledge (data, studies, good practices).

Issues related to urban mobility feature in both new partnerships.

The new Thematic Partnership Sustainable Tourism will focus on the specific issues related to tourism in cities as a crucial component of a sustainable development of the urban economies. Managing the traffic and mobility that goes with tourism needs to be an integral part of it. As a recent policy brief by cities in the Interreg Mediterranean urban transport community put it, 'the growth of touristic activity in European destinations has put the focus on tourism mobility as one of the main technical and political issues to be considered. Tourism and mobility cannot be detached from each other, they must be considered as interdependent phenomena.'

The relationship between tourism and urban mobility was already at the centre of various EU supported actions. Projects like CIVITAS Destinations, DESTI-SMART, Locations, LAST MILE, SUMPORT and Mobilitas, all looked at urban mobility solutions related to tourism. Significant inputs for the tourism industry to on dealing with mobility will come from the New European Urban Mobility Framework.  Green mobility, multimodality, intermodality and shared mobility are all be part of the thematic areas explored by the new Partnership.

The new Thematic Partnership Greening Cities will focus on green and blue infrastructure in an urban context and with extensive links to a number of priority sectors, such as the built environment, sustainable transport and water management. Green Infrastructure is an important instrument for the overarching goal of European transport policy: to reduce the carbon footprint of transport, mitigate the negative effects of land uptake and fragmentation, and boost opportunities to better integrate land use, ecosystem and biodiversity concerns into policy and planning. In the urban context, in particular creation of attractive space for walking and cycling can easily be linked to green infrastructure development.

Cities, Member States, Partner States, Regions, city consortiums, national city umbrella organisations, and other stakeholders which are interested in joining one or both of the two new Thematic Partnerships on Greening Cities and Sustainable Tourism can show their interest by submitting the following application(s) by 16 September 2022 at 18:00 (CET).

1. Application for Thematic Partnership on Greening Cities
2. Application for Thematic Partnership on Sustainable Tourism

More information on the call and the procedure can be obtained here.