ROSTOCK TO ORGANIZE WEBINARS ON SUSTAINABLE AND GREEN CITIES The City of Rostock has recently been launching new projects with the goal of becoming a greener and smarter city. One of the key components in reaching this goal is the development of green and sustainable mobility. For that purpose, the City of Rostock established its Mobility Department last year in the middle of the pandemic and together with local companies and stakeholders started launching projects on active mobility, cycling, smart mobility and public transport. However, it was important to reach out to international partners in order to learn about best sustainable solutions which could significantly contribute to the development of green projects in Rostock and to bringing new ideas to mobility experts. In the pre-corona era, colleagues would travel and meet each other at conferences or on official visits and learn from each other. The pandemic, on the other way, has put many challenges when it comes to traveling and gathering, but modern technologies have made it possible to meet and exchange best practices worldwide in form of webinars. The Department of International Relations of the City of Rostock has therefore planned four such webinars on sustainable mobility to take place from February to May 38 38
2021. The online meetings are aimed at establishing a wide network of experts on smart and sustainable mobility for the knowledge exchange online and on site, developing joint international projects on mobility and searching for new and fresh ideas in the field. The first webinar, which took place in February 2021 with the support of the partners from Lahti (Finland), Copenhagen and Guldborgsund Municipality (Denmark) focused on the question: How to become a bicycle city? Mobility experts from Rostock introduced projects on developing biking roads in Rostock and actively participated in the exchange of ideas with their international colleagues in online chatrooms. In March 2021, the topic of free and digitized public transport was tackled. The experts from local public transport companies from Rostock, Tallinn (Estonia), Dunkirk (France), Turku (Finland) and Vilnius (Lithuania) successfully shared their experiences in both fields. The third on-line meeting will take place in April. This time the experts from Wuppertal (Germany), Riga (Latvia), and Tartu (Estonia) will meet their colleagues from Rostock to discuss challenges in achieving car - free city centres. And finally, the last webinar from these series will take place in May, and it will concentrate on the implementation of electric mobility in cities, from electric vehicles to electric ferries. The City of Rostock is happy to report that the international mobility network already consists of about 200 mobility experts from Europe and beyond. The organizers of the webinars and the mobility experts from Rostock would like to express their gratitude and appreciation to the international colleagues for sharing their experiences and knowledge. They look forward to another two successful webinars to come, as well as to new contacts and ideas! by Ivana Stijelja| Ivana.stijelja@rostock.de
