A Guide for Integrated Urban Development Planning

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INTEGR-ABLE A guide for integrated urban development planning

INTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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Content Foreword ............................................................................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction - The emerging context of integrated urban development ............................................................................... 5 Related supranational policy commitments .................................................................................................................. 11 What is Integrated Urban Development Planning? ........................................................................................................... 15 What is an Integrated Urban Development Plan? ............................................................................................................. 19 What is the Area of Intervention? ...................................................................................................................................... 21 How to organize the process of Integrated Urban Development Planning? ..................................................................... 29 Step 1: Initiating the Integrated Urban Planning process ............................................................................................. 34 Step 3: Identifying and analyzing the stakeholders ...................................................................................................... 39 Step 4: Collecting, organizing and analyzing information and data .............................................................................. 43 Step 5: Setting the urban action area ........................................................................................................................... 46 Step 6: Defining urban development policy in the chosen area .................................................................................... 50 Step 7: Detailed diagnosis of the urban action area ..................................................................................................... 54 Step 8: Establishing the priority objectives of urban development of the area ............................................................. 56 Step 9: Establishing the priority programmes of integrated projects required in order to achieve the objectives ......... 58 Step 10: Developing an action plan for projects implementation and monitoring ......................................................... 63 Step 11: Plan approval ................................................................................................................................................. 65 Step 12: Implementation and monitoring ...................................................................................................................... 69 Conclusive remarks........................................................................................................................................................... 71 Additional Resources and Case Studies ........................................................................................................................... 72 DECLARATION Toledo, 22 June 2010 ........................................................................................................................ 72 Tulcea Declaration: The Black Sea Coast, a Sustainable Place for Everybody ........................................................... 85 Reference Framework for European Sustainable City ................................................................................................. 87 Integrated planning of revitalization in Oradea - Local background of the planning process ....................................... 92 Urban regeneration and social inclusion in the city of Gijon, Spain. City opening to the sea. ...................................... 95 The new concept of town planning and transport in Vienna, Austria ............................................................................ 97 Alphen aan den Rijn: Ecolonia –Dutch test case study on sustainable urban planning ............................................... 99 Bibliography and resources: ............................................................................................................................................ 102 List of figures: .................................................................................................................................................................. 103 Glossary .......................................................................................................................................................................... 104 References: ..................................................................................................................................................................... 108

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Foreword There seems to be a consensus on the fundamental goals of sustainable urban policy in the Black Sea basin. Nevertheless, in many cities, both in EU and non-EU countries, the implementation of corresponding programs, projects and measures still continues to be hampered by uncertainties. This is caused by historical obstacles which need to be removed while embracing good governance practices and public administration reform1. Cities in the region, as in fact cities everywhere, polarizing the economy of surrounding areas and having decentralized responsibilities, face now challenges of territorial development and urban regeneration. Moreover, there is an increased complexity of policies, which are correlated across scales- from the regional scale to the urban scale- and across different sectorial planning domains such as economic development, social safety, transport, housing, public spaces, environment. Meanwhile, there is an increasing emphasis on the local (even sub-local, neighbourhood) scale as this is seen as more effective in terms of accountability, transparency and responsiveness to the needs of citizens.

In this context, the “Capacity for integrated urban development: INTEGR-ABLE” project - the framework of the present guide - aims to contribute to an improved and synchronized capacity to plan integrated urban development and to promote it in the Black Sea basin. The project is implemented by Urban Foundation for Sustainable Development -Armenia, Local Development Group -Romania, Kutaisi Information Center -Georgia, and Association of Mayors and Local Communities -Rep. of Moldova, within The Black Sea Basin Joint Operational Program 2007-2013 co-financed by the European Union through the European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument and the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance.

Involving cities from Armenia, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and the South-Eastern region of Romania, the project proposes to achieve the following objectives: 

to analyse and compare the current situation related to urban development in the action locations;

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to increase the knowledge and skills of the personnel responsible for urban management in the action locations, using the recent experience of Romania (S-E region), toward using integrated urban development planning;

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to increase awareness of the urban communities from the action locations regarding the integrated urban development approach;

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to offer a common methodology to address existing cross-sectorial urban dysfunctions through an integrated approach;

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to disseminate and put in network the experiences, knowledge, resources to be used for better urban policies in the cities, as well as to create a platform to exchange ideas and practical issues related to integrated urban development planning; to create opportunities for peer know-how exchange -therefore to maintain and extend the created capacity to the entire Black Sea region;

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to relate and increase the capacity of the partners in the field of integrated urban development, to be used in a further capacity building endeavours in the involved countries and in the region.

The present guide is therefore developed to offer a common methodology to address existing cross-sectorial urban dysfunctions through an integrated approach to be used in the region. Its draft version was based on the findings of the assessment on the current situation conducted in the involved countries, on the Romanian experience gathered so far in the field, as well as based on the experiences of other EU countries, trying to offer an instrument that could be applied within the administrative and planning framework of each country. The present version of the guide incorporated the feedback received from all project partners and also from the representatives of participant towns who attended the International Urban Development Seminar organized within the project. Our thanks are therefore addressed to all conINTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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tributors to the guide – the project partners as well as the representatives of the pilot cities in the project: Tsqaltubo, Tqibuli and Samtredia from Georgia, Aparan, Dilijan and Yeghegnadzor from Armenia, Bălţi, Orhei and Vadul lui Vodă from the Republic of Moldova, Medgidia, Focşani and Brăila from Romania – SE region. The present guide uses the experiences of some of these cities’ achieved during the project’s activities implemented to date.

This guide is intended, first of all, for the use of the local public administrations - civil servants, technicians such as urban planners or managers of urban development processes (city managers, economic directors, service delivery or capital investment technicians), but also for elected local representatives as well as for other stakeholders involved in the development process. The guide aims mainly: 

to clarify the meaning of concepts that are part of a recent vocabulary: sustainable urban development, integrated urban development, integrated urban development planning, and to show that beyond the apparent rigidity of these theoretical concepts, there is a set of concrete practices that can be learned and experienced;

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to endow the local community involved in the developing process with a methodological framework to conduct the urban development process;

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to describe the process steps of solving correlated needs in a particular area of a city, which results in an increased quality of life and competitiveness of cities;

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to indicate benchmarks for integrated urban development, adding that although there are no universal recipes, successful operations of this type already exist in European cities and useful experience from which one can learn can be found for instance in Romania - SE Region.

The guide serves further to promote the integrated urban development approach among the local governments in each involved country during the training workshops organized within the Capacity for integrated urban development: INTEGR-ABLE project, as well as to be made available online for other interested local governments and stakeholders.

We hope this contribution to capacity building in the field of integrated urban development - bringing together experience from Armenia, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and SE Romania and inspired by more experienced EU countries – will gain chances to be enriched through the further extended network of professionals in the Black Sea basin.

Local Development Group-GDL, Romania

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Introduction - The emerging context of integrated urban development Challenges that public administrations face Currently, countries in the Black Sea basin are facing various stages of a socio-economic transition that has involved new challenges for all economic sectors. In the context of the decentralization of competences in the field of public services, the role of local public administration has become more complex and its actions - or, sometimes, the lack of action - have an increasingly significant direct effect on the lives of communities. Given the key role of urban settlements in the overall national development, urban development and management are most directly affected by all these challenges.

Rapid urban growth generates a dramatic increase of the need for land, services and financial/fiscal opportunities. It is understandable that local governments face difficulties in keeping pace with the complexity and the scale of these needs. The lack of experience in integrated urban development endeavours is also due to the difficult transition from regular to operational urban planning. The latter uses more flexible tools and involves institutional capacity to ensure the cooperation between various levels of decision, and between the various departments of the municipality with expertise in various fields.

Assessment of the countries and pilot cities involved in the project.

Figure 1: General data of the countries involved in “Capacity for integrated urban development: INTEGR-ABLE” project Armenia

Georgia

Rep. of Moldova

(Romania) /SE Region

surface

29,740 sq. km

69,700 sq. km

33,843 sq. km

(238,391)/ 35,762 sq km

population

3,262,200

4,436,400

3,560,400

(19,042,936)/ 2,811,218

5,491

3,373

(12,476 -2011) 12,452 -2009

10 sub-national jurisdictions at the regional level -deconcentrated tier of central government authority, 915 selfgoverned communities

11 Regions. 114 urban settlements (62 considered as cities and 52 – as towns) and 4314 village settlements. More than 400 villages were abandoned during the last 40 years (this number does not include Georgian villages of Abkhazia, which were abandoned during the military conflict).

3 development regions, 32 rayons, ATU Gagauzia, 5 municipalities, 60 towns, 650 communes, 147 localities in the separatist region of Transnistria

Romania’s territory is divided into 41 counties. Each county is further subdivided into cities, towns and communes.

The larger cities (with a minimum population of 40.000) have municipality status, which provides them greater administrative power over local affairs. There are a total of 41 capital municipalities, 62 municipalities, 216 towns and 2.686 communes (with 12.951 villages) in Romania. The SE Region consists of six counties (Brăila, Buzău, Constanţa, Galaţi, Tulcea and Vrancea), 6 capital municipalities, 5 municipalities, 22 towns, 339 communes with 1.455 villages.

13 % of the settlements; 64% of population

2,6 % of settlements, 53% of population (*)

41,5% of population

55,5% of population (SE region); 54.4% of population – country level

General statistics

GDP per capita - at 5,384 purchasing power parity (IMF, 2011, USD) Territorial structure

Urbanization level

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Source: assessment by the project partners.

To offer just a glance of existing situation 2 in Romania, the cities from the SE Region that were analyzed have several urban development strategic documents in force. Four out of the eight cities (Braila, Focsani, Medgidia and Adjud), have two or even four strategic documents in force and seven of the eight cities have also an Integrated Plan of Urban Development already approved. The local government structures in charge with the coordination of development strategies or plans are mainly city planners (chief architects of the city) or the Urban & Regional Planning Department, recently along with Department of European Programs & Projects Development. In two cities there are other departments (Communication Office – Focsani, Investments Development Office - Tulcea) involved in the development strategy coordination, additionally to the planning structures. According with their own assessments, the main economic, social and environmental concerns affecting the cities from SE Romanian region are: creating jobs to solve current unemployment, develop high quality infrastructure, healthcare and social service systems, the use of renewable energies. The public space quality and cultural life are also under local governments concerns. Half of the assessed cities stated that they have only a few community-groups and a low level of citizen participation.

Eighty percent of the Armenian assessed municipalities3 mentioned unemployment as a dominant economic concern affecting their cities. Among the social factors, eighty percent of the assessed cities’ municipalities indicated that “creating an efficient healthcare and social service system” is the most serious issue. In most of the cities (87.5 %) the implementation of the city development strategy and other urban development documentations is coordinated by the City Planner, excepting 2 cities (Hrazdan and Armavir) where it is coordinated respectively by the Spatial and Urban Development department and Urban Development and Housing-communal department.

In Georgia4, the assessment has found that for the majority of municipalities the main economic problem is the lack of job opportunities, and the municipalities nominated infrastructure development as the solution to eliminate unemployment and promote economic growth. Among the social problems, for all the surveyed municipalities, the effective health and social care system was named as the main priority. The survey revealed the environmental problems that have negatively impact on the development of the municipalities, both air and water poor quality along with a deplorable condition of sewage system and waste management.

In Republic of Moldova5, access to clean water and sanitation for all people was mentioned as a priority for 58% of the assessed cities, while efficient healthcare and social service system to replace current deficient service system is a priority for 74% of the cities. The research found that for the majority of municipalities the main economic problem is the lack of job opportunities and in this regard, 89% of the municipalities are seeing the infrastructure development as the solution that can eliminate unemployment and promote economic growth. The assessment of the Moldovan partners specified that although the decentralization process has already started, there are still obstacles in realizing rights and obligations of the local public authorities towards citizens. The current situation is characterized by a complicated set of developments, partial progress unconsolidated in everyday practice, legislative ambiguities, confusion about how to exercise some competences: uncertain, unclear, incomplete delimitation of competences between the public administration authorities of different levels, transfer of responsibilities / competences without providing financial means for their execution, transfer of responsibilities / competences to the local governments levels ignores their real economic resources and their ability to generate significant own revenues, so as to cover an important part of public expenditure needs, vulnerable groups of populations encounter obstacles in accessing local public services. * * * To go at a lower scale, there is a large number of “distorted places” with major problems that could be solved by an additional, tailored effort to plan for solutions which are locally appropriate for specific problems, not always to be resolved only by amending the planning legal framework (as usually claimed by the local governments): 

post-industrial abandoned land (with a high degree of soil and water pollution)



historic centres where buildings are crumbling

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

critical situation of villages that became cities’ neighbourhoods (or even newly built surrounding neighbourhoods as in case of Romania) without access to essential services (water, sewer, roads access during winter, etc.)

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large residential complexes that are moving with quick steps to social segregation and ghettoization.

We appreciate therefore that in the current stage of socio-economic transition, local public administration in the Black Sea area, and in fact all around the world, face the need to develop more effective systems of urban development planning in order to attract investment and to stimulate the economy in a viable, sustainable way. Hence, once the tendency to become more economically ambitious arises, local public administration will have to consider environmental and social aspects, by balancing investors’ needs with those of the concerned communities. Even nowadays there is a trend in the small sized cities analysed and involved in our project from Armenia, Georgia and Moldova to direct efforts almost exclusively to attract new investments under almost no matter which conditions - there is a need therefore to share some existing Romanian experience on how disruptive for the urban development the discretionary and ad-hoc urban development could be in this respect.

The cities in the region need also to pay a special attention to the environmental aspects of the urban development. The Black Sea region's most prevalent economic sectors depend all on its natural resources. The most evident and unfortunate result of competition for space between coastal populations and various economic sectors, including tourism, is a rise in unplanned urban sprawl. According to statistics and studies of environmental organisations, the region’s natural wealth is under severe pressure. The World Wide Fund for Nature considers the Greater Black Sea Basin as one of the critical regions of the world, stating that even suffering in terms of industrialization and urbanization to a lesser extent than other parts of Europe, the region is vulnerable to climate change. Furthermore, it is argued that the region is neglecting environmental issues. Consequently, the study “Greening the Black Sea Synergy”6 provides detailed and concrete proposals addressed to the respective countries and the EU in the fields of environmental protection, climate change, energy, transport and security and strongly ask for environmental protection, integration and governance to become more prominent in the next steps of the Black Sea Synergy.

Figure 2: The Greater Black Sea Basin

Source: WWF (www.panda.org)

Taking into account this vulnerability, the tendency of urban sprawl and its impact is of particular importance. Since 2004, the European Commission has identified urban sprawl as the most urgent of urban planning and design issues in its policy document “Towards a Thematic Strategy on the Urban Environment” 7. The society's reliance on land and nature for food, raw materials and waste absorption results nowadays in a resource demand without precedent in history. The consumption patterns are completely different from what they were not more than twenty years ago in terms of communication, transport, new types of housing, tourism and leisure, etc. Despite the fact that in Europe cities have been traditionally compact developing a dense historical core shaped before the emergence of modern transport sysINTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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tems, the recent trends are showing that urban sprawl, that is urban growth that is not dense, swallowing large swaths of land, is now a common phenomenon and urban areas have expanded considerably more rapidly than the growth of population.

In post-communist Romania, the most obvious spatial effect of the liberalization of political and economical life was the multiplication of constructions in the periurban areas, where urban sprawl is synonymous with unplanned incremental urban development, characterised by low density housing areas with no land use mixture and very often without even proper infrastructure.

Figure 3: Examples on urban sprawl tendency in Romania - Evolution of Floresti village near Cluj-Napoca city, Romania (NV region): left-2003, right -2009

Source: http://superbiasuburbia.wordpress.com

Figure 4: Examples on urban sprawl tendency in Romania – SE region

Galati, Romania (SE region) – “Arcasilor” new neighbourhood, Source: internet media

Advertising a plot for sale, labelling “new villas neighbourhood”, Constanta County, Romania, SE region, Source: internet media

Romanian cities have developed in the last 20 years almost exclusively by extensive territorial growth detrimental to open land (agricultural or forestry). If for almost a decade the extensions were intended for housing, more recently, oversized industrial parks (especially in the context of the current crisis) have been added. Meanwhile, the urban fabric of cities contains numerous buildings and unused areas which had initially different functions (small factories, printing INTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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houses, warehouses, depots, sheds, public institutions and even individual or collective housing). Because they are not being used, they start to degrade while each free space (including plantations and green areas) of the urban area is “hunted” and built up (with unacceptably large coefficients of land use). Moreover, good quality agricultural lands are unconsciously degraded by urban development.

As a proof for this concern, seven out of the eight cities assessed in SE Romania within our project have mentioned that the local development priority projects are spatially located in peripheral districts of the built-in area and one of the cities mentioned that these projects are located out of the built-in area, in a space with potential for city’s territory enlarging.

Aside from the significant growth of urban areas to the detriment of adjacent agricultural or forest lands, another main feature of post-communist Romanian cities is the collapse or the severe restriction of activity of large industrial units.

Although the number and surfaces occupied by these restructuring industries are large, the conversion operations of these brownfields remain only an intention. As in the case of other necessary urban operations (conservation, rehabilitation, revitalization, etc.), the organizational and legal framework do not encourage the achievement of these operations.

Generally, these areas appear in the plans as areas ready for new productive activities, while the needed cultural and recreational activities or green areas do not find their place on territories released by industry. In these conditions, the role of integrated urban development plans is to support urban, social and environmental benefits of intensive urban development using of land and existing dwelling reserves within the city.

Even the pilot cities involved in this project from Armenia, Georgia and Republic of Moldova are far for facing the challenges of the Romanian cities’ sprawl or those more acute of the unplanned urban settlements along Turkey's Black Sea coast, the urban sprawl and lack of healthy interaction between urban and rural areas are to be one of the present concerns toward the future trends.

Figure 5: The urbanization stage of the project pilot cities, by own perception of cities’ representatives Stage

Characteristics

Challenges

Cities

1.a. Urbanization

Economic growth and concentration, industrialization, concentration of administrative and commercial activities, demand for labour force, infrastructure, services and superior facilities in the city, rural to urban migration, population growth

Uncontrolled land use, improvised even illegal neighbourhoods

-

1.b. Suburbanization

Difficulty of the local economy, economic inequality, increasing living cost migration from central areas to peripheral sub-urban areas

Uncontrolled physical expansion /urban sprawl, increased needs for services in sub-urban areas, traffic congestion, pollution, growing fiscal deficit

Braila - Ro

1.c. De-urbanization

Declining population in urban areas, poor quality of services, higher costs, decrease of population income, unemployment, abandoned central areas, migration to surrounding rural areas

Major conflicts in land use, high cost of services and facilities, abandoned buildings and the decline of the central area, old and vulnerable buildings, unbalanced territorial distribution of demand for services

Yeghegnadzor – Ar Aparan - Ar

1.d. Re-urbanization

Administrative and commercial activities are returning in the city, services and facilities are re-developed, evidence of migration from the periphery toward the centre, regained urban character

Rehabilitation of central areas, redevelopment to increase attractiveness of the city, urban greening, public spaces development, traffic diverted on ring roads, social and cultural programs

Dilijan - Ar Balti - Md Orhei - Md Vadul lui Voda - Md Tsqaltubo - Ge Tqibuli – Ge Medgidia - Ro Focsani - Ro

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Source: Identifying common challenges during International Urban Development Seminar within “Capacity for integrated urban development: INTEGR-ABLE” project, May 10-13, 2012, Constanta, SE Romania.

Another challenge related to the recent trends in urban development is the one concerning the social dimension, generically aiming to diminish urban poverty. The concept of poverty has evolved tremendously over the past century, from an indicator comprising one single criteria of income level in 1900, to a multi-dimensional notion of poverty and deprivation, as defined by the European Economic Community’s Council of Ministers in 1975. In 1981, the concept of resources was further defined as “goods, cash income, plus services from other private resources” 8 and in 1985, the EEC extended the definition to include a notion of resources that can be “material, cultural and social”9. In recent years, the European Union has gone beyond a purely relative income poverty measure to include aspects such as risk of poverty rates and gaps, persistent risks, and poverty rates at different thresholds, including indicators based on measures covering lack of basic goods and low housing standards10. The definition of poverty in the European Union is nowadays framed in the notions of relative deprivation and social exclusion. This considers a more comprehensive concept of poverty associated with the notion of lack of participation in the common-life style of society, including attachment to various institutional, social, cultural and political ties within the society, access to jobs with satisfactory income, decent housing, good health, sufficient education, satisfactory social networks, access to opportunities and freedoms.

There is still much work to be done in the cities involved in the project in the direction of aspects highlighted above, however the biggest challenge is creation of awareness to consider social aspects as part of the urban development processes, both at analysis level and impact simulation but also on encouraging proactive involvement of the community. Despite the fact that cities do not fully participate in shaping welfare policies designed at a national level, cities “can play an important role in alleviating, preventing and tackling social exclusion and poverty by taking flexible and innovative solutions at local level”11.

In this respect, in the Black Sea Basin as well as in the European Union, the participation of local governments in policy implementation faces serious challenges, mainly due to budgetary limitations that are reducing the level of public resources for local programmes and investments. A mismatch between the new responsibilities of cities and the resources made available to them is evident in all the countries involved in our project, all facing undergoing administrative decentralisation. Additional challenges are present in relation with policy and institutional aspects are caused by the fragmentation of efforts of different levels of government (more evident in Romania due to country size and fragmentation of administrative units at local level), sectorial interventions in different policy fields, uncoordinated interventions in different geographic areas, as well as reluctance of institutional local structures to initiate independent initiatives. Cities involved in our project have a certain control, albeit with different levels, over the changing spatial structure of the city affecting the quality of life of different social groups. However, they are characterised by having rather weak economic and welfare systems to complement the spatial planning.

To conclude, it is important to build awareness on the important role of cities as important generators of wealth, employment and productivity growth but also on the negative externalities connected with urbanisation such as inequalities and social cohesion, urban sprawl and congestion, environmental problems, housing shortages and distressed areas.

Challenges are therefore diverse, multi-layered and multi-dimensional, as cities are located at the interface between their inhabitants and other levels of government. The complex mix of challenges confirms the need to implement appropriate integrated governance and planning that could mobilise all stakeholders including public from all layers of government as well as from the private sector and the civil society to act on several fronts as part of an integrated development approach that alone can guarantee cities and territories’ sustainability in the long term.

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Related supranational policy commitments European policy influences cities and aims to support positive developments at the local level. The European strategies and spatial development and planning policies became so important in time that the new Constitutional agreement of the EU included the notion of territorial cohesion. Moreover, the urban dimension of Community policies has been strengthened during the last years12.

The following selected documents express the political commitments of both EU and UN institutions, addressing the principles, goals, responsibilities, procedures and instruments for spatial planning and urban issues: 

Agenda 21 or Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992), United Nations



Habitat Agenda (1996) on UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), United Nations



Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998), United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)

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ESDP - European Spatial Development Perspective (1999), EU Ministers responsible for Spatial Planning

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Guiding Principles for Sustainable Spatial Development in the European Continent (2000), Council of Europe, European Conference of Ministers Responsible for Regional Planning (CEMAT)

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EU SEA Directive on the environmental assessment (2001/42/EC), EU Parliament and EU Council

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Application of the Aarhus Convention to EC institutions and bodies (2006), EU Parliament

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Territorial Agenda of the European Union (2007), European Union

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Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities (2007), European Union

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Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion. Turning territorial diversity into strength (2008), Commission of the European Communities

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Spatial planning. Key Instrument for Development and Effective Governance with Special Reference to Countries in Transition (2008), United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Committee on Housing and Land Management

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Resolution on the urban dimension of cohesion policy in the new programming period. Urban dimension of cohesion policy (2009), European Parliament

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Toledo Declaration (2010), Ministers of Urban Development of the European Union

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EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) - as a macro-regional strategy, European Commission (2010), European Council (2011)

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Territorial Agenda of the European Union 2020 - Towards an Inclusive, Smart and Sustainable Europe of Diverse Regions (2011), European Union

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Cohesion policy for 2014-2020 draft legislative package, including Integrated Sustainable Urban Development, Community-led Local Development, Integrated Territorial Investment (October 2011), European Commission

Particularly under the interest of the cities involved in our project, the European Commission as well as the countries and regions within the ESPON territory initiative have paid increasing attention to the role of the small and medium-sized towns for territorial development in Europe. The European Spatial Development Perspective -ESDP (1999) makes INTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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several references to the role of small and medium-sized towns, especially in relation to the policy objective of achieving “a balanced and polycentric urban system and a new urban-rural relationship”. It highlights the potential of such towns for achieving a more balanced spatial structure of the European continent. However, the ESDP does not suggest any policy options directly for small and medium-sized towns, but stresses their importance for structuring urbanised regions or less-favoured regions and their role as a ‘natural’ attribute to the metropolitan regions. The ESDP underlines the relations of the small and medium-sized towns to rural regions and presents their potential for economic development as being shaped by their ability to benefit from these interdependencies, structuring the development of regions that are either less-densely populated or economically weak and describing them as “active regional centres revitalising rural regions in decline” particularly regarding development of industry, research and technology, tourism and the public service provision.

A very important pillar is represented by the “Leipzig Charter on sustainable European cities”13 signed on 24 May 2007 by the Ministers responsible for urban development. The Leipzig Charter supports the concept that an integrated urban planning approach is a prerequisite for sustainable development of European cities. It lays the foundation for a new integrated urban policy in Europe, focusing on helping cities tackle problems of social exclusion, structural change, ageing, climate change and mobility. Its key themes concern strategies for upgrading the urban fabric and for enhancing local economies and labour markets, clean urban transport and the integration of migrants.

Leipzig Charter stresses the importance of all European cities, but also the importance of EU Sustainable Development Strategy implementation in order to achieve the protection, strengthening and development of these cities. At the same time, the Charter emphasizes that, on long term, cities will not be able to act as “engines” of social progress and economic growth if they fail to maintain social balance within and between them, while preserving cultural diversity and ensuring high quality urban design, architecture and environment. According to the charter, the primary aim should be to attract people, activities and investments back to the cities – which are the engines of research, innovation and economic development in Europe – and to put an end to urban sprawl, as it increases urban traffic, energy consumption and land use. Focus should be made on the regeneration of existing residential and business areas in inner cities, with a greater mixture of living, working and leisure areas, making cities more exciting and vibrant, but also more socially and economically stable. Member states agreed that doing something about deprived neighbourhoods should receive particular attention and be considered as a “public task” because the existence of such neighbourhoods jeopardizes attractiveness, competitiveness, social cohesion and security in cities.

The 2008 “Spatial planning: Key Instrument for Development and Effective Governance with Special Reference to Countries in Transition” study of United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) - Committee on Housing and Land Management identifies the role and benefits of spatial planning, the particular spatial planning challenges that face countries in transition, its key principles, the division of roles and responsibilities, and priority actions for countries in transition. According to the study, spatial planning has been defined as a key instrument for establishing long term, sustainable frameworks for social, territorial and economic development both within and between countries. Its primary role is to enhance the integration between sectors such as housing, transport, energy and industry, and to improve national and local systems of urban and rural development, also taking into account environmental considerations.

It is clearly envisaged in this study that the overall framework of defined tasks goes beyond traditionally physical planning tasks. First, the main two functions of planning are defined – the development and the regulatory functions. The study clarifies the principles, goals, responsibilities, procedures and instruments of spatial planning. It concludes that spatial planning can help to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits. Correctly administered, it is an important tool for promoting investment, development, environmental improvements and quality of life.

The Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion (2008) emphasises the role of small cities and towns for a balanced territorial development of the EU, particularly for the intermediate and rural regions. By providing essential services for the surrounding rural areas, the small and medium-sized towns “often play a more important role than their size might suggest” and contribute to “avoiding rural depopulation and ensuring that these areas remain attractive places to live.”

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The key for the development are related to the challenges arising from issues of concentration, connectivity and collaboration. In terms of concentration, the Green Paper points to the need for attaining a balance between the economic competitiveness and capacity for growth in these areas and their natural assets and ensuring social cohesion. Excessive concentrations of growth should be avoided while access to the returns of agglomeration in all territories should be facilitated. The issue of connectivity concerns the need to ensure access to services of general interest in the rural areas, such as health care and education.

To address the challenges of concentration and connectivity facing small and medium-sized towns in intermediate and predominantly rural regions, cooperation at various levels is imperative. This is further underlined by the fact that other pressing issues, such as environmental problems associated with climate change, flooding, pollution or commuting, disregard borders and require cooperation. In particular the Green Paper stresses the importance of cross-border cooperation on these issues.

The European Parliament 2009 Resolution on Urban dimension of cohesion policy has highlighted the importance of the acceptance of an integrated approach to urban planning and the bottom-up principle, and promotion of sustainable urban development as a strategic priority and the contribution of urban areas to regional development. The Resolution has recommended that sustainable urban management plans should include some of the following elements: a waste management plan, noise maps and action plans, local air pollution and environmental programmes, forecasts for population growth, requests for new areas for development, reclamation of abandoned sites and buildings, regeneration of neighbourhoods in decline and de-industrialized areas, availability and accessibility of public services, urban structure and the proportion of green areas, facilities for people with disabilities, upgrading the cultural, historical and natural heritage, estimating water and energy requirements and efficient use of water and energy, availability of public transport, effective traffic management, integration of vulnerable groups (migrants, minorities, people with few qualifications, people with disabilities, women, etc.), availability of decent housing at affordable prices, and plans to combat crime. The Resolution identified an urgent need to reinforce the administrative capacity of both vertical and horizontal urban governance and draws attention to the pressing need to adopt an integrated approach in implementing urban development policy (transport services, public services, quality of life, employment and local economic activities, security, etc.), on the basis of the participation and partnership principle.

The Toledo Declaration of Ministers of Urban Development of the European Union (2010) formalized a commitment to apply a Spanish proposal for integrated urban regeneration. The meeting was held in a context of a global financial, economic and social crisis, having a strong impact on Europe’s economy and also on its citizens’ quality of life. European cities are facing the major challenge of overcoming this crisis and emerging stronger from it; but they are also facing other structural and long term challenges globalization, climate change, pressure on resources, migrations, ageing and demographic change, etc.- with a strong urban dimension –impact on cities’ economy, urban environment deterioration, increasing risk of social polarization and exclusion, etc. These challenges are a wake-up call, an opportunity to chart a firm course based on the principles of integrated, smart, sustainable, cohesive, inclusive urban development, as the only way to achieve a greater economic competitiveness, eco-efficiency, social cohesion and civic progress in European cities, and to guarantee citizens’ quality of life and welfare in the present and in the future. The Toledo Declaration sets out the EU’s political commitment to defining and applying integrated urban regeneration as one of the key tools of the 2020 Strategy. Considering the urban dimension and the future challenges of European cities, the ministers outlined the need to promote sustainable development based on social cohesion. To that end, the ministers confirmed the fact that an integrated approach toward urban policies represents one of the key instruments that would facilitate the implementation of the 2020 European Strategy. In order to create the model of an intelligent, sustainable and social city, the ministers stressed the importance of implementing a development strategy that provides a global vision and the need to improve economic performance, eco-efficiency and social cohesion and established measurement criteria related to environmental protection, the economy, the social sector and urban, architectural and cultural planning.

The territorial priorities outlined in the Territorial Agenda of the European Union 2020 - Towards an Inclusive, Smart and Sustainable Europe of Diverse Regions (May 2011), stress the importance of reducing the strong territorial polarisation of economic performance between capitals, metropolitan areas and medium sized towns on the national scale. In the efforts to reduce the large regional disparities, the small and medium-sized towns can play a crucial role at INTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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regional level, particularly in predominantly rural areas by ensuring the necessary availability of job opportunities and services of general interest.

Of a great importance and inspiration for our present endeavour in Black Sea basin is also the European cooperation between cities involving a growing number of cities through the URBACT programme, new initiatives such as the Covenant of Mayors to endorse and support the efforts deployed by local authorities in the implementation of sustainable energy policies, as well as other endeavours such as Kiev Initiative. The URBACT programme, as well as previous European experiences (URBAN I, URBAN II 14) showed that an integrated approach on economic, social and environmental problems in degraded urban areas embodies a successful method in solving these problems and achieving a truly sustainable urban development.

These programmes and initiatives already benefit from the results of urban research. Practical experience of EU Member States has shown that integrated urban development policies are appropriate for achieving renewed European sustainability strategy. Most countries particularly emphasize the importance of correlation relationship between economic development and social cohesion. This explains why the concepts of an integrated approach towards zone level, especially for disadvantaged areas, are gaining more and more supporters together with those strategies designed to heighten economic growth. However, more will have to be done in the future in order to reinforce the links between research, social/organisational innovation and sustainable urban development.

All the above mentions show that urban development and planning problems represent a common concern for the EU and international institutions as it became obvious that urban design is insufficient in generating urban development, that it must be subordinated to a long-term development vision assumed by the whole community, and that it has to be correlated both with the land resources and public investment programs, and also with private sector investments. For that reason, a new configuration of local public administration working culture and a new relationship with the private sector and local community in general are to be created. This guide is proposing some possible measures in this respect under the present legal frameworks.

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What is Integrated Urban Development Planning?

In the above mentioned context, it is clear that an integrated approach towards economic, social and environmental problems in urban areas represents a necessity for efficient, balanced and sustainable development of cities.

This process imposes a shift from traditional urban planning toward integrated urban planning, which includes approaches aimed to provide flexibility to the dynamics of change, encouraging the participation of local stakeholders, exploiting their resources and leading to concrete, measurable results.

The process should be: 

strategic – establishing the shaping of the vision, objectives and programs or projects on short/medium/long term; orientation towards implementation, local actors participation; providing a flexible framework and defining concrete expected results;



sustainable – care for the environment with an emphasis on community participation;

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comprehensive – integration of spatial, economic, social, environmental components;

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participative – involving in a structured manner all the relevant stakeholders, concerning responsibilities, available resources, decision-making and implementation capacity, and exposure to the impact of the interventions.



operational – establishing the organizational arrangement and actions in a specific timeframe, in order to correlate the efforts, responsibilities and resources allocation related to implementation, and also the provision of monitoring system, periodic evaluation and control;

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focused on the allocation of financial resources – setting up financial policies and plans necessary to objectives’ achievement in accordance with the multi-annual budget, debt and public investment planning;

We consider an approach towards urban development planning as being INTEGRATED if, for a certain city area: - on the one hand, horizontally integrates economic, social and environmental aspects in a synergic manner, and - on the other hand, vertically integrates strategic planning with the operational and financial one, involving the community and other urban development stakeholders.

EU experiences: Based on the Toledo Declaration15, which not only underlines the need for an integrated approach in urban development, but also promotes a common understanding of it, “the key features of this integrated approach, which have become especially important in these times of scarce financial resources, are: 

This integrated approach requires, first of all, the adoption of a holistic approach and thinking. This means replacing the usual sector or one-dimensional approaches with new transversal or multidimensional ones, aligning different policy areas and resources. It also implies considering the city as a whole: strategies and actions should be unitary, and address the whole complexity of urban development, taking into account the role of each part of the city in the whole structure. This holistic approach also means thinking and working –and allocating resources in consequence- on all the multiple dimensions of sustainability — economic, social, cultural and environmental — at the same time, in such a way that the actions undertaken in each of them will have a positive effect on the others, or at least avoid them contradicting one another or having a negative effect on

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the others. The main future challenge for urban policies is to be able to provide convergent answers with equal level of efficiency to the environmental, social and economic questions raised in cities. 

Putting this integrated approach into practice also means resolving conflicts, overcoming discrepancies or interferences between the effects that each of these dimensions has on the others and finding compromises in the line of the overall defined key guiding principles of the city. In order to do so, it seems necessary to channel this shared commitment to deliver sustainable outcomes through establishing appropriate coordination platforms and frameworks –whether formal or informal- for policies and actions: ‘transversal coordination’ to make sector or one-dimensional approaches converge; ‘vertical coordination’ between all administrative levels (EU/national/regional/intermediate/ local), by means of new formulas and arrangements for ‘multilevel governance’; and ‘horizontal coordination’ between all the actors involved in ‘city building’ (public authorities, property and financial sector, professionals, etc.) which combine top-down and bottom-up approaches, and, most particularly, make public participation and involvement a truly effective reality.



The city is time and space. The integrated character means seeking the right way to organise all ‘timescales’ (short/medium/long term) and all ‘spatial scales’ (region/metropolitan area/small, medium sized and large cities and towns/neighbourhood, etc.) and, finally, the conjunction between the two. From a time-scale viewpoint, it is advisable to overcome short-term urban-management methods by creating strategic scenarios (economic, environmental, socio-demographic, etc.) formulated through an integrated city plan or vision with clear statements and goals, combining long-term framework visions with a certain flexibility when it comes to specific determinations, to allow for a greater capacity for adaptation, innovation and evolution, without any extreme ruptures and assuring the continuity of actions and effective use of resources. From a spatial viewpoint, an integrated city plan or vision must go beyond the sum of adhoc or isolated actions, and at the same time consider its implementation at a functional or administrative level. […]



The city is a social construct. ‘Integrated’ also refers to ‘inclusive’, i.e. working on articulating the city’s ‘social body’ in an inclusive shared project of coexistence, to combat social exclusion and spatial segregation.



The integrated character also refers to the ‘integration’ of the parts into a whole structure. This implies that conceptual and operational thinking must also stem from strategies or plans with ‘integrated’ -global or comprehensive- visions of the city as a whole, but optimal development will often be brought about through ‘territorialised actions’ (‘area-based’ approach). In the city, where objects (e, g: housing, buildings) and subjects (physical and legal persons) have a specific spatial location, it is usually more fruitful to conjugate an ‘integrated’, global or comprehensive overall strategy with an ‘area-based’ development, rather than merely acting on objects and subjects in isolation (home by home, or building by building, for example) or indiscriminately and generically. In practical terms, the integrated approach requires shared commitment to deliver common outcomes in urban sustainability, evidence of multiagency or cross cutting teams working together, and evidence of budgets from different authorities or agencies being pooled and directed in the same or convergent directions.”

For a successful implementation of the integrated urban development framework, the following urban planning principles have to be followed: 

Diversity and collaboration – the contributions of various unique perspectives are important in achieving integrated urban planning. The process must involve a variety of individuals and groups who have an interest or are affected by this plan. Features of this diversity can be ethnicity, age, gender, but also different social status, geographical location, level of economic prosperity, life and work experience, political affiliation, groups or individuals known as having a different opinion/position when it comes to certain issues, etc. Local public authorities are involved in the urban community through their actions. Nevertheless, each time it is necessary to have the participation of the other stakeholders. This automatically leads to the need for a good cooperation between all those concerned, so that the forces involved and the existing capacities and funds are being optimally used. And a process like that it is not always easy, since different partners have different expectations, different powers and different responsibilities.

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Urban planning responsibilities often must be divided between local public authorities and other levels of governmental authorities. In this context, a good vertical collaboration is essential.

Investors or potential investors are the second major group of stakeholders. In many EU examples, private investors have played an important role, often only in the effective implementation phase, but sometimes even in the planning one.

A very important group of stakeholders is represented by inhabitants/residents of the concerned urban area.

They must be involved at different stages of the process: from collecting data, to establishing the vision, prioritizing problems, selecting from different alternative solutions and financing methods, setting up monitoring processes, etc. It is important to state that local government should play a proactive role in this, not just waiting for residents to jump into the process.

Most of the times, citizen involvement has proven to be an essential success factor even though is time consuming. Therefore, the involvement of current and potential residents should be carefully organized because problems of representativeness can easily occur (some groups may feel excluded from decision-making process). Citizen involvement is also vulnerable and obstacles can be easily identified: the project is too big, the process takes too long, the results are not visible or some representatives are much more involved than the general population. Real participation is most likely achieved when policy making is to some extent a process of “co-production” and when citizens are given the opportunity to effectively work with local authorities and private sector partners in planning and implementation of urban development.

Collaboration between various partners involved in the planning and implementation process can be legalized with contracts and may take the form of public-private partnerships. Collaboration is necessary, but it does not represent the guarantee of success. Unexpected events, political and economic changes might occur and powerful leaders might join or leave the project. Not all circumstances can be anticipated. It is also needed mutual trust in problem solving and responsibilities achievement among all “actors”, local public authorities, investors, owners or simple citizens.

The determining factor in collaboration is to find the ideal balance between all elements involved, in the context of an integrated approach. This includes involvement and collaboration between all relevant actors, an appropriate combination of measures and sectors, working simultaneously at several levels and combining policies that address current urban realities with those oriented to the future. For some, such a thing might seem easy to do, while for others it might seem impossible. The secret lies in being able to look critically, but with eyes wide open at the successful projects from elsewhere and to identify success elements that could find application at “home”. 

Transparency – the planning process must be communicated to those outside the local public administration or those who are not directly involved. This means promptly and voluntarily sharing the information and idea.

The process must be open to scrutiny and the lack of secrets, of hidden goals and secret agreements are the essence of transparency.

It is desirable for large projects to be divided into smaller ones, more manageable and easier to control when circumstances change. There should be an overview on the desired direction, and all kinds of details can be determined later, during the development process. Flexibility means that plans can be changed at a later time during the process, without changing their major purpose or approach. Policy makers must keep their promises and must act clearly and transparently. The lack of clarity on the effects of decisions taken in certain meetings, on the effects of financial arrangements or how it will be proceed further on might easily “kill” a process and its results.

Furthermore, transparency also refers to the results of policies and actions. If the effects of certain investments are ambiguous, the utility of that particular policy can be questioned. Citizens or other stakeholders might start having doubts about the necessity of that particular policy or investment. In order to evaluate the

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efficiency of one process (in terms of its results or effects), a suitable monitoring and evaluation system need to be developed since the outset and this has to be made public. 

Responsibility and accountability - those who are engaged in urban planning and are responsible for the actions must have both the authority to act and also the responsibility for the undertaken actions.

Thus, integrated planning is the PROCESS that puts together, within an institutional system, the sectorial interrelated components which interact: economic, public services, environmental, social. This process, through the above principles and concepts, highlights and prioritizes integrated urban projects as a precise calendar of activities on short / medium / long term. All these aspects have a direct reflection in the financial planning and in the organization of the activities to ensure an implementation and monitoring system.

The planning process of integrated urban development aims to promote: 

The spatial concentration of resources on the basis of a territorial approach (meaning an "area-based"/ "zone" approach) in order to focus on improving efforts of a specific area of the city. The location and the size of area thus become one of the success factors. A small size area allows for a better visibility and a better cooperation between specific stakeholders and stimulates people to get involved16;



the sustained involvement of local communities in planning, managing and implementing programs and projects designed for them.

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What is an Integrated Urban Development Plan?

An Integrated Urban Development Plan is a planning document of a clearly delineated area: the intervention or the urban action area) and is implemented through inter-connected individual projects. Therefore, an integrated plan aims to simultaneously solve certain problems that are interdependent.

The integrated urban development plan (of an area) results in: 

a strategy that expresses the community development aspirations and schedules on short, medium and long term the projects that help achieving the strategy objectives;



a plan allocating land for urban functions, highlighting the integrated projects according to the strategy and to the local potential;



a plan for scheduling and allocating financial resources through programs and public investments that support the strategy implementation within a defined territory.

For an immediate implementation, this planning tool should: 

describe the strengths and weaknesses of the urban action area and its surroundings based on a realistic analysis of the current situation;



define the vision for urban development as well as consistent, clear and measurable development objectives for that urban area;

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coordinate various technical and sectorial plans and neighbourhood policies and ensure that the planned investments are helpful in promoting a well-balanced development of that particular urban area;

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spatially coordinate and direct the use of funds by public and private actors;



coordinate at the local and urban-regional level and ensure the involvement of citizens and other partners who could substantially contribute to the shaping of the economic, social, cultural and environmental future of those particular areas.

An integrated urban development plan must be supported by appropriate data collection methods, forecasting, transparent allocation of resources, monitoring and continuous evaluation. The involvement of the community, of stakeholders and of economic actors, using various methods of participation and cooperation is essential in this process. Good practices in this domain show that this should not just be a mere application of the legal requirements, but the process of developing such a plan should be addressed in a proactive and creative manner.

EU experiences: According to Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas (JESSICA) 17, “an integrated plan for sustainable urban development (“integrated plan”) comprises a system of interlinked actions which seek to bring about a lasting improvement in the economic, physical, social and environmental conditions of a city or an area within the city. Even if certain conditions – such as public consultation and adequate management schemes – must be guaranteed, the key to the planning process is “integration”, meaning that the relevant policies and their associated plans, programmes and projects are approached taking into account their reciprocal effects in order to effectively capture synergies and achieve balanced outcomes.

In this regard, implementing the physically and operationally interlinked elements of an integrated plan should lead to its global impact being more intense than the sum of the effects of its components implemented in isolation. In INTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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some Member States, city-wide and area-based development plans prepared and adopted in accordance with current planning procedures may satisfy such a definition.

As the urban regeneration market is not mature in many European regions and Member States, a “culture of financing sustainable urban development” has to be reinforced. Developing an urban development culture which understands the role of cities as privileged areas of a region’s growth, employment and social cohesion is an important factor for the successful implementation of the JESSICA initiative.

More precisely, reinforcing the appropriate urban development culture requires a workable definition of integrated plans for sustainable urban development, which could include: 

The definition of the geographic area targeted depending on the nature and objectives of the integrated plan (neighbourhood, municipality, district, metropolitan areas etc.);



The identification of the public works needed and the land-use parameters and minimum public services required (transport, health, education, security, etc.);



To integrate these services into a wider area as part of transport and utilities networks as well as social and environmental services;



The assessment of demand/requirements to ensure the efficient use of resources, if necessary through market analysis and/or socio-economic appraisals;



The development of a clear governance scheme with a timetable and responsibilities, including private stakeholders.”

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What is the Area of Intervention?

Different areas in the city aggregate different services, employment opportunities, social interactions and recreational activities for their inhabitants. In order to implement effective changes that lead to the desired urban development, there is a need to geographically localize the actions as to use minimal efforts toward maximum benefits. This requires a deep understanding of urban systems, of their subsystems and of their interactions. Based on a detailed analysis and forecast trying to predict the impact of urban policies on these systems, a certain city area will result as having most needs but also with most potential to disseminate the desired effect (or at least the one to start with). Consequently, this area should become the target for integrated development planning.

The intervention zone (or the urban action zone, or target geographical area) is: 

a clearly defined area within a city or municipality;



a continuous area, without enclaves



the area that concentrates the needs and issues requiring an integrated approach.

This area is determined by a detailed territorial and social analysis as to solve the most acute problems and to address the most needs and to physically plan the appropriate initiatives and projects to be implemented.

Examples: Copenhagen, Denmark18 “It is the ambition of the City of Copenhagen to initiate one or two new integrated urban renewals each year.

The areas chosen for integrated urban renewal are therefore districts which already possess considerable potentials and qualities. The areas are also characterised by a high proportion of small, outdated flats with lacking installations, relatively poor and run-down amenities (open spaces, institutions, etc.), integration problems and a large number of residents outside the labour market.

Physical and social planning are therefore important elements of integrated urban renewal efforts. It is especially the physical results in the district which are visible to residents and the public at large. The physical projects are also those which attract most attention from residents when work groups are appointed and citizen dialogues held.

With regard to social initiatives, integrated urban renewal focuses on building networks in order to get the district to function better. Almost all activities have a sub-objective of strengthening the district's civil network. Activities directed at social challenges are performed in close cooperation with other social and housing projects in the area. […]

The process begins with the Technical and Environmental Department performing a screening of the city's physical and socio-economic condition. In 2010, the Technical and Environmental Administration drew up a new, we-based, socio-economic map, which now is used for this preliminary, all-embracing screening of Copenhagen. As a result the city can be screened for a greater number of parameters.

SØK is a web-based housing and socio-economic map of Copenhagen. The map contains a number of indicators which help the Technical and Environmental Administration to determine which parts of the city face particular challenges concerning housing and socio-economic parameters. Among other things, the map will be used to select new integrated urban renewal districts and to analyse individual districts so that the efforts can be planned to better target the challenges present in the area.

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The indicators in the map are of both physical and social character. With respect to physical indicators, the map can identify/analyse the areas with a high proportion of: • small flats (under 60 m²) • flats which lack basic installations (toilet/bath/central heating) • residents who live in few m² With respect to socio-economic indicators, the map identified the areas with a high proportion of: • residents outside the workforce • residents with a short educational background • residents with low incomes On the basis of this screening, a number of areas are selected in which the physical and social challenges are most highly concentrated and which meet the other criteria set by the Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Affairs for integrated urban renewal districts (e.g. a high proportion of flats which are owner-occupied, cooperatively owned or privately let).

The Technical and Environmental Administration then performs additional analyses based on observations in the area and interviews with local interest groups. Among other things, these analyses determine how the area looks and which potentials and resources it contains. For example, are there any green spaces? Are the buildings and streets in good condition? Is there life on the streets? Do people feel safe in the area?

The areas which have greatest need for renewal are then selected after discussions involving several municipal departments. The selection is presented to the Technical and Environmental Committee, which submits the choice of areas to the Municipal Council for approval. The Municipal Council then decides whether an application should be sent to the Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Affairs for funding of a new integrated urban renewal.

Figure 6: Example: Central Vesterbro area, Copenhagen, Denmark Central Vesterbro is characterised by considerable social differences and lacking social and cultural integration of the weakest groups. Central Vesterbro is also one of the areas within the City of Copenhagen with the lowest green space area per citizen.

Furthermore, a large proportion of the existing green spaces are run-down and dysfunctional.

The area renewal project will improve and activate corners and squares, allowing them to be better used and helping to interconnect the district and strengthen its local identity.

The area presents a number of physical challenges, the most urgent of which are: • A major need for urban renewal as almost every fourth flat lacks basic installations.

• Comprehensive building projects within and immediately outside the area.

• Considerable need for functional, recreational spaces close to housing.

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• Traffic-related challenges, especially those concerning increased vehicular traffic and unsafe cycle routes for the district's citizens and, in particular, schoolchildren.

Examples of major initiatives: Renovation of eleven large urban spaces and byways in order to interconnect the area, create recreational urban spaces, generate more urban life and enhance the area's diversity. Litauens Plads, for example, which will be made more attractive by renovating the area's ball game pitch and by creating better access routes to the surrounding streets and Oehlenschlćgersgade School. The area will stimulate more urban life and act as an attractive base for physical activities for the district's children.

Local projects and implemented initiatives: Integrated urban renewal will focus in particular on the socially disadvantaged and on children and young people, who themselves will be involved in the process of designing the new urban spaces.

As part of the urban renewal process, a strategy will be developed for utilising the area's many corners.

Fence of Vesterbro: in connection with construction of the Copenhagen Metro, the fence surrounding the two building sites in central Vesterbro will be used as an urban canvas to advertise the neighbourhood renovation plans and ensure citizen involvement.

Steering committee Representatives: Besides representatives of the City of Copenhagen, the steering committee consists of representatives of the area's interested parties, residents, institutions and associations.”

Source: Integrated Urban renewal in Copenhagen 2012, Technical and Environmental Administration Urban Design Department, April 2012

Turin, Italy19 For over ten years the city has been taking forward urban regeneration interventions, part of a broader development policy. These initiatives, such as the Special Project for Neighbourhoods, the Urban Pilot Project (UPP) “The Gate – Living and not leaving”, the Community Initiative Urban II “Mirafiori Nord” are part of the city development and growth plan and they have been implemented alongside experiences like the “Torino Internazionale Strategic Plan for the City”.

This development policy was influenced by the participation of Turin in the European and national debates on the themes of regeneration and promotion of urban development policies and more effective instruments for achieving these objectives, active participation of the City in European networks such as Eurocities and Quartiers en Crise.

The municipal Urban Regeneration and Development Sector continues to implement a global strategy and an innovative methodology adopting the integrated approach. The challenge is to renew parts of the city "attacking" urban deprivation from a physical, but also social, cultural and economic point of view.

To this aim, the city has adopted and experimented several integrated programmes of urban regeneration, using ordinary and special funds and paying attention to the social and environmental part of the renewal process along with the physical one.

A major share of the public housing facilities of the city is concentrated in Mirafiori Nord. The Commune, the Territorial Housing Agency (ATC) and the government own around 20% of the homes available in the area, compared to a city-wide percentage of 6%. Problematic factors of a social, economic and cultural nature go hand in hand with this massive presence of public housing projects. Mirafiori Nord is an urban area which, as a sort of museum, combines the settlement forms associated with the evolution of housing policies in Italy: from the homes for the workers build by the employers, to private homes erected on the basis of land use plans, to high quality complexes earINTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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marked for medium-high level executives of the Fiat Group. Therefore, the area have a high potential as a testing ground for integration and urban requalification initiatives, as well as activities for the rehabilitation of public housing facilities: a large proportion of the latter require extraordinary maintenance works, while a number of assets of historical and documentary interest, call for restoration and strengthening works.

An analysis of current conditions, conducted through a continuous process of consultation with the local stakeholders participating in the Social Table and the Forum for Local Development, has led to the definition of a strategy centring on the general goal of reactivating and revitalising this portion of the city. The slogans that have inspired the planning process were: Find a new centre (from the standpoint of the environment and town planning), Get things going again (in entrepreneurial and cultural terms), Find a new focus (from the social standpoint, through exemplary activities, places and services).

Figure 7: Example: left - Mirafiori Nord neighbourhood, right – area of intervention Mirafiori Nord

Source: www.comune.torino.it

Figure 8: Layers of analysis to select/identify an intervention area reflected in the succinct SWOT analysis for a Torino residential area Physical environment

Economic

Social

Strengths

- green area and public spaces - public sports equipments

- powerful productive area

- network of social actors

Weaknesses

- degradation of the public heritage - urban fabric degradation - absence of public places for socialization

- unemployment - low qualification of the labour force - weak commercial structure

- negative demographic evolution - insufficient services - degradation of cohabitation rules -isolation

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Physical environment Opportunities - public spaces - church and other heritage buildings

Economic

Social

- innovative sectors already - social mix present

Threats

- rapid degradation of any heritage or - development perspective compublic spaces intervention, if no care promised due to lack of public for maintenance services - commercial and craft structure continue to become weak

- lack of cohesion and increased inequalities - explosion of the immigrants tensions - crime rate increase

Problematic aspects

- environment in a serious degradation - long term unemployment stage - weak economic activity

- poverty and marginalisation - strong presence of immigrants

Source: adapted from www.comune.torino.it

The final setting of the action area could be determined in some cases by refining the territorial analysis again after selecting the interventions, as to comprise the beneficiary area of the services proposed for improvement. Defining the intervention area is not actually a single-step process, but needs several returns throughout the process.

Sometimes, areas for further interventions (for development or for regeneration) are defined in city-wide strategic documents or urban plans, based on multi-criteria analysis and also based on development prognosis, several development scenarios as well as participatory vision. In this case, the interventions’ prioritization should be done based on tailored criteria set up in a participatory manner with all relevant stakeholders. An important factor is here the availability of resources, the emergency of problems, the social aspects and the potential to raise benefits in a chain-reaction. This is the reason we propose a stage of identifying the process stakeholders before setting up the intervention area - to better combine the existing situation with the potential resources, namely ideas, energies, human and financial resources.

Examples: Piatra Neamt, Romania (NE) In Piatra Neamt the priority interventions areas were defined based on analyses and prognoses, but also based on scenarios/visions, outlines below: 

the orientation of local public policies to the periphery of Piatra Neamt and the extension of the public intervention area by creating an inter-municipal association with surrounding communes (rural municipalities);



transforming the municipality into a destination or transit point within the regional, national and international tourism market;



transforming the city into an example of good practice, as a major city image element supporting the local economic development.

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Figure 9: Priority development areas in Piatra Neamt, Romania, defined by Local Development Strategy 2008 – 2015

Source: www.espon-interstrat.eu

Focsani, Romania The first endeavours to increase citizens’ involvement in neighbourhoods’ development have been initiated in Focsani since 1998. The city has been structured in six areas and to each area a certain number of local councillors were assigned to monitor the needs of citizens. In each area consultative citizens groups were setup. Together with the local government, these groups conduct area meetings for each annual local budget preparation.

Figure 10: City areas defined in Focsani, Romania, and consultative meetings

Source: Focsani municipality INTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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As result of data analyses and of centralization of the citizen surveys it become clear that “South area”, “Laminorul area” and “Mandresti area” have distinct problems in comparison with the other zones, mainly: 

poor infrastructure



low safety



lack of green areas.



lack of geographic and social cohesion

After the drafting of projects to address these needs, a new questionnaire was distributed to the citizens of the envisaged areas and more problems were identified and localized in terms of: 

insufficient information, lack of direct information



poor public transportation stops in terms of waiting amenities and information



lack of public green and loisir spaces.

Tqibuli, Georgia A town situated in a grand mountain setting, Tqibuli is occupying two valleys in between mountains, which has lived for and through its coal mine. The coal mine is still working, hires more than 3000 people, and is therefore one of the largest employers in Georgia. Residential areas consisting of 4-8 floor modernist highrise follow the valleys and coalesce in a centre dominated by a large plaza and a residential axis of socialist-realist blocks, which are in need of rehabilitation.

Figure 11: Tqibuli, Georgia

Source: Tqibuli municipality

After identifying stakeholders, collecting, organizing and analysing data, the Tqibuli integrated development team, with the help of 30 university students, have conducted a complex quantitative study of local needs in the entire community using a questionnaire with multiple choice and open-ended questions, applied on 280 citizens. Based on the previous data analysis as well as on the survey results, the team then defined spatially two intervention areas:

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

Area 1: area around the coal mine- industrial area plus dilapidated residential pockets, including housing for displaced people.



Area 2: ensemble of residential buildings at the Southern edge of town, on the road to Tbilisi, isolated from the rest of town.

The choice of areas was also sensitive to the relationship of possible projects to the entire city: bringing in projects that are implemented in the intervention area but have an impact at the whole city level. An example is the project of building a bypass road in project area 1, which will redirect the industrial traffic associated with the mine, which currently connects the mine with the rail station through the central streets. Consequently, the centre will benefit from traffic decongestion due to the area-based intervention in zone 1, the local-based project therefore having a positive impact on the whole city.

Indeed, targeting integrated urban development to a certain limited area within the city is really appropriate when there is a geographical concentration of malfunctions and when the identified disadvantages can be addressed predominantly within the boundaries of that area. It is acknowledged that problems will not be totally resolved (or not all the problems) at this level and that some issues can only be addressed at the city level or even at the regional level. For example, labour market disadvantages in our project’s partner cities are rather linked to aspects appropriate to be targeted at the city level (or in multiply disadvantaged areas at once) or at national level as to bring together different stakeholders to tackle problems in a holistic way. Meanwhile, area-based urban development policies have to avoid moving problems from one area to another or ignoring the potential of other parts of the city. Also, the clear set of criteria used to determine it should assure the area is not just chosen because of its better visibility (a strong argument for politicians) but because it is more appropriate and efficient.

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How to organize the process of Integrated Urban Development Planning?

The integrated urban planning process - which includes but is not limited to the preparation of a plan - generally comprises the steps of participatory planning, with emphasis on defining specific aspects of integrated projects and their financial aspects and clear methods for monitoring the implementation.

In such a process, people have to think through what problems they have and /or what they want to achieve, analyse carefully the situation and tendencies, consider some options, and work through what should done, by whom and with what specific resources to achieve the goal.

Figure 12: Spiral stages of participatory planning20

Evaluation stakeholders

Monitoring stakeholders

Signs, signals Probl. / Opport. stakeholders

stakeholders

Diagnosis Problem identification and analysis

Opportunity analysis

Planning Implementation Actions implementation Review /adapt/ update

stakeholders

stakeholders

Objectives / vision formulation Policies preparation & design Alternative solutions Action / Strategic planning

The scheme above presents a complex participatory process, which involves the stakeholders from the very early stages, in which even the general “spiral�, including responsibilities and time frames, is designed in a participatory manner.

Urban development within this framework is process in which the local government together with community based groups manage their existing resources and enter into new partnership arrangements with the private sector, or with each other, in order to achieve the beneficial synergies between economic, social, public space and environmental INTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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aspects. The goal is to stimulate the economic and social activity in a well-defined zone. One of the strengths of urban development is that people are dealing with the life of their own community and its tangible environment. In their own community, local stakeholders acting as planners (together with responsible persons within the local government executive structures or contracted experts) can have a good understanding of what is possible, both in terms of available resources and in terms of what inhabitants want and need and therefore what they will support. Such participatory process will also encourage people and private companies to make positive contributions. Examples are engaging in resource conservation, taking advantage of educational opportunities and seeking their own economic opportunities in the area rather than elsewhere.

The integrated urban planning process can be designed by the following guiding structure of stages and steps: a. Preparation phase: Step 1 – Initiating the process Step 2 – Setting up the team and the cooperation model Step 3 – Identifying and analyzing the stakeholders b. Planning phase: Step 4 – Collecting, organizing and analyzing information and data Step 5 – Setting the intervention area boundaries (urban action area) Step 6 – Defining urban development policy in the bordered area Step 7 – Detailed diagnosis of the intervention area (urban action area) Step 8 – Establishing the priority objectives of urban development of that area Step 9 – Establishing the priority programs and /or integrated projects required in order to achieve the objectives Step 10 – Developing an action plan for projects implementation and monitoring c. Plan approval phase Step 11 – Preparing the documents subject to local council approval and plan approval d. IUDP implementation monitoring and regular assessment phase Step 12 – Implementation and monitoring One mention is to be made regarding the initiator of the process. In some cases the “process organizer” could be different than the initiator and starts to act at the very early stages of the project. This is often the case when the initiators are central government, citizens (individuals or unorganised groups) or external assistance organizations. The central government often offers a framework for initiatives, citizens usually offer to the local authority signals about problems or envision an opportunity, and external assistance programs initiate the process clarifying the local needs and then assist and support the local stakeholders to manage the process. In any case, we encourage the local government to play the steering role and as much as possible to implement this process internally. More on this issue will be further detailed while describing the stages.

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As explained above, the proposed phases and steps are not necessary consecutive - they often overlap and also some steps require going back to repeat or detail a certain stage. This structure is therefore offered as guidance meanwhile mentioning that it has to be tailored on concrete situations with a high level of flexibility. The ultimate goal of an integrated planning process is a comprehensive, area-level document that sets out what every stakeholder intends to achieve over a defined period. There will thus be an actual, identifiable plan, which represents a shared formal commitment by the whole community, and stands as a benchmark against which progress can be measured. But the Integrated Urban Development Plan as well as its development process will not be carved in stone as the intent is not to create an inflexible structure for its own sake or for advertising (even if it could be a marketing tool as well) – however, the modifications will need to be justified. In order to develop a plan that is both ambitious and achievable, process course corrections should be considered and applied in response to concrete situations and/or unforeseen events.

Example: During the International Urban Development Seminar organized in SE Region of Romania in May 11-13, 2012 within the “Capacity for integrated urban development: INTEGR-ABLE” project, each group of participants - representatives of the pilot cities from Armenia, Georgia, Rep. of Moldova and Romania- indentified a slightly different order of the integrated development planning process steps. And none was “mistaken”, as the process is cyclic and reiterative.

Further debates were concentrated afterwards on the firm guidance received to consider involving possible partners as soon as possible in the process, as to take benefit from a participatory approach. The other aspects are to be combined based on concrete city situation – for example in some cases there are already detailed analyses accomplished or consultative problems identification, in others the areas are already defined so there is a need only for selection, in certain cities (yet few) there are active community groups as in others not, in some other cases the funding opportunities are pretty inflexible as still not decentralized, etc – all these should be considered when designing the process stages.

Figure 13: Exercise on integrated urban development planning stages during the International Urban Development Seminar, plenary groups’ presentations

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Source: pictures during IUD Seminar

Therefore there are no right or wrong answers to developing this process. The following do’s and don’ts list suggests some good practice discussed during our project’s seminar and assistance to pilot cities: DO

DON’T

DO systematize planning efforts into a well-defined, repeatable procedure of the process.

DON’T implement this process just to satisfy a certain programme or founder requirements.

DO consider the existing legal framework in terms of process legitimating and outcomes implementation

DON’T rely on the attitude that only what is written in the law it is allowed; it is the other way around: what is not written in the law is allowed!

DO involve all the relevant local government departments (including finance, human resources, communication, etc) as well as elected representatives in the strategic planning process

DON’T leave the task of organising the process in the responsibility of one single sector/department or expertise (avoid to orient the process exclusively toward urban planning or urban design)

DO adapt to existing organisational framework and resources but also be creative in making them appropriate for the process

DON’T avoid to create changes in the organisational internal regulation

DO ensure the core task force have appropriate legitimacy, a clear understanding of responsibilities and includes sufficient personnel to support the process

DON’T give or take tasks if no appropriate skills to perform them (consider training for eventual missing skills)

DO establish work relationships based on interdependent needs and respect, not hierarchy of power and influence

DON’T consider some task force members or even stakeholders more important than others; Avoid any activities that could cause disagreements or conflict.

DO devise and write down an explicit communication strategy

DON’T leave the communication activities to happen only after decisions were made

DO consider to contract process expertise/facilitation services only if the divisions are deep, or where no one available has the needed skills to keep the planning process on track.

DON’T externalise the entire process management; avoid placing local government in a passive position.

DO be flexible to changes in the whole context during the process

DON’T rush the process for the sake of an outcome

DO control the process against established and eventually readapted phases

DON’T leave the process to go by itself – certain stages and important information could be missed

DO assure a complete data and information collection in an open manner

DON’T collect only the information that is convenient for eventual already intended intervention

DO assure a transparent and open method to establish the intervention area

DON’T channel the interventions on an area already established without analysis and specific criteria

DO set up goals that present clear social, economic and environment benefit and outcome

DON’T state the goal broadly or in terms of a problem or to a single sector specific project/solution (often only infrastructure)

DO ensure a match between resource allocations and objectives

DON’T create false expectations; however DON’T apply a resource-driven intervention (don’t jump into a funding opportunity without analysis, integration and maintenance perspective)

DO consider synergic multi-sectorial projects to achieve the objectives

DON’T consider a project means a design plan or investment plan; a project basically means something projected for the future , so could be also a social, educational or cultural one, etc.

DO consider real alternatives by using consultative instruments

DON’T leave the identification and assessment of alternatives too late in the process; DON’T unnecessarily produce alternatives or only permutation of options

DO ensure all the funding procedures (and their duration) are included in the calendar of activities, especially if there is more than one source of funding; submit timely progress reports,

DON’T think on monitoring and evaluation activities only at the end of the process – but plan them from the beginning and consider benchmarks and reports on intermediary suc-

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DO

DON’T

which are needed for timely release of fund instalments.

cesses/accomplishments

DO maintain total transparency concerning the process itself as well as its outputs; projects details, budget and sources of funding should be displayed publicly at different places in the project area

DON’T disregard the need to justify publicly the eventual not considered opinions or proposed options.

DO be open and prepared to play a real team position in relation with the other stakeholders; be ready to accept other points of views

DON’T impose a certain initiative, or suggest false justifications to bring the others to your already envisaged option

DO remember it is a continuous two-way learning process between the local government and the community

DON’T be afraid to say “I don’t know, but I’ll try to find out!”

Next, we present brief descriptions and concise guidance for carrying out these steps of the process.

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Step 1: Initiating the Integrated Urban Planning process The beginning of the process occurs as a result of events that motivate the local public administration to undertake actions aiming urban development. These events are either indications of the problems received from citizens or other stakeholders (the private sector, non-governmental organizations, etc.), or the identification of new opportunities to be exploited. The process initiation can also occur by combining the two aspects, thus following the notification of acute problems along with the emergence of opportunities.

The process starts when something happens in the locality that one or more individuals believe deserves a collective response. This something could be: 

a serious problem appears or a long standing problem has become intolerable to an increasing number of concerned citizens - e.g. destroyed areas after conflicts or disasters, an intolerable lack of children’s safety in a certain area, alarming situation of certain public services, evaluation of certain pollution indicators, illegally dumped toxic wastes that are beginning to seep into the city’s water source, etc.;



a formal request by a group of citizens to support some initiatives;



a campaign of protest or repression of an initiative may be turned into a more collaborative program of action (e.g. potential of Mashtots Park Movement in Yerevan21 or Hala Matache in Bucharest22).



the government may announce funding is available for community-based projects;



external assistance programs may promote a methodology or may assist an integrated urban development endeavour;



an opportunity to exploit an economic advantage which did not exist until now.

In most cases, the problems are already identified through consultative processes and through undertaken analyses for local development strategy. Their resolution is already part of the city's long term strategy.

This problem or opportunity becomes the “triggering” event that motivates one or more people to call for action. They could be local elected officials, city officers and staff, a local non-governmental organization (NGO), the director of a small community-based organization (CBO), a neighbourhood club or individual citizens. It is their awareness that a problem exists or their vision that an opportunity is at hand that takes the local government and community to the point where they believe a participatory integrated urban development process could be helpful.

Integrated processes of urban development planning whether are initiated by local government officials, members of a civic organization or by citizens, are precipitated by one of two major human attributes: awareness and vision. These attributes are, in turn, triggered by, respectively, two phenomena: problems and opportunities.

Example: In order to disseminate in the community the fact that municipality is going to start an integrated urban development planning process as well as to initially explore the perceptions and possible partnerships, the pilot cities from Rep. of Moldova involved in our project23 (Orhei, Balti, Vadul lui Voda) organized meetings in the form of “public café”.

The Public Cafe is a method which makes use of an informal hospitable cafe for participants to explore an issue and the questions that matter by discussing in small table groups. Discussion is held in multiple rounds of 20-30 minutes. The groups share collective discoveries in each round. The event is concluded with a plenary and recommendations for the issue.

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The Public Cafe has been used by a wide spectrum of participants, ranging from community members to business executives, selected local stakeholder groups, local government, experts, and professionals. The services of a professional facilitator are needed and the event duration could be from few hours to a day long workshop.

Step 2: Setting up the team and the cooperation framework Whether triggered by problems or by opportunities, situations are often messy and unclear, with different people and groups having different views of what should be addressed or solved and - even more important – how exactly to do this. In order to move into a planned process, it is important to start asking some key questions as: 

Who is going to support the process?



Who are the key stakeholders in the community and what are their attitudes?



Who pays? Who administers? Who convenes?



To whom the progress should be reported?



What organizational resources we can mobilize to manage the process?



What approach on participation is likely to be appropriate and acceptable?



What skills are needed for the process? Are these skills available in the local government structures or in the community?



How will we know when we have succeeded?

The entity that starts to ask similar questions at the beginning of the endeavour is becoming the “process organizer”.

Usually, the process organizers are the same with the initiators. However, there are very rare cases in which citizens can be also the “process organizers” - when a community initiative takes the form of an enterprise/agency able to conduct further the process. Therefore even when the initiators are community groups or private entities, the process organizers are usually the local governments24, presumption that we take into account forward. a) Establish the process management team(s) At this stage, the internal working team is established within the public administration. Furthermore, the ways of cooperation with other people or institutions that may be part of an extended task force team are identified. This is the moment to decide if external experts and /or facilitators of the consultative processes along the way are involved. If it is so decided, in this preparatory phase, take place all activities necessary to purchase those services. Moreover, in this period necessary institutional partnerships are explored and established to solve the problems that triggered the process. This may involve partnerships between local authority and NGOs or other local or private sector organizations. It is important to attain at this stage this initial effort to broaden the circle of those involved. Following that, the analysis of stakeholders and of those to be involved or consulted should be detailed.

IUD in practice: You can choose between the following general approaches towards the organization of plan: - consultative planning, involving (main) stakeholders at the level of collecting their opinions mainly on alternative solutions - participatory planning, involving all community stakeholders throughout the entire process - an approach which, although takes time, it is the most recommended to have the support of the whole community and realistic goals shared by all.

The advantages of both consultative and participatory planning types (to a lesser extent if just consultative): 

Determines the awareness about urban planning and its likely effects;

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

Contributes to public education on strategic options implementation at territorial level;



It is a valuable means of gathering information from all urban development stakeholders;



Improves the quality and relevance of plans as a result of taking into account all stakeholders’ views, concerns and information;



Facilitates public acceptance and public support for the implementation of plans;



Improves transparency and consistency of democratic process of public policy creation.

If a participatory approach (as presented in Figure 12) is decided, this stage includes establishing agreements, partnerships and concrete tasks with the external stakeholders involved in process management, supervision or monitoring. b) Organizational framework preparation/adaptation The process of integrated planning of urban development involves an update, and sometimes even a reform, of the organizational framework, with the aim of efficiency. Effective management involves not only decision making and problem solving, but also requires a proactive attitude in order to research and take advantage of opportunities, both within the organization and beyond. Troubleshooting, by its nature, is reactive. The management team has a problem and reacts so as to solve it. Nevertheless, opportunities require a proactive style which involves a course of action that anticipates the necessary changes.

Organizations are made in order to fulfil certain tasks. Correspondingly, organizational charts are designed to show what organizations do, namely who, what or how formal authority is distributed to the various levels of the organization. The problem of organizational charts resides in the fact that they depend solely of a photographic aspect in order to convey reality in a dynamic world, sometimes presenting hierarchy instead of collaboration, routine instead of initiative. In organizational management, as in architecture, the guiding principles should be “form follows substance” or “function dictates form”. In other words, the organization form should reflect wishes and / or what it is mandated to fulfil.

Following the approach focused on programs (results oriented) as required by integrated urban development process, the working manner should be cross-departmental and interdisciplinary. Moreover, the integrated planning of urban development challenges local governments to think of organizational formats that will provide both access and influence in local government by sharing power.

IUD in practice: As required by integrated urban planning process, the basic tasks to be fulfilled by those who commit to work in a power-sharing arrangement are25: 

Understanding the social, political and economic compromises - for example, the need for democratic governance, the new competition reality in a global economy and its impact on regional and national policies;



Understanding those involved in the change process, including ourselves – What are the gains for those involved in shared power relationships, or what do I and my organization gain? What are our weaknesses and our strengths as managers of local administration as we enter the “battle”?;



Building teams, critical in power-sharing relationships - it is desirable to create a creative team with autonomy as the dominant trait, focusing on exploring the possibilities and alternatives, with members possessing analytical skills, but also the ability to abandon normative thinking, taking initiative, with a high degree of self confidence and toughness (does not get discouraged by the lack of immediate solutions).



Organizations, inter-organizational networks and communities education - for example supporting municipal organization to face new challenges, to go beyond political and organizational borders in order to have new work alliances;

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

Formulate an organizational goal and communicate it in order to take advantage of opportunities in order to provide interpretations and directions in situations of uncertainty and difficulty, offering views of the future.



Making and implementing administrative, managerial and legal decisions - mediating conflicts between constituents, strategically using the managerial influence and resources.

One of the key elements of the process is to establish as early as possible the partnership working framework necessary for the integrated urban development planning, including communication. The formal record of the fundamental principles underlying the partnership is very useful. So is the clarification of each partner’s aspirations, as well as the working methods to be used26.

It is necessary for the planning process to be perceived not as the endpoint of a technical development, but rather as a governance instrument of the area within the city, which generates decisions and actions with strategic value for the community development. Hence, in order to have an effective implementation, the following it is required to be achieved in this phase: 

A solid management structure, supported by a strong political leadership, where the administration is not the only active organization. Involving the stakeholders who take part in preparing the integrated urban development plan and subsequently other new, relevant actors, expands the number of those who consent to the plan. It also reinforces the strategy and initiatives sharing and creates a favourable climate for the establishment of partnerships between public and private actors. This allows a more efficient, rapid and targeted implementation, facilitating also its regular updating.



Enabling communication processes by establishing measures to maintain the interest and participation at a high level during the whole process, mainly by constantly informing all stakeholders.



Constantly monitoring the planning process itself, critical assessment of the progress, adaptation to emerging situations and provision of accurate and concentrated information for the actors responsible with actions at various process stages.



For all the above, it is useful to develop a plan (a Gantt chart) of the planning process itself, as to establish benchmarks and the course of process steps into defined timeframes and responsibilities, as well as clear allocation of internal resources (staff, equipment, meeting rooms, funds for consultative processes or technical external expertise, etc)

IUD in practice: In order to optimize the teamwork: 

The format and style of meetings and events should be carefully planned in order to provide a positive ambience and to encourage participants, but also to ensure that the objectives achievement.



To hold effective “meetings” (which might also use communication through teleconference, Internet, etc.), an agenda must be submitted in advance, specifying whether any additional document has to be printed or read before.



After each meeting, a summary report should circulate to all participants and members that were not present and hence, finding out about the topics discussed.



It is very important to ensure a quality management of the meetings and events, in order to create conditions for effective participation and collaboration.



The experience in facilitating these events it has to be ensured, making use even of external experts in this field.



Workshops where participants are equally treated are usually more useful than formal meetings dominated by expert presentations.

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

Success will depend on many factors, but a critical issue is how well organized are the meetings. Make sure that all members analyze and discuss how these meetings will be organized.

Figure 14: Planning the process stages, municipality of Aparan, Armenia The process activity plan developed by the Aparan municipality, to be completed with concrete, specific resources allocation: ACTIVITIES

May 2012

June 2012

July 2012

1. Start of IUD process 2. Working group and joint method formation 3. Partnership agreement signing with the Municipality 4. Information and data collection, classification and analysis

5. Differentiation of activity zone boundaries within IUD of the cities

6. Definition of urban planning policy in the outlined zone 7. Detailed analysis of the zone of urban influence

8. Definition of priority goals of the urban zone development (via public discussions)

9. Definition of programs or/and priority integrated projects for the main goals achievement 10. Activity plan development aiming to invest and to monitor the project 11. Plan approval

INTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

August 2012

Sept.

2012

Nov. 2102

1. Responsible 2. Categories of involved urban “actors” 1. Mayor 2. Local authorities 1. Mayor 2. Chief Architect, economist

1.Chief Architect 2. Different departments of municipality, economist, population 1. Chief Architect 2. Different departments of municipality, economist, population 1. Mayor 2. Local authorities, Chief Architect, economist, 1. Chief Architect 2. Different departments of municipality, economist, 1. Mayor 2. Chief Architect Different departments of municipality, economist, population 1. Mayor 2. Chief Architect Different departments of municipality, economist, 1. Chief Architect 2. Different departments of municipality, economist, 1. Mayor, Local authorities 2. Chief Architect,

38

economist, 12. Implementation and monitoring

Step 3: Identifying and analyzing the stakeholders A stakeholder is any person, community, group or organization who may be affected, positively or negatively, by integrated urban development, or who can influence positively or negatively the implementation activity. Hence, any group or individual who has an interest, is influenced / affected or may affect / impact on problems solving and opportunities use.

After their identification, stakeholders must be analyzed in order to assess each one’s influence and importance in the creation and implementation of the integrated urban development plan. Stakeholder analysis is made for the following purposes: 

Identify, and then negotiate the interests of all those involved that could affect or be affected by the plan;



Avoid potential conflicts and risks that could jeopardize the plan;



Consolidation, during the plan implementation, of partnerships and relationships that can contribute to its success;



Encourage more passive groups to participate in different stages of urban planning;



Identify ways to improve the plan and reduce or even eliminate the negative impact on vulnerable or disadvantaged groups.

IUD in practice: According to their power of influence, the stakeholders can be divided into the following categories: 

Key stakeholders: those who can crucially influence the activity outcome.



Main stakeholders: those individuals and groups directly affected by the plan, either as beneficiaries (positively influenced) or un-beneficiaries (disadvantaged or negatively influenced).



Secondary stakeholders: all other individuals or institutions involved, interested or playing an intermediary role in implementation.

Depending on how they can be involved in integrated urban planning process, stakeholders can be divided into the following categories: 

Interest groups



Competence groups



Support groups



Decision groups



Information transfer and communication group

The relation interest-power could be also analized placing the stakeholders on a simple scale as on the below model.

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Figure 15: Stakeholder analysis – scale power / interest

High POWER

Low

Low

High

INTEREST (in urban development)

Figure 16: Model - table of stakeholder analysis

Stakeholder analysis For a better understanding of the different stakeholders Topic (trigger element – problem or opportunity): Key stakeholders

…………………………………………………………………………………

Interests and how are affected by the problem

Capacity and motivation for change

Possible actions to address stakeholder interests AND to delegate to the stakeholder

Interests and how are affected by the problem

Capacity and motivation for change

Possible actions to address stakeholder interests and, eventually, to delegate to the stakeholder

1

2 3 . .

Main stakeholders

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Stakeholder analysis For a better understanding of the different stakeholders 1

2

3

Secondary stakeholders

Interests and how are affected by the problem

Capacity and motivation for change

Possible actions to address stakeholder interests

4

5

6

7

Source: adaptation from Program URBACT II. Toolkit for Local Support Group – 2009

Example (relevant for steps 2 and 3, see Case Study 1: URBAN II. “Removing the barriers” in Berlin): The cooperation between various interest groups involved in the programme “Removing the barriers” in Berlin (aiming to connect the city's neighbourhoods) was organized by the following institutional forms: (i) Monitoring Committee, which monitors the programme and controls the way it is conducted; (ii) Coordination Committee, which decides on the projects and deals with the basic issues that arise during the implementation; (iii) Working Groups (one for each thematic priority) preparing decisions on projects, in terms of their content, and track the achievements of the project and (iv) Coordination Group, which facilitates the coordination of involved authorities and external management.

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Of the four listed entities, the Coordination Committee is the most important in bringing together the stakeholders involved. Members of this Coordination Committee are: 

Regional administration for Economic Development, Retraining, Education, Urban Development;



The two local authorities (at district level) involved;



Representatives of the communities in the four neighbourhoods;



Economic and social partners such as the Chamber of Commerce, Employment Agency, local businessmen, delivery agencies;



Representatives of civil society: ecological and cultural associations.

Some of them also take part in Working Groups. Program implementation is managed by a team. Each institution involved has a specific function and only good quality teamwork can secure success.

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Step 4: Collecting, organizing and analyzing information and data Depending on the context, in order to identify problems or faults and to create the basis to solve them, the required actions in this stage comprise the following: 

Collecting as much data, information and ideas as possible;



Organizing them thematically for a better understanding of the problems and opportunities;



The definition of indicators, enabling then the evaluation of results;



Exploring information in relationship to the definition of the urban action zone;



Analyzing data and information in relation to the goal.

Thus, multi-criteria analysis of the current situation should lead to precise characterizations in terms of demographic, economic, investment, history, public spaces quality, service quality, etc. A better understanding of local realities requires the development of more appropriate and multifaceted indicators capable of measuring more qualitative aspects of urban economic and social life – the environment, economic development potential, cultural assets, etc. Usually existing current indicators are not sufficiently developed to properly measure the progress of cities progress or, even less, the link between sectorial issues. The management team must have the capacity to share and analyse information and to establish causal links between indicators and actions. Crude indicators, such as migration measurements and different types of input and output indicators, have to be complemented with outcome indicators as well as qualitative indicators, such as perception surveys in order to complement quantitative with qualitative analysis to include intangible resources and to distinguishing between the effect of internal and external factors in the city development. For example, even very comprehensive socio-economic data exists, it is difficult to understand and analyse issues such as social polarisation and social cohesion - people’s habits (including consumption of public and private services), social relationships, daily and weekly mobility patterns, etc. are equally important as the hard data on income, employment and education.

Also, an even bigger challenge is to collect data and information on different areas within the city. The bigger the city, the more relevant such data and information, as there are likely to be significant intra-city disparities. Therefore, for an integrated urban development endeavour and long term vision, as well as to monitor the progress, it is needed to gather the information not only at the level of the city but also at that of the neighbourhood, or even smaller areas. Ideally a range of different data sets should be collected at area level - e.g. indices of housing conditions, accessibility and actual use of public services and infrastructure, deprivation, environmental health, cultural aspects, quality of air, sound pollution, aesthetics and architectural quality, cultural heritage, social cohesion, etc. Therefore, the initiation of an integrated urban development planning process could be an appropriate opportunity to set up such a knowledge base of data and information.

IUD in practice: The working team can use the following collecting instruments for information, data, needs and perceptions: 

inventory of existing documents, such as sustainable local development strategy or Local Agenda 21, strategies and / or sectoral programs (e.g. waste collection, water and wastewater infrastructure, mobility, urban plans, etc.) and their consultative processes results;



collecting from various other institutions or specialized compartments, the data necessary for the analysis of certain indicators evolution;



quantitative sociological research by questioning a representative sample (usually by questionnaires);

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

qualitative sociological research through focus groups (group interviews) that can be organized for certain categories of residents or users of the area (by age, profession, etc.), combining interviews and questionnaires;



the team own experience and knowledge;



direct observation.

It is highly recommended to use as many of these tools, so that the data can be cross-checked.

Regardless of the methods used for data collection, they must be compiled and gathered in one place, then categorized according to the information needs.

The required categories of data and information shall be determined according to the specific context of each city or according to already reported problems at the beginning of the process. We suggest here some possible categories: 

information about the local economy and local labour market;



socio-demographic data;



data on the quality of public spaces, on usage (and needs) of public spaces, the accessibility of public spaces;



information and data on utilities infrastructure networks and circulation networks;



information and data about the quality, accessibility and sustainability of urban transport;



land use



travel patterns



energy use



data on quality and energy efficiency of buildings;



data and information on education and training



data and information on social assistance;



data on crime and vandalism, etc.

Often, these data and information are being collected during the development of broader strategic documents such as sustainable development strategy. If these data are sufficient (actual data) and detail sufficiently certain city areas, they can be taken as such, with no need to repeat their collection.

A lot of relevant aspects for integrated urban development, such as the information of public institutions regarding infrastructure, disasters management, environment protection, health, urban plans, security, education, culture, entertainment, etc., as well as private sector information regarding transport, telecommunications, electricity, distribution, trade, etc. involve geo-spatial data for which information systems provide updated means for analysis and consequent decision-making. Therefore, if available, geo-spatial information facilitates coordination also at neighbourhood level, giving decision an accurate, actual and objective assessment fundament. GIS system provides many layers of information from all available fields of activity in a graphic representation. The data necessary in urban GIS applications are diverse and numerous and they involve important costs for their gathering and updating. It is important to be contributed by many institutions that shall use the same categories of data, beside those adequate activities (for instance, the data concerning buildings and owners is necessary to urbanism services, taxes authorities or departments, public utilities suppliers, survey operators, etc.; data concerning roads are necessary for traffic department, investment department, transport companies, mail, firemen units, police units, etc). Therefore there is a need institutions collaboration improving data availability as well as in using the same geographical reference.

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Examples: Figure 17: GIS application

GIS Braila, SE Romania

Map of environment quality Focsani Sud, SE Romania

Source: Braila County Council

Source: OpenGIS

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Step 5: Setting the urban action area It is recommended that the choice and delimitation of the area for intervention should be performed in a manner as objective as possible. This should be based on collected data and information and should rely on an analysis of criteria aimed at maintaining the social balance while preserving cultural diversity and ensuring high quality in terms of urban development. Hence, the aim is an examination of the development potential of supposed urban action zones, in terms of demographic, socio-economic, equipment level, heritage, public space, environment, public services needs, social cohesion, etc.

By analysing the existing situation as well as the direct and indirect impact of possible interventions in different areas, and examining different dimensions of an area with the same “core”, the result will be the selection of the most geographically limited area, with the highest impact (“a chain reaction”).

As mentioned before (see “What is the area of interventions?” chapter), the final setting of the action area could be determined indeed by envisaging already some possible interventions and estimating their beneficiaries. Defining the intervention area is not a single-step process, but needs several returns throughout the process. The territorial analysis needs to be refined again after selecting the interventions as to comprise the beneficiary area of the services proposed for improvement.

Usually the local government knows about “problem areas” and the issue here is just to select the one with which to start.

IUD in practice: The analysis necessary for area delimitation could follow direct, indirect and general impact parameters; these parameters are detailed in various categories and weighted. Criteria can be divided into sector categories, but will follow particularly criteria for inter-sectoral relationship.

Various alternatives of urban action delimitation are analyzed by scoring according to a rating scale and choose the area that will meet the maximum score.

Criteria that can be considered in the delimitation of urban action area (to be tailored on concrete situations): 1.

criteria related to physical urban regeneration



Extent to which pedestrianization of streets in the area would ensure a better use of public space and raise the area prestige with benefits on a larger area;



Extent to which restoration of heritage buildings in the area would raise the area prestige with benefits on a larger area;



Extent to which the mobility reorganisation leads to an effective interconnection of the area with another area;

2. criteria related to economic development 

Extent to which rehabilitation of public spaces increases area’s attractiveness for citizens and investors;



Extent to which investments in infrastructure increases the attractiveness of city / area for citizens and investors;

3. criteria related to social issues 

Extent to which the development of green spaces improves the social cohesion;

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

Extent to which better quality of public spaces results in attracting people from certain categories (youth, elderly, disabled);



Extent to which the design of public spaces increase the population safety;



Extent to which interventions made at the road infrastructure level leads to increased road safety;

4. indirect impact 

Extent to which the interventions for rehabilitation of road infrastructure and public spaces encourages walking and cycling;



Extent to which interventions in road infrastructure improve mobility;



Extent to which interventions for rehabilitation of public spaces and surrounding buildings increase the citizens safety;



Extent to which local community benefits from the investment in the rehabilitation of green spaces and pedestrian areas;

5. general criteria: 

Extent to which equal opportunities are ensured by the implementation of efficient and diversified solutions for people with disabilities at public infrastructure investment level;



Extent to which the creation of equal opportunities for disadvantaged categories is ensured;



Extent to which environmental conditions will improve by streamlining pedestrian traffic, cycling and public transportation;



Extent to which a better environment is provided by developing green spaces;



Extent to which energy efficiency is ensured through fuel savings resulting from the traffic flow and public mentality orientation towards pedestrian transportation and bicycle use to the detriment of car transportation;



Extent to which the respect for history and local traditions is followed;, as well as urban planning and architectural design;



Extent to which the so-called “Greenfield / Brownfield” is ensured; this promotes the re-utilization of already used lands (called Brownfield), in the detriment of the lands that did not suffer any kind of intervention (called Greenfield).

6. resources: 

Extend to which institutional partners or/and citizens as well as other stakeholders support the area development with their own resources (time, human resources, financial resources);



Extent to which solving the area needs responds to local elected representatives electoral promises (normally based on assessments)

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Examples: Figure 18: Summary of criteria for identification of intervention area boundaries CRITERIA

OBSERVATIONS

(a) Basic criteria 1.

Small-scale, urban character and local approach

Clearly identified and demarcated area of the city which can be called area of intervention, containing worrying phenomena and processes; Interventions in free zones are not excluded.

2.

Population critical mass

Intervention area will include a relevant number of inhabitants for which the impact has to be significant.

3.

Character and clearly defined issues

The socio-economic characteristics of the area (central area, industrial area, etc.) and diagnosis of the problems that can be solved by IUDP.

4.

Local potential for development

The existence of immediate, visible and accepted (by stakeholders) endogenous development potential.

5.

(Pre)Existence of efficient partnerships

Activities/ actions/ (urban) projects existence and results that required commitment and involved several institutions and partner organizations (local partnerships that developed and implemented procedures and mechanisms with good results), indicating community involvement in area intervention.

(b) Complex criteria 6.

Integration/compatibility with existent strategies

Compatibility with strategic reference documents and relationships with other urban and territorial planning tools.

7.

Co-financing capacity

Attracting funds from multiple sources (with co-participation of relevant public administration entities) and multi-annual planning of activities and available resources.

8.

Proper institutional framework

An institutional construction, with a well defined status, responsibilities and resources.

9.

Implementation and communication mechanisms

Public authority at a level closer to the intervention area, in an effective partnership of locally important dynamic forces, associated supportive structures, transparent monitoring and evaluation system and a good communication between the initiator - the local community

10.

Relevance and multiplication capacity of IUDP effects

A development concept with lasting effects on the city scale that contributes to territorial cohesion and it is adaptable to particular city situations and other areas of intervention.

Source: "Methodological guide to integrated urban project - pilot project" - Ministry of Regional Development and Housing, Romania; elaborate by Lattanzio e associati s.p.a, 2010.

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Figure 19: Intervention area, Vadul lui Voda, Rep. of Moldova

Source: Vadul lui Voda, IUD management team

Vadul lui Voda municipality selected a clearly defined loisir area of the city as intervention area for Integrated Urban Development Plan. This has been made in coordination with the local development strategy and the multi-annual planning of activities as well as result of the analysis of the potential to attract funds from multiple sources (with coparticipation of relevant public administration entities) and to achieve lasting effects on the city scale that contributes to territorial cohesion and it is adaptable to particular city situations and other areas of intervention.

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Step 6: Defining urban development policy in the chosen area While intuitive elements of urban policy were used in previous steps, now it is the time to formally assume the intentions on the chosen urban development area. This is done by the “transcription” of the vision for urban development to a set of principles to be followed in the next steps of integrated urban planning. Since successful implementation of such a plan depends on organizational, financial and partnership arrangements, these have to be established by this policy.

The diagnosis of urban action area is going to be completed in a detailed way with regards to the urban development policy undertaken by the local administration and its partners.

Questions that can contribute to the definition of urban development policy of defined area may be: 

What are the features of the area? What values of the area can be harnessed? What aspects need to be developed?



What is desirable for the integrated development of the area? What are the goals of the integrated urban development of the area?



What principles should be followed in establishing integrated projects and their implementation?

Actions focusing on the quality of development itself need to be a core part of the urban policy package, not add-ons to an already crowded agenda. That means that stakeholders will have to expand actions, shifting the emphasis toward: 

valuing natural resources and investing adequately in human resources instead of exclusively favouring or subsidizing physical capital; the implication is to ensure broadly based, sustainable development, not to impede growth;



building regulatory frameworks for competition and efficiency to accompany the implementation of the project;



nurturing good governance, participatory processes and accountability and actively involving the private sector to reduce the influence of vested interests, while building capacity for coalition building and ownership in the community.

Examples: Some policy examples concerning urban development: 

“The orientation of urban planning in order to improve the recreational useful and quality of existing spaces”



“Encourage and provide infrastructure for green means of transportation”



“Establish guidelines for "certification" of ecological building; climate change should be considered in all planning projects”



“Supporting local economic forces”



“Creation of information transfer networks between industry, business and scientific community”



“Improved urban technical networks in an early stage of regeneration / urban development process and adapted to the changing needs, so as to enable future requirements that a high quality urban life imposes”



“Reducing costs for citizens and the business sector through efficient and optimized infrastructure and energy efficient buildings”



“Provide a space to preserve cultural diversity”



“Using schools in order to disseminate information, such as those related to health and crime prevention”

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

“Creating a widely recognized system of citizen participation at neighbourhood level.” (e.g. Berlin land, in Germany)



“Ensuring the integration of town planning and transport planning (e.g. Vienna, Austria)”

IUD in practice: Visioning Participatory workshop A Visioning Participatory workshop is a way for a community or area stakeholders to create a shared vision for its future. This is designed to encourage people to think globally, review the past and present, and based on this focus on the ideal future, they identify common ground and make public commitments to action in a certain local issue.

This method is used when we need to create a shared future vision on a local issue combined with the energy to make it happen.

The suitable participants to this event are local stakeholders who are chosen because they have power or information on the issue or they are affected by the outcomes.

The tool requires one or two days duration.

Another version of this tool could have the form of a Guided Visualisation workshop, which is the use of a script to take a group on an imaginary journey into the future. It can be adapted and used with a variety of groups and fits into a limited time slot of an evening/half a day workshop. The method accesses people’s deepest hopes and dreams which are not often shared with others. The participants with the help of the facilitator take an imaginary journey into their future visioning “one day in their life” which helps to create a collective vision and project actions among the whole group.

Case study: Edinburgh (Waterfront / Leith) – Visioning at an area scale27 Facilitator: Architecture and Design Scotland (A+DS), 2010-2011 To assist in the development of an Area Development Framework a series of charrette styled events were supported that considered place resilience in terms of quality of PLACE, quality of life and quality of service. Initial work to engage a range of stakeholders was followed by working up concept diagrams and propositions to a level of design guidance for this area that is above what is in planning policy or the local plan.

Challenge The City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) is prioritising areas of the city as a focus for regeneration. Two of these areas, the Waterfront/Leith area and an area stretching from Holyrood to Haymarket known as the ‘Southern Arc’, were felt to require a closer examination that was designed to ‘deliver a coherent strategic direction for broad areas of the city within which individual masterplans can be prepared, describe how individual areas can physically evolve and, importantly, how the Council and its partners can facilitate place-making.’ The term ‘Area Development Framework’ was coined for the plan that would result from this strategic focus on individual areas.

Prompted in part by events held by the Scottish Government in 2010 promoting the charrette-based work of Andres Duany, CEC decided to take a charrette-based approach to drawing up Area Development Frameworks for the Waterfront-Leith area and the Southern Arc. This case study focuses on the production of the Waterfront-Leith ADF. The plan preparation and visioning process INTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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Stage 1. Representatives of relevant CEC service areas considered potential for collaboration between different services. A notion of service priorities in the Waterfront-Leith area was brought to a half-day ‘internal charrette’, where participants also discussed: 

what is the quality of PLACE ambition for Edinburgh Waterfront and what needs to done to achieve it?



what is the quality of life ambition for Edinburgh Waterfront?



what is the quality of service ambition for Edinburgh Waterfront, and how can this be achieved through joined up working?

The key messages from this first session were: 

general agreement that a new approach to the regeneration of the Waterfront / Leith was required



recognition that there was a lack of integration between the development that had taken place at the Waterfront / Leith and the existing communities in north Edinburgh and the city centre beyond

Stage 2. Following the ‘internal charrette’ CEC held a day-long ‘external charrette’ on 26 August 2010, to which a range of people were invited including elected members, community groups, public agencies, institutions, landowners and others with an interest in the area.

Following a presentation on ‘Place Resilience’ which looked at the three economies of place – the Public, the Social and the Commercial, participants considered three questions: 

Q1. What kind of place will the Waterfront be if we continue to do what we have been doing?



Q2. What kind of place would we like the Waterfront to be?



Q3. How might we make the Waterfront more resilient?

Collective thoughts were summarised in a diagram which identified a series of primary, secondary and tertiary ‘Hearts’ in the area, key green spaces, key commercial areas and key routes or connections within and beyond the area.

Stage 3. CEC developed the notion of ‘hearts’ and ‘links’ into a more tangible proposal for the creation of a Great City Street, Neighbourhood Streets, Nodes and a Green Network; together with other outputs from the ‘external charrette’ these were presented to a half-day ‘Outcomes and Scenarios charrette’ held in October 2010 which was attended by all who had attended both previous charrettes, plus additional invitees.

Stage 4. CEC, with the further support and advice of A+DS, commissioned three architects to take the three ‘Heart’ areas and produce concept drawings showing how those areas could develop over time without prejudicing the development of the wider area or plans already in place in those areas. The drawings presented by each architect were subsequently re-worked by A+DS before inclusion in the draft ADF. The draft ADF was published in February 2011. A shortened document, accompanied by an Action Plan, was presented to Planning Committee in May 2011.

Conclusions

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The key skills brought into the process were the ability to articulate ideas about urban design and place-making and to communicate these in words, pictures and diagrams. The value of participation in the project by an authoritative independent external body was also noted; on occasions this helped to defuse tensions arising between the council and some attendees and it ‘helped emphasise the collaborative nature of the initiative’. As a result of the process the CEC now have a level of design guidance for this area that is above what is in planning policy or the local plan, and which (at least until it is tested) will be a useful tool in achieving a better end-result for development in the Waterfront/Leith area.

Source: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0040/00400747.pdf

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Step 7: Detailed diagnosis of the urban action area Additional information and supplementary data are to be further collected and analysed defining a detailed diagnosis of the area. The specific areas features will be analysed, especially from the perspective of the relations between them, so this diagnosis subsequently leads to a precise formulation of realistic goals to be achieved in a reasonably efficient manner. Hence, the goal is to identify the problems or malfunctions causing effects or symptoms leading to other problems.

At this stage, depending on context and policies adopted, the following aspects are to be analyzed at an area scale: 

Demographic and social characteristics of the action area



Economic characteristics of the area (economic profile, accessibility, public service, university education, research, etc.)



Investment dynamics in the urban action area



Development needs in the urban action expressed by citizens



Potential development of urban action area

The detailed diagnosis of the urban action area consists of an examination of the development potential in terms of social aspects, equipment, heritage, environment and identifying the advantages of the area, its problems and failures.

This characterization of the area substantiates the development goals and the action plan.

Also, this stage is another opportunity to enlarge the partnerships with eventual newly identified stakeholders.

This is the stage during which the area problems are clearly outlined. The analysis of problems helps next to determine real (as opposed to apparent) development needs. Also, as mentioned above, it helps to bond process participants together by identifying a variety of issues that may need to be dealt with, such as the roles of different stakeholders in resolving those issues, or the timescale and resources needed to achieve addressing a certain need.

The problem analysis may reveal upstream issues (causes of problems) that need to be tackled before the apparent development need downstream can be addressed.

Therefore, problem and opportunity analysis is useful in terms of: 

building a better understanding of the underlying causes of development issues;



building stakeholder consensus;



identifying potential constraints;



helping establish the actual size of the problem and the likely resources needed to tackle it.

Problem finding not only includes better definition of the problem or opportunity but judgements about whether the problem is solvable or the opportunity attainable. Actually, the problem analysis could be already used to directly identify the hierarchy of objectives and actions (see logical framework at next step). However, it should be paid an additional care not to narrow too much the analysis on the causes which may sometimes cause losing the integration approach and focusing only on a narrow objective, usually the most visible one regarding physical state of the public space (neglecting the social aspects) or even regarding just one of the physical state aspects of an area. (e.g. in Dilijan case below there is a risk to focus only solving the problem of degradation of the cultural building which is only one of the causes of not appropriate attractivity of the area).

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The analysis of present situation will comprise a SWOT analysis of urban action area, which will present: 

strengths and weaknesses of urban action area



aspects of the external environment (regional, national, economic, etc.) that might result in threats and opportunities causing certain development needs.

Each identified development need should be correlated with the results of socioeconomic analyzes on development tendencies of the city / region and with the development priorities. It is advisable to have a participatory SWOT analysis, by organizing an advisory committee with the involvement of key stakeholders or by organizing planning workshops with a wider involvement.

Examples: Yeghednadzor, Armenia: -

the preliminary analysis was made and the intervention area was selected: an extension of the city, opposite the Yerevan-Stepanakert highway, previously undeveloped (with the exception of circa 20 houses built through a central government program for housing refugees, which are found at the other extremity of the area, with bad connections to the road and the centre of town)

-

the urban policy was defined as to address infrastructure as well as social amenities and also to avoid isolation of the new neighbourhoods;

-

next, in order to obtain a strong fundament for the goals and objectives, the project team has organized a public consultation with the major stakeholders, including the 25 local NGOs, from where potential partnerships have further emerged; further detailed diagnosis is also focused as to eliminate the risk the highway will act as a barrier, an obstacle for mobility and functional relationships between the two parts of the city.

Dilijan, Armenia:

-

the selected intervention area comprises an area surrounding the cultural palace of Dilijan, in the Dilijan town centre;

-

the diagnosis was afterwards completed in the framework of the development policy of the town, mainly as a tourism destination but also as a financial centre of Armenia (the latter decided by a central government decision) - different scenarios of urban development planning for tourism were discussed, based on current trends in international tourism market with an accent on focusing on authenticity but also on luxury - identifying there is no consistency between for instance the lack of quality public spaces (including sidewalks) and the tourism vision.

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Step 8: Establishing the priority objectives of urban development of the area The priority goals are being set up in accordance with the current situation analysis, through a consultative process involving all stakeholders.

The urban development goals for the area must focus on solving the identified problems and/or harnessing the opportunities in the area of action, through projects aimed at solving/reducing/improving the problems or obtaining competitive advantages in a correlated manner.

Objectives will be stated in a simple, clear, concise and measurable in time manner. Objectives should be closely related to the needs identified in the opening stage of integrated urban development plan construction.

IUD in practice: An objective is well defined if it meets all of the following criteria: 

States as concretely as possible what is going to be realized.



Realistically states a desired outcome, not an activity.



It is measurable in order to assess its achievement or its level of achievement at certain stages.



States a precise deadline.



It is under the control of those striving to achieve it and local public administration agrees to accomplish it.

An objective is a statement of the outcome we want to accomplish for the intervention area target group(s).

Goals are bigger statements of intent, more global in scope and tend to be stated in less precise terms. Goals may include a number of objectives under the umbrella that will help in their achievement. A statement of the goal to be accomplished should probably precede every set of objectives.

The biggest challenge when writing objectives is to state them in such a way that we will know whether or not we are succeeding in their attainment in our planning and implementation efforts. Objectives that are vaguely worded or include several purposes make implementing them difficult if not impossible. In order to assess the objectives accomplishment logical framework matrix proved to be a very useful tool, comprising a hierarchy of objectives, indicators of performance, means of verifying the indicators and important risks and assumptions along the horizontal axis and goal, objectives, outputs and activities along the vertical axis.

According to Project Cycle Management Guidelines of EC 28, the Logical Framework Approach (LFA) “is an analytical process and set of tools used to support project planning and management. It provides a set of interlocking concepts which are used as part of an iterative process to aid structured and systematic analysis of a project or programme idea.

The LFA should be thought of as an ‘aid to thinking’. It allows information to be analysed and organized in a structured way, so that important questions can be asked, weaknesses identified and decision makers can make informed decisions based on their improved understanding of the project rationale, its intended objectives and the means by which objectives will be achieved. [...]

The Logical Framework Matrix (or more briefly the Logframe) consists of a matrix with four columns and four (or more) rows, which summarise the key elements of a project plan, namely: • The project’s hierarchy of objectives (Project Description or Intervention Logic); • The key external factors critical to the project’s success (Assumptions); and INTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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• How the project’s achievements will be monitored and evaluated (Indicators and Sources of Verification). [...]

The Logframe also provides the basis on which resource requirements (inputs) and costs (budget) are determined.”

The so called “logframe” should be simple and concise. The Goal, Objectives and Output must be specified in full, activities should be summarised where possible. The logframe should be comprehensive at first glance to the reader. The logframe is utilised not only at the programme or project proposal stage, but throughout the implementation and eventual evaluation as a basic management and monitoring tool. The logframe is a living document: it should be reviewed regularly during programme and project implementation.

Figure 20: The structure of a Logframe Matrix adapted for IUD Description

Indicators

Source of Verification

Goal (overall purpose) The endeavour’s contribution to local development policy or to strategic objectives

How the goal is to be measured including Quantity, Quality, Time?

How will the information be collected, when and by whom?

Objective – Direct benefits to be achieved for the city area citizens’(both inhabitants, visitors)

How the Objective is to be measured including Quantity, Quality, Time

As above

If the Objective is achieved, what assumptions must hold true to achieve the goal?

Results – Tangible products or services delivered in order to achieve the objectives(s)

How the results are to be measured including Quantity, Quality, Time

As above

If Results are achieved, what assumptions must hold true to achieve the Objective?

Activities – Tasks that have to be undertaken to deliver the desired results

How the necessary outputs (process activities, organizational and communication activities, as well as projects and works activities) will be measured?

As above

If Activities are completed, what assumptions must hold true to deliver the results?

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Step 9: Establishing the priority programmes of integrated projects required in order to achieve the objectives An integrated approach covers a wider range of projects and programmes and focuses on several sectors, including the economic one, social services, urban planning, urban development, cultural settlements and environment.

Depending on the defined objectives, and therefore, according to diagnosis and to adopted urban development policy, there are going to be selected those programs and/or priority projects ready to be implemented in a correlated manner in order to reach the desired situation. Hence, the correlations between established programs and/or projects should be clearly revealed.

The local public administration and especially its elected representatives must resist to the temptation of imposing certain preferred projects to the working team, since the beginning. Although derived from daily experience and thus with possible benefits for the defined area, such programs or projects considered early in the process might divert the analysis quality. Moreover, straightening efforts and resources towards such projects, insufficiently justified by the area's complex diagnosis and by the citizens needs and preferences analysis, can lead to serious situations of city management interruption or even financial crisis or insolvency.

Selected projects that include investments should be included in the multi-annual capital investment plan; it means that administration has proposed such measures together with medium-term planning; but some projects have moved on the priority list together with the diagnosis done or with the identification of new opportunities; and thus, together with the establishment of possible new urban development policies.

However, not all the programs or projects include works –there could be so called “soft” programs as well. A program is a more general endeavour and usually comprises many related (simultaneous or consecutive) projects.

For example, in order to achieve the goal of a better connection between a certain X city area and the central area, the following objective was established (as one of the objectives to achieve this goal) to be addressed through a program: “the inhabitants of X area will spend with 30% less time to reach the central area, using quality public transportation, by mid 2014”. In order to achieve this objective, the following projects were established as part of the programme titled ”Centre in 20 minutes”: -

Correlation of public institutions open hours, as to diminish rush hours;

-

Re-organise the public transport: 

Improving the quality and number of buses;



Develop a new tram line;



Develop a public parking area outside city centre and to connect it with line “y”;



Implementing an electronic system for drivers in relation with stops boards and training for the public transport company;

-

A public campaign to improve the ownership attitude toward public transportation.

-

Reorganize the public transport department into the city hall as to better monitor the activity in cooperation with “association z”.

Only some of the projects are of physical (investments, works) nature, the other - equal important to achieve the objective - are focusing on “soft” aspects related with communication, internal organisational efficiency, cooperation, etc.

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A programme is a set of related projects which collectively and synergically deliver an overall change toward urban development of the area.

It can be hard or often useless to identify whether a certain endeavour is a large project or a small programme. Perhaps the most useful test is to look for the two levels of management - a strategic management team guiding the overall change programme overseeing project management teams charged with delivering the specific changes.

Figure 21: Guidelines comparing the characteristics of programmes vs. projects: Programmes

Projects

Address the entire change toward achieving the objective

Deliver a specific change component

Focus on (strategic) objective

Focus on tactical delivery

May have imprecise result definition

Have a precise result

May have uncertain timing

Are defined with a specific timeline and budget

Evolve over a period of time to derive optimum benefit for the area

Try to avoid change in order to ensure delivery

Require much senior management attention, often including strategic and political debate

Require management communication primarily at an operational level concerning operational details

Produce an overall improvement in the area that may be multifaceted and not fully defined at the outset of the programme

Produce specific pre-defined deliverables

Require a manager who is high-powered, high-level, visionary, strategic, political, and works with people at the top and across the organisation and community

Require a manager who pays attention to detail, has good team leadership, plans in detail, follows a disciplined approach, and delivers the results.

In correlation with the responsibilities on information and consultation of the citizens, local public administration is responsible for developing alternatives and to conduct public information and consultation concerning these alternative programmes or projects. It is recommended that the establishment of programmes and integrated urban development projects derive from the above diagnosis-analysis, but also from public options - options that have to be collected in this stage.

IUD in practice/Examples: Possible integrated programs or projects relating to the European strategy of improving the physical environment, with the aim of structural and physical improvement of residential housing and public spaces, which focuses also on social stabilization, social integration and revitalization of local economic structures: 

improve the recreational usefulness and quality of existing spaces by parking spots, playgrounds and sports facilities,



reorganize storage facilities for municipal waste,



improve avenues/gateways network



improve public transportation



improve street lighting concepts in order to provide a better sense of security

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

improve traffic;



add supplementary facilities for sport, recreational or social/gathering activities;



public spaces management in a way that creates a new image of the area (e.g.: temporary or permanent installations with artistic features, new indicators or signs, etc.);



improve existing microclimate and eliminate ecological deficits (e.g. replanting bare spaces, transforming tree planting in an event for the community and offer residents the possibility to "adopt" certain piece of land, to grow plants on roofs, etc.).

Possible integrated programs or projects with the main focus to improve the environment: 

Improving parks, public spaces and playgrounds in situations where they were abandoned and/or have become unattractive due to wear or damage and lack of care (e.g. Vienna, Barcelona, Bratislava, Prague, Helsinki, Sofia, etc. );



Building parks and public spaces is especially applied in urban areas that are somewhat "stone" like, meaning that consist almost entirely of residential buildings and roads (e.g. Antwerp, Glasgow, Luxembourg, London, etc.);



More green on streets: is a way to make streets more attractive (e.g. Bratislava, Dublin, Amsterdam);



Improving lighting is a simple, but effective, way to improve safety in the area (e.g. Paris, Orebru, Plock, etc.);



Creating cultural and recreational facilities can transform a place in one much more diverse and attractive for both its residents and to its potential visitors, especially in the case of dull areas that focus on living spaces;



Improving infrastructure increases the accessibility and it can also enhance road safety (e.g. Budapest, Riga, Torino);



Effective connection of some settlements in the city itself is an essential way to solve the problem of physical isolation. It is especially the case of those settlements arisen after the Second World War that are located relatively far from the cities and their opportunities in terms of offering employment and recreational point of view.

Possible integrated programs or projects with the main focus to improve the constructions/housing quality: 

Buildings restoration is intended to increase the value of historically interesting cities. Such strategies are related to the economic revitalization of central areas and aim to make the city more interesting as a whole;



Buildings renewal and modernization, particularly the residential ones, but also other types of buildings;



Improving existing buildings. In this case, buildings are not only upgraded, but improved. Examples of such interventions include: the union of two houses into one or transforming three houses in two; adding regular or luxury services or facilities that could attract different types of residents;



Changing functions. A classic example of this situation is turning the corner shop into residential space. Another similar example is the conversion of deposits or laundry rooms at the ground floor of buildings in the public areas (commercial, cultural, etc.).

An integrated approach requires detailed and adequate financial and organizational planning financial.

Public investment costs and other expenses financed by local public funds corresponding to IUDP are included in the draft budgets, based on the financial planning of the administrative – territorial unit presented as an annex to the original budget, after being corrected and approved by the deliberative authorities.

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Technical-economic documentation of new investments, which are entirely or in addition financed by local budgets, as well as those funded from internal and external loans directly contracted or guaranteed by local public administration authorities, are approved by the deliberative authorities.

IUD in practice: Types of operational budgets The following table describes the three types of (periodical) operational budgets, namely: i) budget by categories of income and expenditures; ii) performance-based budget; iii) budget according to programs. A budget can be a combination of several types of those presented before. Normally, local public administrations’ budgets are planned and approved based on detailed categories of income and expenses. Each type of operational budget varies according to how funds are allocated to cover expenses and to budget orientation: control, management efficiency and planning: Type of budget

Characteristics

Criteria

By categories of income and expenditures

Income and expenditures are reported to budget articles

Control

Performance-based

Income and expenditures are reported to results

Management efficiency

According to programs

Income and expenditures are reported to public objectives expressed explicitly in the budget

Planning/Impact

Performance-based budget A performance-based budget allocates money to different programs within the organization and it also details the quality level of services provided in the budget. Service quality is identified by using performance levels. In addition to control costs, the priority orientation of performance-based budget is to improve the internal management of the program. One example of a performance-based budget is the following: Road Maintenance Measures for performance improvement

Amount

Roads paved with stabilized ballast To be paved Kilometres: 10 km Cost per km: XX.XXX Subtotal Cost

XXX.XXX

Roads back into track To be brought into track Kilometres: 5 km Cost per km: XX.XXX Subtotal Cost

XXX.XXX

Total roads maintenance costs

X.XXX:XXX

The essential advantage of performance-based budget is that it illustrates both activities and also the levels of provided services. Relative levels of services and consumed funds for different activities show which the local public administration priorities are. Besides providing information about the quantity, quality and productivity evaluation, the performance-based budget provides sufficient information for elected officials to decide if priorities are correctly set.

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Budget according to programs Budget based on programs differs from traditional categories budget of income and expenditures in terms of budget preparation, analysis and presentation. Rather than focus on what a local public administration acquires, a budget based on programs allocates money for programs, focusing on the expected results from the activities and services and on achieving predetermined goals. Program areas, usually identified by local authorities are public works, recreation services, social services and community household, but it is desirable that a program covers integrated areas, thus reflecting IUD. Reference point of budgeting based on programs is that it allows local public administration representatives to think the budget in a way that leaves room for decision-making system improvement on the organization's objectives. A budget based on programs, income and expenditures relate to the objectives set for a period of several years and expressed by the financial policy statements. A budget based on programs identifies the anticipated results of these investments. One example of budgeting according to a program can be seen in the following table: Program: Urban Regeneration Area Y (IUDP)

Amount

Traffic flow Public transportation Traffic lights, markings Subtotal

XXX.XXX XXX.XXX X.XXX.XXX

Recreation services Parks Libraries Subtotal

XXX.XXX XXX.XXX X.XXX.XXX

TOTAL

XX.XXX.XXX

Both the budget according to programs and performance based budget are using evaluation indicators of financial and operational performance. But the two budgets are focused on different things. A performance-based budget focuses on management efficiency, while a program based budget emphasizes local community benefits, gained from local authority expenditures.

Benefits arising from using a program based budget as a primary instrument of public finance operation are: 

Financial data are presented in a transparent manner



It encourages a more efficient and coordinated management



Budget focusing on local public administration (community) priorities and on its financial possibilities.

These last two types of budget are drafted according to the proposed objectives in the condition of expanding the reference period. From a resources’ budget, that has an annual finality, we pass to program based budget (such as the one related to IUDP), which records the expenses concerning the medium and long term goals development.

Program based budgets reflect the amount of expenses for the proposed projects (in our case projects formulated within IUDP), allocating budget appropriations annually for the intended purpose. In order to assess the opportunity of public expenditures, we start from the comparison between updated costs and benefits of achieving a particular project (a particular investment or a certain action involving operational expenses). This basic criterion of budgets development in these modes is completed by the assumption of optimal income distribution.

For this purpose it is necessary to structure the expenditures of each public institution on programs specific for its tasks. And also to formulate concrete performance criteria adapted to the specificities of each activity sector in or-

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der to assess the efficiency, effectiveness and economy within budgetary financing programs and the whole budget.

Step 10: Developing an action plan for projects implementation and monitoring At this stage of the planning process, the precise schedule of all actions necessary to achieve the objectives is determined. Clear responsibilities are established within the realistically assessed resources. The possible contributions of stakeholders are estimated again, with their mutually agreed commitment.

The action plan describes how the established objectives and priorities of the strategy will be achieved (fully or partially) through individual projects proposed for funding (from the local budget and/or with the support of alternative sources).

The Action Plan will contain the following: 

The list of projects and the estimated budget for their implementation, according to funding sources and specific periods during project implementation



The map of the urban action zone, showing the location of individual projects, components of integrated plan



The presentation of the implementation management of the integrated plan, the description of the structure that manages the implementation plan.

These three areas (social, economic and urban regeneration) should be analyzed through a unified approach: the action plan should ensure the coordination and integration of all aspects of these areas. In the action plan, the following should be included: 

measures to facilitate the achievement of desired measurable results;



performance indicators to measure the outcomes achievement at different stages (not just at the end of implementation)



a reference system to compare the obtained results with those planned in key moments to allow recovery.

These requirements endow action plan with a real function. Without these elements, the action plan has only a formal role, which is not desirable. A sequence of reference activities, with the establishment of clear outcomes achievable within a clear timeframe is essential in the urban action area – the area with acute needs to be addressed - especially for infrastructure development. Without this sequencing, the investment costs would be much higher.

Certain programs or projects can be implemented through a range of alternative actions. The consequences of these alternative actions must be evaluated so that we plan the most viable sequence of activities. At this point, it is very important to determine the order in which actions take place, so as to potentiate each other so that implementation takes place logically and smoothly. Otherwise, it may lead to regression and recurrence of certain stages and, therefore, the waste of resources and delays in objectives achievement.

With all the attention to detail and concrete indications, the action plan should also provide adaptability to unforeseen circumstances. It is recommended to seek a listing of possible such situations, to estimate their consequences and to establish measures to adapt to these new conditions the action conduct.

A good coherent action plan contains not only information about subprojects and their costs, but also contains information about budget suppliers and their limitations, sets deadlines for implementation, assigns responsibilities for implementation and describe risk affecting the other subprojects, in case of budget or time overruns.

IUD in practice:

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In order to check if an IUDP is "properly prepared"; you can use the following check questions that should be answered affirmatively: 1. Will the implementation of the IUDP increase the economic and social role of the city?

2. Does IUDP aim to simultaneously solve a number of problems which have interdependent relationships and affect the area and its adjacent neighbourhoods?

3. Does IUDP contain projects that contribute to the strengthening and development of city competitive advantages in order to transform them into attractive places to live, to work, to invest and for tourism, in healthy and safety conditions?

4. Does IUDP contain projects that contribute to increased accessibility of the area and of the mobility degree within it, under safety and appropriate quality of the environment conditions?

5. Does IUDP contain projects that contribute to improving access for disadvantaged groups both to infrastructure and good quality social services?

6. Do IUDP objectives correlate with major directions of spatial development at regional, county and area level?

7. Are statistical data and information used to assess the most recent situation, for each analyzed area?

8. Are failure diagnosis and SWOT analysis clear, relevant and verifiable in an objective manner? Can they be quantified?

9. Is the IUDP strategy (vision, objectives, policies, programs) achieved through a participatory process? Is this supported by documents?

10. Is the IUDP strategy (vision, objectives, policies, programs) logically correlated to the analysis and evaluation of the current situation?

11. Are priority intervention or projects localization areas accordingly represented and identified on maps/cartograms?

12. Were IUDP documents confronted with the prior public consultation process for the Action Plan?

13. Are projects identified and included in the Action Plan related to development policies and programs? Do they answer to identified issues and priorities?

14. Are the projects identified and included in the Action Plan sufficiently described?

15. Does the Action Plan include clear and realistic planning preparation and implementation?

16. Does the IUDP clearly and sufficiently describe the operational capacity mobilized by the local authority?

17. Does the IUDP clearly and sufficiently describe the local authority capacity to fund the projects proposed in the Action Plan, for the entire period of their implementation?

18. Does the IUDP demonstrate a high level of consistency and clarity?

19. Was the IUDP the subject of a public consultation process?

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Step 11: Plan approval At this stage, all documents are subject to the approval of the deliberative authorities of local public administration.

Moreover, this should be followed by the informing and consulting of the public process as required by law29.

The recommended content of documents to be submitted for approval, especially for extra-budgetary funding requests, is the following one: 1. Introduction 

General information about the city;



Relation with the region, the country, the national and regional urban system.

2. The current state of "urban action zone" where integrated urban development plan will be implemented: 

Framing the area in the city analysis;



Spatial delimitation of urban action zone (map);



Demographic characteristics;



Economic characteristics;



Social characteristics;



Disparities, gaps, development potential;



SWOT analysis of "urban action zone".

3. Strategy (Integrated plan must include the development strategy of urban action zone): 

overall objective;



specific objectives;



policies adopted and measures proposed;



assess the impact of the plan on the area, city and surrounding area, the contribution to sustainable development;



references to strategic spatial social/economic documents with implications for local development and plan connection with them – urban plan, city development strategy, etc. (the plan must be consistent with them).

4. Project plan: 

Measure planned - project title, description;



Projects steps;



Expected results;



Institutions, departments within the municipality involved in the implementation;



Allocated budget (by source of funding).

5. Financial allocation 

Funding sources (state budget, local budget, grants, and private funds).

6. Project management 7. Partnership description in the programming and implementation process - partners are being consulted and involved

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Example Figure 22: Sections of IUDP structure and content involving illustration / graphic representation:

Sections and chapter

Specific content elements (minimum recommended)

Graphic representation

Presentation of the city/municipality/sector (localization and general data)

geographical position position and role in the localities system brief historical evolution and recent developments socio-economic characteristics spatial and functional characteristics built and cultural heritage

Schemes Tables

Problems of socio-economic and spatial development of the city / municipality

socio-demographic problems economic problems environmental problems technical and social infrastructure problems spatial-functional problems problems of the built fund housing problems

Schemes Diagrams Graphics Tables

Critical development areas identified in spatial planning documents

main current spatial planning documentation concentration of problems on the city/municipality/sector territory multiple criteria ranking of problem areas

Schemes Tables

Presentation of intervention area (location and general data)

position in the city of intervention area/sector dimensions and boundary features accessibility and connectivity (relationship with other areas)

Schemes Tables Plans

Arguments for selecting the area

the role and importance of the area socio-demographic criteria economic criteria ecological criteria equipment criteria cultural-patrimonial criteria functional criteria

Schemes Tables Cartograms

Framing within urban plans

provisions of spatial development within urban plans for of the intervention area regulations areas and sub-areas and current urban rules exceptions/failures in applying regulations

Cartograms Plans Schemes

Socio-cultural and economic features, demography and population structure

social issues and phenomena cultural issues and values economic structures, production units and services SMEs sector and entrepreneurship investment and housing market dynamic

Cartograms Carto-diagrams Diagrams Graphics Tables

Section 1: Urban context

Section 2 – Intervention area/zone

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Spatial features

geo-climatic and hydrological characteristics history, recent evolutions infrastructures and housing stock housing and complementary functions public spaces (including planted spaces), urban image environmental quality, pollution sources and natural and technological risks

Cartograms Carto-diagrams Diagrams Graphics Tables

Urban services

public transport public utilities social care and other services of local public administration

Schemes Diagrams Graphics Tables

General and prospective diagnostic

positive and negative aspects in terms of quantity and quality of the area trends that occur and present a possible evolution for a certain length of time (5-10 years)

Schemes

SWOT/field of forces analysis

characteristics of internal environment: strengths, weaknesses characteristics of the external environment: opportunities and threats (to the field of labour force are added weights of each item “force”)

(Eventually) Table Schemes

Development scenarios

trend scenario – spatial and socioeconomic expression of prospective diagnosis interventionist scenario / scenarios – spatial and socioeconomic expression of alternative and corrective evolutions as related to identified trends

Schemes Diagrams Cartograms

Consequences of interventionist scenario on urban documentations

comparing proposed scenarios with the provisions of current urban plans assess similarities/differences between the proposed scenarios and their provisions changes/revisions of the urban plans in relation to the proposed scenarios

Schemes Plans

Section 3 – Urban Development Strategy Vision (correlation with city / neighbourhood development vision)

development vision of the intervention area correlation with the vision to develop higher territorial level satisfaction of territorial cohesion and sustainable development requests

Schemes

General and specific objectives

general long-term objectives (min. 10 years) specific sectoral and space objectives on medium and long term (min. 5 years) correlation scheme with development objectives set for higher territorial level (district/city, etc.)

Schemes Diagrams

Spatial/urban concept and solution

spatial development concept for the intervention area schemes spatial expression of the concept - urban space or situation plan (if applicable) elements of local urban planning regulations specific projects/interventions - situation plans, 3D representations, etc.

Schemes Cartograms Plans

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Types of interventions and projects

interventions and hard projects (infrastructures) interventions and soft projects (training, events, promotion, etc.) presentation of the most important projects at the level of "project sheet"

Diagrams Tables

Logframe Matrix of IUDP

project description indicators and sources of verification assumptions and preconditions for the project realization

Matrix

Involved urban actors (institutions, organizations)

local public administrations other public institutions (local, central) private and community organizations professional associations roles and relationships between urban actors

Schemes Diagrams

Established partnerships and their objectives

formal partnerships (legalized) informal partnerships role and objectives of partnerships activities/undertaken/planned actions

Schemes Diagrams Tables

Implementation steps

main stages and phases on medium and long term (5-10 years and over) detailing stage on short term (1-3 years) at Action Plan level

Diagrams

Institutional responsibilities – implementation management

the structure of management and implementation unit role and responsibilities of the MIU MIU relationships with other partners and urban actors roles and responsibilities of other partners and urban actors

Schemes Tables

Communication plan

steps and means of information steps and forms of consultation ways to exploit the consultation process

Schemes Diagrams

Financial plan

funding sources financial plan on steps financial plan on types of interventions estimated costs for major projects

Tables Graphics

Monitoring and intermediary evaluation

monitoring and evaluation stages monitoring and evaluation structures objectives of monitoring and evaluation stages monitoring and evaluation indicators

Schemes Tables

IUDP modification/review

situations involving review situations involving modification procedures for revision / amendment

(eventually) Table

Section 4 – Actors and partnerships

Section 5: IUDP Implementation

Source: Adapted from “Methodological guide to integrated urban project - pilot project” - Ministry of Regional Development and Housing, Romania, developed by Lattanzio e associati s.p.a, 2010.

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Step 12: Implementation and monitoring It is recommended that all those involved in implementation, should have been also involved in planning and thus, their responsibilities are already established by mutual agreement and assumed. Activities must be organized according to needs and not by tradition; hence, you can organize (and it is recommended) the establishment of a permanent implementation team, composed of various departments representatives of the municipality, of people working in the same space.

Achieving the overall goal should be always checked during the implementation of actions and they should be reviewed so that there are no "derailments". Impact assessment should be a continuous process during the implementation of interventions by criteria that measure the appropriateness, effectiveness, efficiency and the consequences. While completing the established activities, as many details as possible must arise and a report to the community must be prepared.

Information on the plan implementation should be regularly shared with the community. And also the responsibilities not negligible at all in this field must be defined.

Types of management structures For the management of IUDP implementation, several types of frameworks can be established. The experience of several European cities allows us to identify three major categories: a. Implementation management performed by the municipality. This approach is focused on administration: management structures are composed of representatives of local administration and, in some cases, representatives of other local administrations and/or of other territorial levels. Local actors - NGOs, local associations and enterprises - are involved to some extent in implementing individual interventions that are part of the plan. Citizens are generally informed and/or consulted at various stages of plan implementation. This type of management structure tends to involve the use of local administration own resources.

This approach includes, for example, the following possible structures: 

Director group/coordinating body for management composed of representatives of governmental organizations (local or from other territorial levels) and it is responsible for overall supervision and coordination of the implementation process;



An implementing agency or secretariat, the staff comes from local administrations and other key public bodies and it is responsible for the implementation of coordination and daily management.

Examples: Salerno, Italy An example of adopting the approach led by the municipality is the Salerno city. In the implementation process of integrated urban design of the Urban Community Initiative I, Salerno municipality decided to use its own internal management and planning resources. Individual departments and offices directly involved in various measures have been responsible for the project implementation, while the department "Studies, Programming Resources and Community Policies", which officially works with the mayor's office, it was responsible for coordination.

The municipal administration has decided not to outsource the project monitoring because it realized that coordination office was able to obtain and process information in due time. There was established an "Urban observatory" to

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inform citizens, to hold local partnerships and to act as a permanent interface between citizens and decisionmaking power, and also to provide technical and administrative support for implementation.

Timisoara, Romania In order take to improve the urban planning framework in the Timisoara city, the municipality has decided to provide better coordination of its planning functions by setting up an that will coordinate the development of all plans and strategies for the city called Urban Planning Workshop (Atelier de Urbanism). Somehow, this office could seem a reinvention of the former state owned planning institute, but it is serving the interests of Timisoara’s inhabitants. „To facilitate their participation in the urban planning process, the office it is prominently located on one of the main squares of the city, adjoining one of its busiest pedestrian pathways. Its large windows allow a literal transparency that represents the openness that the Atelier can bring to Timisoara’s urban planning process. The Atelier [...] but it has not yet achieved the coordinating function that would allow it to lead an integrated approach to urban planning.

Until the internal conflicts and capacity issues that limit the scope of the Atelier’s activities are resolved, Timisoara will remain a good but imperfect model for urban planning in post-communist cities. [...]The best way to implement such an integrated, comprehensive, community-based approach is through the strengthening of the Atelier de Urbanism as an urban planning institution.”30 b. Partnership between local government, institutions and local community organizations. In this approach, the local government representatives are responsible for management, but it is a clear involvement of local, nongovernmental actors in the implementation phase. Relevant actors in the area - public and private ones - are involved in formal partnership structures.

Subsequently, it can be especially established a specific organization - a commission or a partnership - which includes a representation of local stakeholders in order to ensure the involvement of local actors, the dialogue with local government and coordination between existing partnership structures.

Example: The City of Valencia is a good example of adopting the described approach: Urban Project of Valencia City funded under the Community Initiative Urban I was managed by the administration of regional government (Generalitat Valenciana), while the component "Economic development" has been implemented through a cooperative agreement with the local association of artisans. c. Separate legal entity to manage the implementation. This approach provides the establishment of an external body to manage the implementation and to adopt a more appropriate organizational model to facilitate the involvement of external actors on an equal level. Such a body can have different nature and structure, including local government representatives, representatives of regional institutions, NGOs, local community representatives and the private sector.

Example: The city of Turin chose, after the approval of the strategic plan (29 February 2000) to establish Torino Internazionale Association (9 May 2000) that governs the implementation and monitoring of strategic plan of the city and of provided urban interventions. It supports actors’ participation and designing new strategic interventions. Torino Internazionale is chaired by the Mayor of Torino City and by the province president and has a total of 97 partners, including municipalities in the metropolitan area, institutions, economic organizations, cultural actors and private companies.

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Conclusive remarks Countries differ in the way of presenting and addressing concerns in urban development plans. In the EU countries of Black Sea basin the introduction of an integrated-approach urban development practice, highlighting social and environmental issues, was supported by the pressure of meeting the European Union norms, which has been a prerequisite of receiving funds. In Romania, the regulation of the conceptual type of integrated urban development planning is not definite. To ensure that urban development will follow the guidelines announced in the European Union strategies (Lisbon Strategy, Leipzig Charter), it is prescribed that grants for urban development (practically the only grant that cities with the most common and most pressing problems can apply for) are only available for cities that have prepared an Integrated Urban Development Plan (IUDP). Although the urban development field has had an impressive evolution in Romania over the last 20 years, unfortunately still the land-use and strategic planning, and recently these Integrated Urban Development Plans too, seem to evolve separately although they have the same objective, which is the shaping of the actual urban forms into more balanced, sustainable cities. Much has to be done to assure a natural and viable manner of planning, following a bottom-up community approach, especially when there is a tendency for a resource driven approach. In this context, some methodologies imposed by funders, even bringing real benefits, risk to be applied under the pressure of time shortage impose by funders without being internalised. It is the case of a majority of Romanian cities, which actually made it very difficult to find best practices to share in this guide.

But the assumption of our project „Capacity for integrated urban development: INTEGR-ABLE” - the framework of the present guide – is that there are real chances for partners cities (Romanian cities included) and other cities of the Black Sea basin to adopt the basic principles and adapt the steps of integrated urban development planning into their activity as a natural methodology – as to better to respond to nowadays challenges.

It is up to local governments in the region to be aware (and to further foster capacity building and networking initiatives in this respect) that economic development purposes alone is insufficient and can lead to social and territorial unbalance. Despite the fact that we face a global economic crisis, we need to carefully eliminate the risk of focusing on shortterm economic growth while neglecting the social and environmental aspects. If environmental issues have already been tackled by previous experiences to certain extent, the biggest and the newest challenge for cities involved in our project was to consider the social cohesion issues. Maybe cities in the region have the advantage of an inherited healthy social fabric, or maybe they are not yet aware on the risks to come if these aspects are not integrated in urban development planning. A more proactive network in developing prevention measures is therefore even more useful as to benefit from existing experiences of cities with longer decentralized urban management experiences.

We encourage therefore further contributions and adaptation of this guide in order to encourage a community driven identification and planning of resources and to eliminate eventual distortion caused by an externally imposed methodology. As we promote participatory approaches, we apply it in our endeavour as well: therefore, “the floor is yours” to continue this guide and to foster further learning environment on integrated urban development…

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Additional Resources and Case Studies TOLEDO INFORMAL MINISTERIAL MEETING ON URBAN DEVELOPMENT DECLARATION Toledo, 22 June 2010 PREAMBLE On 22 June 2010, in Toledo (Spain), in response to the invitation made by the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU), and within the framework of the Informal Ministerial Meeting on Housing and Urban Development (21–22 June), the session of the Informal Meeting of Urban Development Ministers was held, with the core topic of “integrated urban regeneration”. The meeting was also attended by the European Commissioner for Regional Policy and representatives from the European Parliament (EP), Committee of the Regions (CoR), European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), European Investment Bank (EIB), as well as representatives from the three candidate countries for EU membership, plus Norway and Switzerland, and several observers and relevant stakeholder organisations related to urban development.

This meeting was held in a context of a global financial, economic and social crisis, which is having a strong impact on Europe’s economy and also on its citizens’ quality of life. In the short and medium terms, European cities are facing the major challenge of overcoming this crisis and emerging stronger from it; but they are also facing other structural and long term challenges – globalisation, climate change, pressure on resources, migrations, ageing and demographic change, etc.- with a strong urban dimension – impact on cities’ economy, urban environment deterioration, increasing risk of social polarisation and exclusion, etc- which have to be tackled at the same time.

These challenges are a wake-up call, an opportunity to chart a firm course based on the principles of integrated, smart, sustainable, cohesive, inclusive urban development, as the only way to achieve a greater economic competitiveness, eco-efficiency, social cohesion and civic progress in European cities, and to guarantee citizens’ quality of life and welfare in the present and in the future.

Having considered: -the Treaty of Lisbon amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community, signed at Lisbon, 13 December 2007 and entered into force on 1 December 2009, -the strategy “EUROPE 2020”, approved by the European Council on 17 June 2010 following the Commission Communication “EUROPE 2020: A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth” dated 3 March 2010 (COM(2010)2020); and the renewed “EU Sustainable Development Strategy”, adopted by the European Council on 15/16 June 2006; - the Working Document of the Directorate-General for Regional Policy “Fostering the urban dimension – Analysis of the Operational Programmes co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (2007- 2013)” from November 2008; and the Guide from the Commission on "The urban dimension in Community policies for the period 2007 – 2013" updated in December 2009; -the Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee entitled "Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion: Turning territorial diversity into strength" dated 6 October 2008 (COM (2008)0616) - the European Parliament resolution of 24 March 2009 on the Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion and the state of the debate on the future reform of cohesion policy (2008/2174(INI)); the European Parliament report of 24 March 2009 on the urban dimension of cohesion policy in the new programming period (2008/2130(INI)); -the opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) on “the need to apply an integrated approach to urban regeneration”(EESC 760/2010), approved on 26 May 2010; -the opinion of the Committee of the Regions on “the role of urban regeneration in the future of urban development in Europe” approved in its Plenary Session of 9-10 June, 2010;

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-the Barcelona Agenda “Towards an European Local Agenda”, approved at the European Summit of Local Governments, held on 2224 February 2010; -the Communication from the Commission “Action Plan on urban mobility”(COM (2009) 490 final) adopted on 30 September 2009 and based on the Commission’s Green Paper "Towards a new culture for urban mobility” (COM (2007) 551 final).

-the Presidency conclusions from the Informal Ministerial Meeting on Regional Policy, held at Zaragoza on 19 February 2010; the conclusions on multilevel governance from the Informal Ministerial Meeting on Territorial Policy, held in Málaga on 16 March 2010, and the Final Communiqué of the 18th Informal Meeting of Housing Ministers held in Toledo on 21 June 2010.

-the documents of the most recent Informal Ministerial Meetings on Urban Development, in particular: the “Lille Action Programme" adopted at the Informal Council of Ministers responsible for urban affairs held in Lille on 3 November 2000; the "Urban Acquis" adopted at the Informal Council of Ministers responsible for territorial cohesion, held in Rotterdam on 29 November 2004; the "Bristol Accord" adopted at the Informal Council of Ministers on sustainable communities held in Bristol on 6-7 December 2005; the “Territorial Agenda of the EU - Towards a More Competitive and Sustainable Europe of Diverse Regions” and the “Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities”, which were both adopted at the Informal Council of Ministers responsible for spatial planning and urban development held in Leipzig on 24-25 May 2007; the “Marseille Declaration” adopted at the Informal Ministerial Meeting of Ministers responsible for urban development on 25 November 2008, the Ministers responsible for Urban Development agreed upon and approved the following statements of the: TOLEDO DECLARATION: A. ON ADDRESSING THE CURRENT URBAN CHALLENGES AND IMPLEMENTING THE EUROPE 2020 STRATEGY BY ACHIEVING A SMARTER, MORE SUSTAINABLE AND SOCIALLY INCLUSIVE URBAN DEVELOPMENT. Taking into account the urban dimension of the current crises and future challenges faced by European cities, the Ministers examined the Europe 2020 strategy in detail and consequently highlighted the need to promote a smarter, more sustainable and socially inclusive urban development in European urban areas, cities and towns.

A.1. The suitability of the integrated approach in urban development policies and the need for a common understanding of it.

To achieve this smarter, more sustainable and socially inclusive urban development, the Ministers reaffirmed the validity of the commitments taken at and the principles established during previous ministerial meetings, and highlighted in particular the integrated approach in urban policies as one of the main tools in order to advance in the direction set out in the Europe 2020 strategy, especially in the current scenario of scarce resources in which it seems necessary to achieve more with less. To this end, they also acknowledged the role that cities can play in achieving this objectives and call for a real partnership with cities in the implementation of Europe 2020.

Nevertheless, the Ministers considered that to face these important urban challenges principles agreed on at the last meetings held in Leipzig and Marseille have to be fully developed, implemented and put into practice. In order to continue doing so, Ministers agreed that it would be advisable to establish an in-depth common understanding of the integrated approach in urban development. In this regard, they took note of its key features described in the “Toledo Reference Document on integrated urban regeneration and its strategic potential for a smarter, more sustainable and socially inclusive urban development in Europe” and thank the Spanish Presidency for the preparation of this valuable document. From this common understanding, the Ministers expressed their commitment to promote it from their respective competences; and furthermore agreed on their interest to explore the possibility of developing a minimum common set of indicators translating this shared understanding of the integrated approach, and including urban sustainability indicators.

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A.2. The importance of integrated urban regeneration and its strategic potential for a smarter, more sustainable and socially inclusive urban development in Europe.

In order to make the model of a smarter, more sustainable and socially inclusive city a reality, the Ministers emphasised the importance of: • implementing integrated urban development strategies with a global and comprehensive vision of the city, conveniently framed within a territorial perspective, which harmoniously promote all dimensions of urban sustainability in an integrated way both in new urban developments and in existing areas of the city; • taking into account the need to improve the economic performance, the eco-efficiency and social cohesion of the existing city, in order to achieve the general aims and the specific headline targets1 set out in the Europe 2020 strategy and to truly implement and deploy this smarter, more sustainable and socially inclusive model in the whole built environment and in all the social fabrics of the existing city; • assuring citizens’ quality of life and welfare in all the existing communities and neighbourhoods of the city, stressing the need of their involvement in urban development through citizen participation, and also acknowledging the importance of the alliance and implication of all other stakeholders (private sector, civil society, etc.) as a crucial tool for an integrated approach, • recalling the recommendation to reflect and take due account of climate change as expressed in the Europe 2020 strategy itself and in the Marseille Declaration; • supporting the acknowledgment of the importance of the renovation and physical upgrading of the existing housing stock from different perspectives, as stressed in the Final Communiqué of the 18th Informal Meeting of Housing Ministers held at Toledo on 21st June 2010; • taking into account the commitments set out in the Leipzig Charter with regard to paying special attention “to deprived neighbourhoods within the context of the city as a whole” and more particularly the convenience of aligning one with each other its concrete objectives2 in order to reduce social polarization ; • recalling that the overall urban quality, determined by the quality of public spaces and urban man-made landscapes and architecture is an essential requirement for establishing a pleasant environment for the urban population and also for the global attractiveness and competitiveness of the city, • stressing the convenience and effectiveness of spatial and urban planning as a policy lever for integrating environmental, social and economic objectives, • taking into account the suitability of urban recycling, and/or compact city planning3, where appropriate, as strategies to minimize land consumption, preventing unnecessary conversion of greenfields and natural areas to urban land, and therefore managing and limiting urban sprawl.

Therefore, they agreed to point out the strategic role of Integrated Urban Regeneration, framed in the broader concept of Integrated Urban Development, as one important perspective in order to achieve these afore-mentioned objectives.

Consequently, the Ministers took note of the related recommendations outlined in the afore mentioned “Toledo Reference Document”, acknowledging its value for a common understanding of this concept and for the future development of the cooperation between Member States and with the European Commission, the other EU institutions and stakeholders. Therefore, the Ministers agreed to promote -within the framework of their respective competencies, in close cooperation with the cities from their countries, and when relevant given the context of each Member State- integrated urban regeneration as a strategic tool for achieving a smarter, more

These are: 75% of the population aged 24-64 should be employed; 3% of the EU’s GDP should be invested in R&D; the 20/20/20 climate energy targets should be met (including an increase to 30% of emissions reductions, if the conditions are right); reduction of the share of early school leavers to under 10% and achieving the rate of at least 40% of the younger generation with a tertiary degree; and reducing the people at risk of poverty to under 20 millions.

1

Which were: “pursuing strategies for upgrading the physical environment, including investment in housing”, “strengthening the local economy and local labour market policy”, promoting “proactive education and training policies for children and young people”, and the “promotion of efficient and affordable urban transport”.

2

3

In accordance with the Communication from the Commission on “Thematic Strategy on the Urban Environment”, COM (2005) 718 final.

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sustainable and socially inclusive urban model, and particularly to address the current urban challenges and implement the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy in the existing urban fabrics and built environment.

B. ON SUPPORTING THE CONTINUATION OF THE MARSEILLE PROCESS AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EUROPEAN REFERENCE FRAMEWORK FOR SUSTAINABLE CITIES (RFSC).

Following the Marseille Statement on the need to continue supporting sustainable urban development and the integrated approach, and to implement the principles of the Leipzig Charter at local level, a prototype of a common European Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities (RFSC)4 has been established in 2009-2010 by a high level working group (MS/I WG) led by France.

In this perspective, the Ministers: • thanked all participants involved, and especially France, for their contribution and commitment in the process, • welcomed and acknowledged the work done to date, recognising the added value of the RFSC as an operational tool for cities, and more particularly medium-sized and small towns, helping them on a voluntary basis to develop better integrated sustainable urban development strategies, policies and projects, • reaffirmed, in line with the Marseille Statement, that this RFSC is based on a collective and open process, and is to be an overarching, adaptable, open and non-binding tool for cities, based on the principle of subsidiarity, Considering that the prototype presented at the Toledo Informal Ministerial Meeting has now to be further developed and tested in a new phase, the Ministers: • reasserted their commitment to continue the process for the upcoming second phase, which is now foreseen for having the prototype tested by a set of selected pilot cities, and to improve and finalise the RFSC on the basis of this text and as described in the document of Conclusions of the MS/I working group, proposing that the complete and fully operational final tool would be delivered at the end of 2011 (under the Polish Presidency) • underlined the need for a shared support by the Members States and the European Commission and asked the European Commission to take a significant role in this process, co-leading the testing phase together with France and other volunteering countries, including the respective EU Council Presidencies, • affirmed their commitment, within the framework of their competencies and possibilities, to carry on and reinforce the process at national level, through the continuation of the existing National Support Groups or the voluntary launching of new ones; to make an appropriate effort to disseminate, promote and use the European Reference Framework in their national context; and to translate the RFSC prototype and/or the final tool into their national language in order to make it accessible and to allow for broad participation across cities, and • considered that a broad participation and involvement of European towns and cities is key for the success of the development and future implementation of this tool, and therefore, proposed, on a voluntary basis, a number of test cities for the testing phase, and to facilitate the testing by these cities in the national context as well as communication at European level if necessary; Taking into account all these recommendations, the Ministers: • encouraged the upcoming Presidencies to participate in the follow-up stage of the process; • invited local authorities and other bodies, and more particularly the professional bodies, private sector bodies, NGOs, etc. to be active participants in the process; • encouraged all the stakeholders at European, national, regional and local levels, to take this opportunity and support the dissemination of this tool; • stressed the potential contribution of the RFSC to good governance, and to a European multi-level wide dialogue on the basis of a common format and understanding; and • underlined its high added value in the perspective of a new European Urban Agenda and the Europe 2020 objectives.

4

http://www.rfsustainablecities.eu/

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C. ON THE NEED TO CONSOLIDATE A EUROPEAN URBAN AGENDA IN THE FUTURE Acknowledging the work on urban issues carried on by successive EU presidencies in rotation and especially the outputs of the most recent landmarks from the last Informal Ministerial Meetings mentioned in the Preamble, the Ministers considered that the new framework resulting from the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty increases the need for coordination between the Trio of successive presidencies. It therefore seems to be appropriate to start consolidating strategic areas for continuity and coordination between successive presidencies, moving towards the future preparation of a joint working programme or ‘European Urban Agenda’, which will have to mature gradually before taking its final shape.

Besides the intergovernmental support, the Ministers also acknowledged the continuous efforts and contributions to the urban agenda made by the European Commission, particularly through the urban dimension of cohesion policy. In this regard, they called upon the European Commission to continue playing a pro-active role, particularly in those areas of the intergovernmental process that foster the European ‘Acquis Urbain’.

The Ministers also underlined the need to strengthen the cooperation and coordination with the European Parliament, the Committee of the Regions, the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Investment Bank, and other relevant institutions and organisations working in the field of urban development in Europe.

As a preliminary outline of this joint work programme, the Ministers undertook to encourage and support the following joint actions: C.1. Strengthening the urban dimension in Cohesion Policy.

The Ministers considered that cities and towns are the places where most of the current and future potentials and challenges lie, and that they are key to achieve the goals of Europe 2020, by making Europe's economies smarter, more competitive, sustainable and socially inclusive. Therefore, they stressed that it must be a political priority to empower European cities to tackle future challenges and to unlock their potential, and to continue and to strengthen the public support for sustainable urban policies across the EU, in particular through Cohesion Policy.

In order to do so, the Ministers agreed on their wish to collaborate with the European Commission in the debate on the consideration of and the elaboration for a strengthened framework for the urban dimension in Cohesion Policy in the next programming period.

The Ministers agreed that the common basis of the new framework of the urban dimension in Cohesion Policy should be the following principles: the involvement of local authorities and the cities in the design and implementation of the Operational Programmes, a stronger emphasis on the integrated approach and sustainable urban development, a stronger focus on territorial and social cohesion, and a simplified delivery system.

C.2. Supporting a greater coherence between territorial and urban issues and agendas and fostering the urban dimension in the context of territorial cohesion The Ministers stressed the importance of the coordination and coherence of urban and territorial policies, taking note of the paper “Territory matters to make Europe 2020 a success”5, recognising that Europe as a whole would be smarter, more sustainable and socially inclusive if better use of its rich geographical diversity and territorial potential in all the regions and cities were made, paying particular attention to multilevel governance mechanisms in order to secure better consistency in the territory between different sector policies and between different tiers of government.

In this regard, they agreed to explore the possibility of establishing greater coordination between territorial and urban issues and agendas, working in a coordinated way on this issue in the process of reviewing the European Territorial Agenda that is expected to be approved during the Hungarian presidency in the first half of 2011.

The Ministers also considered crucial to view the urban dimension within the wider context of territorial cohesion. European cities and the relationship between cities and neighbouring communities, including metropolitan and urban-rural relations and partnerships, and 5

Joint contribution by the Directors Generals of ministerial departments responsible for territorial development policy in

the European Union approved in Seville, 10th May 2010

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considering the wider territorial diversities, are key in achieving this new EU horizontal objective. Therefore the urban dimension should be an integral part of the concept of territorial cohesion.

C.3. Continuing to promote research, comparative studies and statistics, exchange of best practices and dissemination of knowledge on urban topics, and strengthening coordination of them all.

The Ministers considered it to be key to continue to promote research, comparative studies and statistics on urban topics, in addition to exchanging best practices and dissemination of knowledge.

To do this will require coordination and driving research programmes more vigorously on a national scale and transnational projects on a European scale. In this regard, the European Commission is thanked for driving the European Research Area on urban topics by supporting urban research through the Framework Programmes for RTD in a considerable way and especially by funding the URBAN-NET network6. It would be extremely useful to continue beyond 2010 on the path begun by URBAN-NET to coordinate transnational research programmes on urban topics and the intergovernmental funding of calls for transnational projects, and also extend the number of participating countries. The Ministers also asked the Commission to consider the urban dimension within the Seventh Framework Programme currently in effect, and stressed the importance to continue supporting it in the future. Finally, they also asked the Commission and national authorities involved to strengthen the analysis of the territorial dimension of urban dynamics within the ESPON Programme.

In the light of the recommendations from Portugal’s report presented at Leipzig on the need for stronger cooperation between knowledge providers, the Ministers took note of the progress that has been made in the cooperation between the European urban networks, and also between intergovernmental and Commission initiatives, particularly welcoming the envisaged creation of a Common Search Engine between EUKN77 and URBACT8 Programme. The Ministers also welcomed the commitment of several Member States to continue their participation in EUKN for the 2011-2015 period and valued their efforts to establish EUKN as an EGTC. Finally, the Ministers stressed the need to reinforcing all these initiatives and welcomed Sweden, Spain and Belgium’s initiative to set up a working group associated with the UDG to look into the possibilities and define the strategies to foster coordination and reflection on these topics related to urban research and knowledge.

C.4. Promoting sustainable urban development and integrated approaches by re-enforcing and developing instruments to implement the Leipzig Charter at all levels.

The Ministers reaffirmed that a multi-level policy as described in the Leipzig Charter, is a prerequisite for the implementation of an integrated urban development policy. Such an approach will not only facilitate an integrated urban development policy but will also help to realise the Europe 2020 objectives and the EU Sustainable Development Strategy. In that respect it is clear that the Leipzig Charter needs to become more than just a set of principles, aiming to become a living document on the basis of which concrete strategies can be elaborated in order to implement all its recommendations.

The Ministers considered that existing coordination instruments have to be re-inforced and the development of new instruments for integrated and sustainable urban policies have to be explored at all levels of governance: local, regional, national and European. At the urban level, the RFSC will offer a useful tool to support an integrated approach. At regional and national levels, existing coordination structures should be used more intensively and the possibilities of new coordination instruments explored in order to move towards an integrated approach in urban policies. As mentioned above, at European level, cooperation between Member States, European institutions, and cities’ associations and networks should also be reinforced.

In relation to this, the initiative driven by the Czech EU Presidency to follow up the implementation of the principles of the Leipzig Charter on a national scale is welcomed. The conclusions of this survey show the need to continue promoting sustainable urban development and integrated urban approaches, especially in the national policies for which we are responsible.

To this end, on Spain, Belgium and Hungary’s initiative, the possibility of developing methods to address and follow up the implementation of the Leipzig Charter at all levels of governance will be explored from the second half of 2010 onwards.

6

http://www.urban-net.org/

7

http://www.eukn.org/

8

http://urbact.eu/

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C.5. Considering the most important challenges that European cities will face in the future.

The Ministers welcomed the European Commission’s initiative for a reflection process on the challenges and models for the cities of tomorrow.

The Ministers also supported Hungary’s initiative, to open a topic-based discussion on two of the major challenges that Europe's cities will face in the future: climate change –continuing the reflections carried out during the Slovenian, French and Swedish Presidencies- and the impact of demographic changes.

TOLEDO REFERENCE DOCUMENT ON INTEGRATED URBAN REGENERATION AND ITS STRATEGIC POTENTIAL FOR A SMARTER, MORE SUSTAINABLE AND SOCIALLY INCLUSIVE URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN EUROPE 1. The strategic importance of integrated urban regeneration to achieve a smarter, more sustainable and inclusive urban development As has been addressed in the Europe 2020 strategy approved at the recent June Council, the European Union faces a number of major challenges in terms of economics (financial and economic recession, globalisation, etc.), social issues (unemployment, social integration, demographic structure, inequality, etc.) and the environment (climate change, preserving natural resources, etc.), maintaining that “our exit from the crisis must be the point of entry into a new economy. For our own and future generations to continue to enjoy a high-quality of healthy life, underpinned by Europe's unique social models, we need to take action now. What is needed is a strategy to turn the EU into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy delivering high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion”. To do so, the Europe 2020 strategy sets out three mutually reinforcing priorities: smart growth, developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation; sustainable growth, promoting a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy; and, inclusive growth, fostering a high-employment economy delivering social and territorial cohesion.

In this regard, cities and towns are vital for achieving the general objectives and specific headline targets of the Europe 2020 strategy.

If the impact of these challenges on Europe’s cities is considered and examined from the classical viewpoint of the multiple dimensions of sustainability (economic, social, environmental, cultural and governance), it comes out that “urban regeneration” may have a truly strategic role to play in the future of urban development in Europe, and come to represent an opportunity to help to address the challenges of European cities from this multiple perspective, and particularly to address them in the existing urban fabrics.

From the environmental viewpoint...

Taking the environmental dimension first, metropolitan areas, cities and towns are key actors for global sustainability and more specifically to combat climate change, since they are the places where most of the resources consumption (both materials and energy) and the production of waste and emissions (including, most significantly, greenhouse gases) are concentrated. To solve the equation of urban sustainability, and taking into account that the Europe 2020 goals include reducing greenhouse gases by at least 20% compared with the 1990 levels (or by 30% if the conditions are suitable), increasing the percentage of renewable-energy sources in our final energy consumption by up to 20%, and energy efficiency also by 20%, the eco-efficiency of the new urban developments (for example, by means of developing new ‘eco-neighbourhoods’) is a necessary condition, but it is not enough. The core battle for urban sustainability will lie in achieving the maximum possible eco-efficiency in the existing urban fabrics of cities.

To achieve this, a genuine ‘green, ecological or environmental’ regeneration of cities must be undertaken, including such key issues as: - reducing transport needs by the promotion of proximity and mixed-uses schemes, while at the same time stimulating a more sustainable mobility (on an urban, metropolitan and interurban scale) by: prioritising non-motorised (‘walkable’, ‘cyclable’ cities)9, less pollutant means of transport, supporting affordable and efficient public transport accessible for all-notably for deprived neighbourhoods, where it can play a key role in breaking its physical isolation-, and multimodal transport networks, and optimizing urban logistics; 9

As pointed out in the Communication from the Commission “Action Plan on urban mobility” (COM (2009) 490 final).

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- boosting energy efficiency in existing buildings (by improving the thermal insulation of exterior walls, roofs and glazing, and the efficiency of heating and other installations), considering the physical conditions of the building stock ; - improving the management of energy and material resources and flows in the city (urban metabolism), including the whole water cycle, waste, etc., striving to close urban metabolic cycles locally and to reduce the ecological footprint; - promoting renewable energies and implementing them and their use in cities; - recycling land (by means of urban regeneration, the redevelopment or reuse of abandoned, derelict or unused areas, etc.) as a key strategy for contributing towards the reduction of land consumption and therefore combating ‘urban sprawl’; - promoting the consumption of local green products to shorten consumption circuits and to strengthen the local eco-economy, - protecting natural, landscape, forestry, water resources, agricultural areas, etc. around cities and strengthening their links or articulation with cities (for example, with green belts and/or corridors connected to and in continuity with the network of public parks and spaces), ‘re-greening’ the existing city, etc.

Finally, it shouldn’t be forgotten that besides strategies to mitigate climate change there is a need to begin to stimulate strategies to adapt to it, particularly in coastal or river areas that could be affected by rising sea levels or flooding, or areas where the effects of warming are expected to be the greatest. The new scenarios being considered imply the need for cities to develop proactive strategies to resist these changes (‘resilient cities’), to protect them against natural disasters or warming and to improve water management in times of drought.

From the social viewpoint...

From a social perspective, cities — concentrating most of the European population as they do — are also the places where the challenges of demographics, inclusion and social cohesion, the integration of immigrants, unemployment, education, poverty, multiculturality challenges, etc., are felt most intensely. These problems, which have been made worse by the effects of the recent recession, mostly threaten the most vulnerable population, and particularly some “deprived neighbourhoods within the context of the city as a whole”10, deepening social polarisation and therefore leading to a higher risk of potential social fracture. Fostering employment, reducing the number of early school leavers and the reducing the poverty risk are the main social targets of the Europe 2020 strategy.

Furthermore, the European Commission has recommended11 that active inclusion policies should facilitate the integration into sustainable, quality employment of those who can work and provide resources that are sufficient to live in dignity, together with support for social participation, for those who cannot, combining adequate income support, inclusive labour markets and access to quality services. This goals, together with the implementation of a set of other interconnected measures - e.g. for the integration of immigrants, ensuring equal opportunities in education, demand-oriented training, inclusion, ensuring the availability and affordability of services, etc., as well as other economic and environmental measures, such as the physical upgrading of the built environment-, are the key actions for stimulating greater social integration and cohesion that enable combating spatial segregation and social marginalisation. In this regard, housing policies are particularly important: on the one hand, decent and affordable housing can be considered as one of the cornerstones of social inclusion strategies, especially for those at the greatest risk of exclusion; while on the other hand, housing and building renovation, retrofitting and upgrading can provide tangible and considerable improvements in its inhabitants’ daily lives12; and last but not least, socially balanced housing policies allow to reduce social polarization at neighbourhood level. As it was recommended in the Rotterdam Ministerial Meeting on 200413, considering all these types of actions in integrated programmes or urban plans is particularly effective when intervening in the most deprived neighbourhoods.

From the economic viewpoint...

Finally, from an economic viewpoint, cities concentrate a large part of Europe’s human, social, cultural and economic capital, etc., such that optimising and revaluing them are also key for a strategy of global competitiveness, where the ‘traditional European city model’ is one of the EU’s principal assets.

10

Leipzig Charter.

Commission Recommendation of 3 October 2008 on the active inclusion of people excluded from the labour market (notified under document number C(2008) 5737) (2008/867/EC).

11

12

For example: improving physical accessibility is crucial for the promotion of autonomy and participation in society of disabled and elderly people.

13

Conclusion 3.6 on Social Inclusion.

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The economic headline targets of the Europe 2020 propose to increase employment and investment in R&D. To achieve this, it seems necessary to develop strategies to ‘regenerate the urban economy’, which, in accordance with different local contexts, are committed towards a more competitive economy, in which economic progress is steadily decoupled from the consumption of resources, stimulating an economy of knowledge, creativity, excellence and innovation, strengthening endogenous development and diversifying local production systems, while appropriately organising the labour market through education and ongoing training for workers.

Building retrofitting, physical upgrading and the modernization of infrastructures are not only some of the essential requirements for the attractiveness of a city, but also fairly labour-intensive sectors, and therefore a potential new source of jobs that could help to absorb unemployed workers, particularly those from the new-building sector (which is currently undergoing a major slump in several Member States). It is also a more specialised sector, and quite appropriate for the creation of new local SMEs, with a certain knockon effect for innovation and industry. These opportunities are even more significant in the case of ‘green, ecological or environmental regeneration’, based on stimulating energy efficiency for buildings and installations, on sustainable mobility, on the implementation of renewable energies in cities, etc. As the Europe 2020 strategy has pointed out 14, this field offers excellent opportunities not only for creating new businesses and jobs but also for innovation and consolidating European leadership in this sector.

Last, but not least, the current recession also has an individual and family dimension whose repercussions are felt particularly strongly by the most vulnerable and in the most deprived neighbourhoods, where an integrated approach would also have a highly positive effect, by making economic and social support policies more permeable and channelling them more directly towards those who are the most seriously affected. In this regard, strengthening welfare and social services not only contributes towards improving citizens’ quality of life, but also towards the economic development of the city.

From the urban planning, architectural and cultural viewpoints...

Cities and heritage are key elements and repositories of the rich and varied European history and culture. Fortunately, nowadays the need to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of the city, particularly its architectural heritage and the ‘Baukultur’, is generally taken for granted as a way of keeping alive the collective memory that is characteristic of the European city model. Nevertheless, besides as protecting the heritage from a physical point of view, it is often necessary to guarantee its inhabitability and attractiveness in order to keep it really alive.

From an architectural point of view, building rehabilitation will enable many of the deficiencies of the existing built stock to be overcome, particularly those of the many dwellings that were poorly built to low quality standards in the second half of the 20th century, by improving their functionality, promoting diversity and adapting residential typologies to new family and demographic patterns, stimulating the eco-efficiency of buildings and facilities, resolving accessibility problems and the building deficiencies that some of them still present, etc., and also to increase their architectural quality, diversity and identity.

Revaluing deteriorated public spaces and providing new open spaces, together will the protection or requalification of architectural forms, will contribute not only towards the improvement of the urban scene, landscape and place quality of many of our cities’ urban fabrics, and therefore to raise their attractiveness to highly skilled workers and business, but also to increase their attractiveness and the local residents’ identification with the urban environment and their community. This will therefore contribute not only to their cultural enrichment but also towards creating or recreating citizenship, because the values of democracy, coexistence, exchange, civic progress, diversity, living together and freedom are key factors in the culture of the European city, which are expressed most effectively in the public realm.

From the viewpoint of governance…

Good governance, based on the principles of openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness, coherence and subsidiarity, is required in order to assure the successful implementation of public policies, a more efficient and effective allocation of public resources and to increase citizen’s direct participation, involvement, engagement and empowerment, considering that citizens’ satisfaction and well being is also key for the success of urban policies.

Meeting the objective of 20% of renewable energy is thought to have the potential to create more than 600 000 jobs in the EU, and adding the 20% target in energy efficiency, over 1 million new jobs are believed to be at stake.

14

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Good governance has acquired even greater importance in the current financial crisis, which makes it particularly significant to achieve the maximum optimisation of resources and efforts by stressing cooperation and synergies, multilevel governance and the integrated approach, as described below.

2. Towards a common understanding of the integrated approach in urban regeneration in particular and in urban development in general Which are the key features of the integrated approach?

The Leipzig Charter recommended “making greater use of integrated urban development policy approaches”. The experience and practice accumulated through national, regional and local projects as well as those funded through EU urban initiatives (based on which a common European ‘Urban Acquis’ has been developed), has demonstrated that the key features of this integrated approach, which have become especially important in these times of scarce financial resources, are: • This integrated approach requires, first of all, the adoption of a holistic approach and thinking. This means replacing the usual sector or one-dimensional approaches with new transversal or multidimensional ones, aligning different policy areas and resources. It also implies considering the city as a whole: strategies and actions should be unitary, and address the whole complexity of urban development, taking into account the role of each part of the city in the whole structure.

This holistic approach also means thinking and working –and allocating resources in consequence- on all the multiple dimensions of sustainability — economic, social, cultural and environmental — at the same time, in such a way that the actions undertaken in each of them will have a positive effect on the others, or at least avoid them contradicting one another or having a negative effect on the others. The main future challenge for urban policies is to be able to provide convergent answers with equal level of efficiency to the environmental, social and economic questions raised in cities.

• Putting this integrated approach into practice also means resolving conflicts, overcoming discrepancies or interferences between the effects that each of these dimensions has on the others and finding compromises in the line of the overall defined key guiding principles of the city. In order to do so, it seems necessary to channel this shared commitment to deliver sustainable outcomes through establishing appropriate coordination platforms and frameworks –whether formal or informal- for policies and actions: ‘transversal coordination’ to make sector or one-dimensional approaches converge; ‘vertical coordination’ between all administrative levels (EU/national/regional/intermediate/local), by means of new formulas and arrangements for ‘multilevel governance’15; and ‘horizontal coordination’ between all the actors involved in ‘city building’ (public authorities, property and financial sector, professionals, etc.) which combine top-down and bottom-up approaches, and, most particularly, make public participation and involvement a truly effective reality.

• The city is time and space. The integrated character means seeking the right way to organise all ‘timescales’ (short/medium/long term) and all ‘spatial scales’ (region/metropolitan area/small, medium sized and large cities and towns/neighbourhood, etc.) and, finally, the conjunction between the two.

From a time-scale viewpoint, it is advisable to overcome short-term urban-management methods by creating strategic scenarios (economic, environmental, socio-demographic, etc.) formulated through an integrated city plan or vision with clear statements and goals, combining long-term framework visions with a certain flexibility when it comes to specific determinations, to allow for a greater capacity for adaptation, innovation and evolution, without any extreme ruptures and assuring the continuity of actions and effective use of resources.

From a spatial viewpoint, an integrated city plan or vision must go beyond the sum of adhoc or isolated actions, and at the same time consider its implementation at a functional or administrative level. o at local level, an integrated spatial vision should be reflected in the coordination of actions with the goal to ensure a balanced development of the city as a whole and its parts, and even beyond, considering its role within the territory; o at regional level, in coordinating sector and local policies under a broader regional perspective and articulating metropolitan or rural-urban relationships, promoting regional clusters of cooperation and innovation, ensuring the contribution of territorial economic growth as a driving force for strengthening a polycentric structure, and a well-balanced and integrated model based on diverse territorial identities; This is further developed in the Committee of the Regions White Paper on Multilevel Governance (2009) and in the Annex 3 (“Governance and sustainable communities”) of the Bristol Informal Ministerial Meeting (2006).

15

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o at national level, in assuring the coordination of sector policies and the effectiveness of multilevel governance at all the administrative tiers, promoting polycentric and balanced national development and international competitiveness by developing existing and planned economic, social and functional ties and cooperation projects.

• The city is a social construct. ‘Integrated’ also refers to ‘inclusive’, i.e. working on articulating the city’s ‘social body’ in an inclusive shared project of coexistence, to combat social exclusion and spatial segregation.

• The integrated character also refers to the ‘integration’ of the parts into a whole structure. This implies that conceptual and operational thinking must also stem from strategies or plans with ‘integrated’ -global or comprehensive- visions of the city as a whole, but optimal development will often be brought about through ‘territorialised actions’ (‘area-based’ approach). In the city, where objects (e, g: housing, buildings) and subjects (physical and legal persons) have a specific spatial location, it is usually more fruitful to conjugate an ‘integrated’, global or comprehensive overall strategy with an ‘area-based’ development, rather than merely acting on objects and subjects in isolation (home by home, or building by building, for example) or indiscriminately and generically.

In practical terms, the integrated approach requires shared commitment to deliver common outcomes in urban sustainability, evidence of multiagency or cross cutting teams working together, and evidence of budgets from different authorities or agencies being pooled and directed in the same or convergent directions.

Which are the benefits of the integrated approach?.

In a context where the urban challenges are increasingly more complex, but where both public and private resources are decreasing, and subsequently there is a need to achieve more with less, it is necessary to struggle to extract full value from each input of public and private stakeholders. There is a need to break down silo-based thinking, working and funding to develop new ways of thinking and working in order to offer better, more efficient and sustainable services. The integrated approach offers these possibilities, allowing additional, synergetic and multiplying effects to be achieved while encouraging coordination and avoiding any duplication, conflict or interference.

3. How do we understand Integrated Urban Regeneration?.

Integrated urban regeneration is conceived as a planned process that must transcend the partial ambits and approaches that have usually been the norm until now, in order to address the city as a functioning whole and its parts as components of the whole urban organism, with the objective of fully developing and balancing the complexity and diversity of social, economic and urban structures, while at the same time stimulating greater environmental eco-efficiency.

This concept of ‘integrated urban regeneration’ aims to optimise, preserve or revalue all the existing urban capital (social, built environment, heritage, etc.) in contrast to other forms of intervention in which, amongst all this urban capital, only the value of the land is prioritised and conserved, by traumatically demolishing and replacing the rest of the whole urban capital16 and — most lamentably — of the social capital. Deprived urban areas are not to be seen as a problem, but as a source of untapped human talent and physical capital whose potential has to be unlocked in order to contribute to the overall civic progress and economic growth of the city.

This strategic commitment towards ‘integrated urban regeneration’ is not meant to be incompatible with urban growth. Obviously, wherever necessary, spatial and urban planning should allow the appropriate amount of land development to meet justifiable needs, applying the terms of “strong control of land supply and of speculative development” included in the Leipzig Charter. But it is also advisable to curb the limitless growth of cities or urban sprawl, because — in societies with basically stable or recessive demographics such as that of many European cities — new suburban growth is largely fed –together with the increase of housing prices and the decentralisation of employment, services and facilities- by the citizen’s feeling of decline or lack of quality of life in some of the existing parts of the city.

In shrinking cities it may be important to find a balance between the need to maintain the vitality of their central areas and the regeneration and upgrading of block housing estates, avoiding some potential contradictory side effects such as the increasing share of unused dwellings in renovated buildings.

In short, the aim is to stimulate urban policies of plenitude by means of comprehensive urban approaches that administer the physical extension of the city as necessary and combine the commitment towards integrated urban regeneration in the existing fabrics and This does not mean that in certain ‘regeneration’ operations it may be not necessary for some specific buildings to be demolished and replaced, or that on other occasions (‘brownfields’, derelict, abandoned areas or areas in decline) it may be best to turn to complete renewal.

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built environment with a sustainable, integrated growth model in new urban developments. This should be based on calling for the ‘traditional European city concept’, which, while diverse (and therein also lies its richness), is recognisable by striving for complexity, compactness, functional diversity, plurality and social integration, with the ultimate goal of achieving a better balance and integration between all the dimensions of sustainability.

4. Which are the operational tools that could favour integrated urban regeneration?

From an operational viewpoint, the tools that could favour integrated urban regeneration include: • The launch of integrated regeneration plans and programmes that at the same time consider both the city as a whole and its partial ambits of intervention, establishing diagnoses of the problems and opportunities and determining the sector actions to be applied and how they should be organised and coordinated in order to create synergies and to overcome any discrepancies between them, assuring the necessary consensus between all the urban actors, and including public participation.

• Among these plans and programmes, combining an organised set of actions focusing on the physical upgrading of buildings and urban spaces with other integrated sector-based actions as the afore-mentioned, and with urban-development guidelines that set the criteria for physical-regeneration interventions, for the management of uses, improvement of public spaces and the urban scene, protection of the landscape and cultural heritage, etc.

• Taking into account that the integrated variety of social groups and diverse urban activities and functions, over and above certain areas of specialized uses, is a symptom of urban vitality, we should aim to extend quality of life, attractiveness and inhabitability to all the fabrics of the city, particularly to its central ones and especially to residential areas. This means: cities and neighbourhoods for everyone to live in, in an urban environment which is “active, inclusive and safe, well run, well connected, well served, environmentally sensitive, thriving, well designed and built, and fair for everyone”17. For this to be achieved, urban planning and urban management must seek to create or recover sufficient attractiveness and optimal inhabitability conditions, and to provide the means to “meet the needs of existing and future residents” 18, so that all parts that make up the fabrics of the city become areas where diverse social groups can and “want to live and work, now and in the future” 19.

In some cases, this may mean increasing the social and functional complexity and variety of certain areas (for example, in tower block housing estates built after the Second World War), by enhancing the attractiveness of these areas for new residents or new activities, and thus improve the social mixture of different population and income groups and the functional balance of the area.

However, in other cases (as is often the case, for example, in central or historic areas), it can be necessary to set up mechanisms to reduce social exclusion or any unintended side effects of gentrification that urban regeneration interventions may occasionally cause, by having the unwanted effect of driving out certain population groups or vital functions for a proper urban balance, because they find themselves unable to compete with other, more profitable activities in the short-term.

Housing typologies and formats, and affordability of prices for rented or owned houses are some of the key elements of these strategies. In order to preserve -or if necessary, stimulate social diversity and the plurality of social groups of differing incomes and ages in all the existing fabrics of the city, there is a need to encourage the presence in them of a wide diversity of housing typologies and formats, by preserving them if possible, or by introducing them if no such diversity was previously present.

• Public funding in urban regeneration is considered to be key in order to guarantee social and environmental goals in the medium and long terms, but in the current scenario of limited public resources it may be necessary to combine different types of existing public funding (European structural funds, national, regional and local funds, etc.) together with other formulas and new financial means (loans, revolving funds, JESSICA, etc.) as well as the development of new financial and tax incentives for private enterprises trying to increase the involvement of private property and financial agents and other urban actors in urban regeneration.

• Strengthening existing and developing new, regeneration-specific forms of public–private partnership based on codes of conduct for both sides that are clear and transparent, led — if necessary, in order to spur the private sector’s involvement — by the public authorities by means of incentives, an initial economic boost and the play of a catalysing role.

• Investing in capacity building efforts and skills to address economic, social and environmental issues as they affect places, wherever they are located (cities, towns, urban and rural) is essential in promoting sustainability. The Bristol Accord championed the concept of 17

These were the eight characteristics of a sustainable community agreed at the Bristol Accord, 2006.

18

Bristol Accord, 2006.

19

This was the definition of sustainable communities included in the Bristol Accord, 2006

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‘place-making’ skills – such as such as territorial leadership, community engagement, partnership working, project management, governance and cross-occupational learning.

• Considering the diversity of European cities and towns and the wide geographical and contextual diversity, it is impossible to apply ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions in integrated urban regeneration plans and programmes, and consequently they can benefit from a local development and implementation by the inclusion of a management and governance proposal adapted to the local context, with particular regard to the stimulation and channelling of public participation. This often requires previously the existence of an open and transparent process for measuring and reporting performance towards sustainability to local citizens and other stakeholders, empowering people and making them aware first, and then giving them the opportunities to have a stronger participation in decision making.

• In this regard, it seems convenient –both for the self evaluation of public policies and for citizens’ information- to include appropriate monitoring and assessment tools (ex ante, midterm and ex post evaluations, set of criteria and indicators, etc.) in the plans and programmes, in order to verify whether the goals set have been reached and, if necessary, consider the relevant changes or corrections.

5. The need to configure a new ‘urban alliance’ to put the strategic commitment towards integrated urban regeneration into practice Putting into practice this strategic commitment towards ‘urban regeneration’ and the ‘integrated approach’ that is under consideration will call for a new ‘urban alliance’ shared by all the actors involved in the ‘city-building’ process: the property sector, finance, local people, public authorities, professionals, etc. This new ‘urban alliance’ should be based on consensus and legitimised by new forms of governance, where social and citizens’ networks play a leading role, and its common aim should be to revalue, recover and even re-invent the ‘existing city’, thus optimising the human, social, material, cultural and economic capital that has been built up there over the course of its history, and using these elements to build the efficient, innovative, smart, more sustainable and socially integrated cities that Europe is striving for.

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Tulcea Declaration: The Black Sea Coast, a Sustainable Place for Everybody - adopted at the 8th Meeting of the Forum of Architects of the Black Sea Region (FABSR) Tulcea, Romania, 16 October 2010 Architects representing the professional organisations from Bulgaria, Romania, Russia and Turkey gathered in the FABSR meeting in Tulcea-Romania under the theme of ‘Sustainable Development of the Black Sea Coaster Cultural Landscape’. This meeting was realized in such a period where there are various problems such as climate change, poverty, discrimination and political conflicts in the region and the world. The effects of globalisation have a tendency to create uniform human beings and living environments without identity and deprived of natural resources. In such a context, FABSR meeting participants call for peace and justice in the region, where all cultures are equally respected and peace is maintained. We need to work together to make a sustainable use of natural resources.

Following their discussion of actual issues in the Black Sea region, FABSR members reaffirm the following general beliefs: 1. Architecture and communities: Architecture is the living expression of peoples’ culture and part of their identity. Architecture is an instrument of measuring the life quality and the environmental standards. Architecture gives the structured physical shape, visually perceptible of the planned environment in which communities live, develop and interaction. As a privileged component, the public space ensures the framework to meet the cultural, socialisation and educational needs of groups and communities.

2. Landscape and communities: Landscape is also a key element of individual and social well-being and quality of life, and plays an important part in human fulfilment and in reinforcement of communities’ identity. It has an important public interest role in the cultural, ecological, environmental and social fields and constitutes a favourable resource for economic activities, particularly tourism. Nature is not only a range of values to be displayed, admired and consumed; it is our own vital environment, resource and nest, it is the reflection of our being as much as we reflect the nature surrounding us.

3. Sustainability of heritage and growth: In any policy for spatial development - coastal areas make no exception -, building and development of sustainable communities and settlements shall hold a central place; it is a process where architecture and planning play a crucial role. It is important to exploit all expertise, creativity and innovation in the architectural profession, but intellectual, collaborative and ethical conduct shall also be encouraged as meaningful virtues.

In order to be part of the sustainable development, quality architectural standards and rationality in the exploitation of resources shall be increased and promoted, local conditions and people’s needs must be considered. Adoption of an integrative approach must go beyond the professional toolkit of the architect or planner; sharing and contributing to policies of the public administration of coastal communities give architects a social meaning, ensure the feedback and supply the visions.

Reiterating the principles and commitments of the past meetings of FASBR, we foresee future threats, challenges and opportunities. We commit ourselves to objectives and targets that will help integrate quality architecture and responsible planning in the life and aspirations of cities and villages of the Black Sea Region, such as: reconstruction/repair of the damaged physical space, spoiled natural environment and destroyed cultural landscape of the coastal areas harmonise the architectural production with the actions/interventions of strengthening of collapsing cliffs, stopping of eroded beaches and soils, stopping the biodiversity depletion, reducing up to eliminating industrial waste and garbage storage areas, reconstruction of traditional plantations and fauna habitats networking of cultural landmarks in the coastal area – Black Sea bordering countries’ organisations are welcomed to develop common (bilateral, trilateral, multilateral) projects regarding architecture and cultural landscape each country can propose buildings/institutions/public space functioning as meeting points in a network hosting project reunions, communication of architecture, exhibitions, experiments and research in architecture strengthening the regional/local specificity in architecture and landscape, by promoting and adopting integrative instruments of protection of cultural built, mobile and immaterial heritage reintroducing into the urban interventions local building materials, vegetation species, handcraft workshops/schools, decorative patterns, ethos, etc. building pilot programmes meant to design, corroborate and implement coherent regulations and standards in the territorial or urban planning of coastal areas creating professional groups and networks advancing comprehensive guidelines for building rules, urban and territorial planning within the region

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reinventing the public space in the coastal areas and inventorying the political, architectural, planning, environmental and social tools enabling accessibility of population and visitors/tourists to these places, towards a continuous “public belt� of the Black Sea in the future structuring the region map by interdisciplinary layers of soft and hard infrastructure, such as: cultural institutions and venues, archaeological sites, listed historical monuments, protected natural reservations/areas, roads, railways, tourist ports, airports, sport and recreation centres, resorts, etc. bringing more credibility and efficiency into the culture of networking of professional groups and organisations from the Black Sea Region introducing managerial means: permanent monitoring and reporting, sharing, establishing tasks and responsibilities.

With this declaration, FABSR members commit themselves to develop a Black Sea Architectural Policy that will set architectural objectives and priorities for regional policy in the Black Sea. FABSR calls the central and local administrations, universities and research centers, professional and cultural organizations, governmental and non-governmental organizations in the Black Sea to take into consideration the concerns and suggestions mentioned in this declaration and to contribute to the development of a regional architectural policy.

Signed on 16 October 2010 in Tulcea, Romania by authorized representatives of: Armenia (excused for the meeting) Azerbaijan (excused for the meeting) Bulgaria Georgia (excused for the meeting) Romania Russia Turkey Ukraine (excused for the meeting)

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Reference Framework for European Sustainable City

Context In May 2007, the Ministers of the Member States responsible for urban development adopted the "Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities" in order to improve the design and implementation of integrated urban development policies. This was a first step in developing a common tool at European level to facilitate and support the process of integrated urban development. The importance of such an instrument is more necessary as the challenges that our cities have to face are becoming increasingly complex and diverse.

It is estimated that 70% of the EU population lives in cities. Today, local authorities must take important decisions, they have to deal with competing cities, and they must develop their local economy and create attractive places for residents and tourists. This is extremely important in a knowledge-based economy, with high labor mobility.

Cities need tools to assist them in establishing a dialogue and finding answers to questions such as: How can we better share our experiences and how we can learn from other cities experience?

How can we better cooperate to achieve balance in territory development?

How can we apply modern diagnostic and assessment tools and how can we involve staff at technical level, political actors and civil society?

Moreover, the need to understand how an action such as an investment project may affect a particular group, it is vital in order to have an overview of our cities development.

In the context of these challenges and realities, an operational tool has been developed and it is called the Reference Framework for European Sustainable Cities.

This tool aims to achieve the following targets:

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To provide a reference framework for urban development supported by all stakeholders, that ensures the premises for accurate decision-making processes, and also the foundations for new abilities achievement;

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To provide the foundation for acquiring the necessary abilities for a sustainable and integrated development of our cities;

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To provide a set of materials and tools that can be adapted to the city development needs;

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To mobilize local actors in building a sustainable network of education and training.

About „RFSC” instrument Reference Framework for European Sustainable Cities contains the following components:

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A policy document that discusses the vision, goals and desires for Sustainable European Cities;

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A basic common and operational model that translates into action objectives the goals of Leipzig Charter;

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An assessment tool that can be used by local authorities in monitoring progress of city sustainable development and of different public policy options and their impact;

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Possible indicators of performance monitoring and evaluation tools that can be used in setting up measurable targets;

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A research tank, best practices and tools, available online.

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This tool highlights and explains step by step what actions are needed to organize the processes in a particular city. Users are also directed and guided through a series of questions in order to explore their possibilities of approaching their city on sustainable development and they are offered a range of tools to improve the way they address these challenges.

The “RFSC” instrument begins with an assessment of how the city is seen in terms of existing features and actions to ensure local sustainability. In this respect, the tool provides a series of questions that can help the user to review and reflect on its approach on sustainability, to reflect on local priorities and to bring an input on local strategy and on development processes. Since it is designed as an open tool, "RFSC" allows the user to choose the instruments that fit the city needs.

One of the main purposes of Reference Framework for European Sustainable Cities is to encourage cities to fix their own integrated sustainable urban development actions and measures.

There is no single model for sustainable local development and there is no one way to achieve this, but it is a continuing need to develop new approaches to support the development of our cities.

The Structure of Reference Framework for European Sustainable Cities This virtual instrument consists of the following components:

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A guide that provides information about how to use "RFSC" and the instruments;

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A set of questions and tools that help describe the current situation and identify your city main information and key development issues;

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A set of questions and tools to help you adopt an integrated approach;

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A set of possible indicators and visualization tools that help you monitor the territory progress;

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Relevant documentation with direct access to European reference texts and other important documents for sustainable urban development;

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The base of a common platform for dialogue between local authorities and professionals or other major networks.

Describing the instruments proposed by the web application Describe/characterize your city Before verifying the implementation of an integrated approach to your project or strategy, you can complete an optional step consisting in identifying the characteristics of your territory, capital and the concerns on sustainable development.

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The information you collect will help you formulate a common understanding of your city challenges, of the various local partners.

How can you use this instrument?

This step is the completion of a series of information about your city. The required information to complete this step is:

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Main features of your city (e.g. you are asked to provide certain qualitative or quantitative data on certain topics, data that you want to share with certain local actors);

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Existing or future actions you propose to address the challenges and issues mentioned (a list of proposed actions);

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Some things that you are concerned about related to the proposed issues and actions.

Who should take this exercise?

This tool should be used by all actors (stakeholders) involved in strategies, policies and local projects. (for a detailed description of this tool please see "Characterize your city - STRUCTURE OF THE USER'S Guide” at the Internet address http://rfsc.tomos.fr/. This site is in draft form, and it can be accessed directly from the address www.rfsustainablecities.eu) Instrument 1: Develop a sustainable strategy for your city When can you use this tool? How can you use this tool? Who should take this exercise?

This tool should be used when:

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You want to have a clearer view on the objectives and on impact in terms of sustainability they may have;

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You want to formalize a strategy;

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You want to compare your goals in terms of sustainability, with the objectives of other European cities;

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You want to gain new ideas about the durability of your city.

Before using the tool "develop a sustainable strategy", it is necessary to achieve the first step of this application, namely "characterize/describe my city". This will allow you to share certain information with respect to the capital and challenges of your city.

You can also review the objectives and actions described in the vision of "European Sustainable City".

Step 1: Select detailed actions (associated with the 25 objectives you consider relevant for the local context and priorities). The tool allows the addition of new objectives if necessary.

To select these actions, you will receive the following support information:

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Interdependence between main objectives;

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Illustrations (concrete examples of policies and projects from European cities, which are related to the main objective).

(for more information about the tool “Develop a sustainable urban" strategy” please go to the link "USER'S GUIDE" at the section "Tool number 1: Develop your sustainable urban development strategy", on the Internet address mentioned in paragraph above) .

Instrument 2: Check the integrated approach of your project or of your Strategy When can you use this tool? How can you use this tool? Who should take this exercise?

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You already have a sustainable strategy and you want to improve its weak points;

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You want to know much better your projects and strategies impact;

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You want to share with your partners an evaluation of your project or strategy.

How should you use this tool?

An important preliminary step: Before using the tool, "check the integrated approach of your strategy/project" it is necessary in order to complete first step "describe/characterize your city."

Step 1: 

ensure that your goals are understood by the people using the tool;

Step 2: 

Evaluate the impact of your project or strategy: define impact as negative, neutral or positive ranking them from -1 to + 2 (0 = neutral).

For each objective you can write a justification for the given rank.

To achieve this impact assessment, you will be given information about: 

Correlations between main objectives;

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Illustrations: concrete projects and policies;

(For more information about the tool "Check the integrated approach towards your strategy and projects”, please follow the link USERS GUIDE and the section "Tool number 2: Check the integrated approach of your strategy or project”, on the website mentioned at the first point).

Instrument 3: Focus on disadvantaged neighborhoods When can you use this tool? How can you use this tool?

This tool should be used when: 

You are dealing with complex challenges in the deprived neighborhoods;

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You are dealing with difficulties and you lack examples and concrete actions to reduce inequalities and social exclusion;

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You need an increased awareness on the challenges of these neighborhoods, requiring some interventions.

How can you use this tool?

In this section you are provided with a set of 23 questions. Follow carefully this set of 23 questions and mention whether action have already been taken to resolve these problems.

Instrument 3 provides the following results: 

A table with all questions and comments associated with these questions;

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A graphic as a checkerboard that enables you to understand the problems and challenges that must be addressed in the future.

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Instrument 4: Monitoring Progress When can you use this tool? How can you use this tool?

This tool should be used when: 

You want to monitor your projects or strategy progress;

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You need a visual representation of your indicators system;

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You need to communicate the strategy results to your projects.

How can you use this tool?

Step 1: Select the sustainable development objective you have information about and indicators. You will get a result table. For selected objectives, you will be provided with a list of sets of indicators, indicators directly correlated to the main objective.

Step 2: Select those indicators you consider most relevant to the local context. You can also add indicators that you are using currently.

To select the appropriate indicators for your context, instrument 4 provides: 

Recommended indicators;



You can download the descriptive table of each indicator containing the description of indicator, operational formulas, etc.

(For a detailed description of the instrument "Monitoring projects and strategies progress ", please consult the USER'S GUIDE link in the section “Tool Number 4: Monitoring progress” on the website mentioned at the first point).

Note: at the time of final editing this guide the draft site of RFSC (www.rfsustainablecities.eu ) was disabled and the new site of the RFSC was under construction; however, the user guide was still available at http://rfsc.tomos.fr/users-guide

The RFSC webtool will be available at the address www.rfsc.eu by the end of January 2013.

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Integrated planning of revitalization in Oradea - Local background of the planning process31

“[…] After a decade of stagnation, the city was a scene to a rapid economic restructuring that rested largely on increasing external investments, until the financial crisis in 2008. The rapid growth raised a number of problems related to the deficiencies of the urban and regional infrastructure in terms of transportation and road network, the water supply, sewage and waste management. Moreover, due to the rising interest toward property investments focused mostly on the historical as well as the urban fringe, a quick restructuring in the city centre and a suburbanisation process – that affected also the surrounding villages in Romania, as well as on the Hungarian side – emerged, particularly, after the EUaccession. This challenged urban planning practices: it had to manage rapid changes, support economic restructuring by providing space for tourism and business – while preserving cultural heritage and enhancing the quality of urban space for all residents. To achieve all this, the municipality of Oradea made steps in comprehensive planning of public spaces of a better quality in the historical centre in the framework of the ViTo project, including a strategy for the future use of cultural heritage, street marketing study, and plans/methods for the renovation of facades of historical buildings if the urban centre.

Social participation Involving stakeholders in the process of planning and implementation in the city was the first crucial point in the local pilot project. In Oradea, the participatory planning process was launched through workshops, forums, and using the Internet-based communication channels, such as e-mails and website. As a strategic step to emerge the activity of stakeholders the Municipality decided to establish a ‘Strategic Committee’ for revitalization to collect representatives of political parties, local citizens, entrepreneurs (from the city centre), NGOs, experts of the local university etc. In this moment, this Committee has not founded yet, because of legal problems. However, the idea of the organization seems very useful, as a local forum for providing ideas for strategic planning and supporting communication between the experts of the municipality and citizens of the whole urban region.

The City Hall tried to inform the residents of the Historical Centre directly about the major goals and problems of the pilot project and about the new local regulations, connected to the development actions. The local forums opened the floor to ask the residents about their opinion about local development steps, their priorities, and tried to get some feedback from

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the recent development action, too. Collecting and analyzing the ideas and opinions, it became clear, that forums are not effective tools for contacting local residents.

The Municipality organized local questionnaire surveys to approach the residents. The surveys were made by experts from the local university (Faculty of Social Sciences) and the results were merged into the planning documents. As an opposite, the Internet based communication channels were proved not to be effective, as no useful feedback came from the stakeholders. It was more efficient to co-operate with local NGOs, particularly with the Local Chamber of Architects, who were able to offer professional inputs to the Municipality.

Involving stakeholders in Oradea suggest the local team did not find new, innovative tools for involving stakeholder groups, but in ViTo project they used the former tools more professionally and effective. Thus, the planning process is still dominated by the view of local experts – primarily, by architects. Nevertheless, it was stressed by the experts of the municipality that the practices they learnt from ViTo partners are useful and methods for involving citizens through flexible organisation (see the planned local committee) and for regional cooperation will be adopted in the near future.

The rise of the need for and the first steps toward cross-sectoral approach The need for a cross-sectoral approach was raised by the emerging conflicts between stakeholders. In Oradea, an innovative tool was formulated in local taxation. Owners of historical buildings have to pay tax into a common fund for renovating the facades of the Historical Centre. This fund offered a tool for the Municipality to solve an urgent problem and not to use public money for renovating private-owned properties. (EU-Funds also not available, to use them, for financing those private actions.) In that case of not to pay tax, Municipality has (limited) legal opportunity to push/motivate owners. The social conflict arose, because a certain group of owners are too poor to pay the tax, in some cases owners are foreigners, who do not care about local issues, and in some cases the owners has very good connections to local and national level politics. Nevertheless, in general, the sum of this local tax is quite small and inadequate to solve the original problem. Thus, it became clear that an integrated approach toward the historic centre as a public space, as diverse property stock and as heritage is needed. This recognition is a result of the planning phase Oradea.

Another field of local conflicts arose in traffic calming inside the historical centre. A group of stakeholders are pushing local decision makers to increase the number of parking places inside – thus, attracting a higher level of traffic – to let the visitors come and look around in the centre. Other groups work for banning non-public traffic from the centre and develop dominantly public transportation all around the city centre. This problem concerns municipal budget, too: the higher number of parking places means higher incomes, but the other way of development needs huge investments, without increasing local resources. This issue also called for a new, cross-sectoral approach in setting up a strategy for the historical centre.

The vision of local pilot project is focused largely on economic development (profitability) and, particularly, the development of tourism. Nevertheless, municipal experts are seeking for a wider vision for all residents, through creating new public spaces for rest and relaxation, and saving local identity with the help of restoration actions. Environmental issues were fundamental, as well (particularly in feasibility studies) such as energy efficiency, greening program, pedestrian zones, preserving environment, traffic calming, extension of public spaces for leisure and sports. In relation to the revitalization steps, a new program emerging: energy efficient public transportation system is under development.

There are newly finished strategic documents in Oradea. The strategy for the historical centre of the town is ready and rested on a local cross-disciplinary research results, supported largely by the local university. Some feasibility studies were completed with the help of external experts. These documents are very useful guides for local developers (and partly financed by additional sources). They finished the Marketing Strategy of Historical City Centre. The content of the later document is wider than an ordinary marketing plan, because it contains a wide range of strategic development issues, too, focusing on diverse aspects of urban tourism. Majority of local documents were made for the next 4-5 years period, except zoning plan and urban plan (10-15 years outlook). Using these documents as a basis, they applied for INTEGR-ABLE: a guide for integrated urban development planning

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EU-Fund successfully to complete a new Strategic Plan for Oradea. The planning phase was a great challenge for the local team they had to secure the coherence of all formerly existing documents and new ones; thus, planning documents are consistent and built upon each other.

The local ViTo team is organised cross-sectorally, too. It includes professionals from the Department of Urbanism of Municipality in Oradea, having a diverse knowledge basis (engineering, history, law); they have an occasional collaboration with the other departments of City Hall (concerning traffic, social and financial issues). These temporary teams were formed to solve some specific problems in different phases of planning and implementation. Thus, local planning rests on a flexible network of experts and teams within the municipality.

Human capacities of planning are supported by a wide network of external expertise, too. Contracted architects worked for the Municipality of Oradea on the feasibility studies. As specific knowledge was needed (e.g. on environmental issues, finance and local social processes) external expertise provided by the local university; by the local professional body of architects and by business service firms was involved in the planning process. The regular co-operation with professors from the university and also with representatives of local economy also emerged in the planning and also in the implementation phases. The municipality of Oradea doesn’t use external moderators (e.g. professional organizations) to negotiate the municipal point of view and get the ideas from stakeholder groups’ opinion.

Spatially integrated planning As a part of integrated planning and implementation, the regional co-operation seems to be a crucial problem in Oradea.

In the former INTERREG IIIA CADSES project Hist.Urban (2006-2008) there were some steps toward setting up collaboration with other towns and cities. The best practices of other EU cities were useful, because there were/are no urban networks in the field of revitalization in Romania.

The on-going suburbanization process around Oradea raised a new dimension in local planning: the city is forced to cooperate with the surrounding settlements; they manage common infrastructure networks, public transportation, that is largely supported by an existing ‘umbrella’ organization, Oradea Metropolitan Area defined in the Spatial Planning Act of Romania (2006). Nevertheless, although, the residents of surrounding villages use the historical city centre of Oradea, the settlements are not involved in and do not seem to be interested in the revitalization project. Inside the City Hall a whole department is responsible for the collaboration with surrounding villages, but the information flow inside the Municipality work at quite basic level.

Comparing the former project, Oradea improved its human capacities, became more professional in local planning and implementation. They understood what is meant by an integrated approach and tried to find the most effective ways to involve stakeholders, serve the interest of different target groups, solve the problem of limited human capacities of local team, turn the development action into an environmentally more sustainable way. Nevertheless, there are deficiencies in the integrated planning process, in terms of regional embeddedness, social involvement of residents, as well as of cooperation with NGOs operating in different fields/sectors.”

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Urban regeneration and social inclusion in the city of Gijon, Spain. City opening to the sea.

Gijon city is situated along the Asturian coast in Spain, with an area of 182 km 2 and has a population of 267.000 inhabitants. During the last century, Gijon underwent drastic changes as a result of the industrialization process, mainly in the field of iron and steel processing and of naval construction, and as a result of restructuring process that followed the industrialization. The processes of industrialization and events that have followed have particularly affected urban development and human settlements. The largest demographic expansion occurred in the 1960s, when the population grew by 112.000 people (during 1960-1975), growth that has resulted in a totally unplanned urban growth and in a chaotic spatial growth distribution due to immigrants. In this period, at the periphery were established new settlements.

But these settlements lacked the necessary facilities and infrastructure. As a reflection of residential segregation, entire neighbourhoods of poor housing were created near industrial sites, in the most degraded areas in terms of social and environmental protection. They were accommodating the most marginalized groups of immigrants. Subsequently, as a result of industrial restructuring in the early 1980s, strongly degraded areas located in urban area faced a new situation, which contradicted with the aspirations of Gijon citizens on living conditions and quality of life.

Thus, in 1972, the first census of these poor neighborhoods showed a total of 600 poor housing (shacks), distributed in 7 districts, where a total of 5000 people were living. On the other hand, until the 1980s, most of the coastal area was occupied by railway lines, iron and steel manufacturing facilities, naval production lines, unused or undergoing restructuring.

As a result of lack of planning and lack of any form of control, the city's wastewater was discharged directly into the sea without any sanitary measures, while air quality did not meet the quality limits. This situation prevented public access to the beach and imposed actions in regard to quality of life improvement in this city.

The solution to all these problems could not be taken unilaterally by Gijon City Council. Regional and central government had to intervene as owners of a portion of the concerned land. And they intervened as promoters of sectoral plans (housing plans, stations plans, coastal zone plans, sanitation plans) while playing the "channels" role for the necessary funds for such ambitious actions. The involvement of social partners was also required, and was done by promoting the Neighborhood Associations, the Housing Cooperatives and creating the so-called Housing Management Authority ("Gestora de la Vivienda"), which enabled citizens participation in the assessment and study of the housing needs.

Gijon City Council and Municipal Social Services Foundation have taken the leader role among all involved "actors", from the economic, political or social field, creating the necessary background for the “Urban regeneration and social inclusion plan. Opening the city towards the sea”, by the development in 1984 of the Eradication of Poor Housing Neighbourhoods Plan and the approval in 1985 of the General Scheme of Urban Planning, key elements to launch such an initiative. The main objectives of this initiative consist of: 

Eradicate poor housing neighbourhoods by introducing appropriate housing, integrated into the urban frame;



Recover coastal area and transform it into spaces with urban destination, which can be used by citizens.

The implementation process of this initiative could be summarized in the following elements: 

An individual study of each of the 600-800 families living in poor neighbourhoods;



A sociological study of the phenomenon which led to poorer residential districts in the city;



Creating basic resources that could lead to temporary improvement of the situation;



Rigorous control of poorer residential districts in order to prevent their growth or the establishment of new settlements of homes mobile or on former enterprises ruins;



Involving the affected population throughout the process;

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

Integrating affected families by carrying out work, occupational or social projects;



Providing economic incentives to purchase their own homes;



Creating two classrooms, a "transit school" (“Bridging School”), a dining and showers;



Setting up a nursery for children from poor neighbourhoods;



San Juan settlement of prefabricated housing construction (24 homes) and the City for Progress (26 homes), and purchasing a 35 apartments building for families who previously lived in demolished prefabricated houses, so that to ensure the redistribution of their inhabitants in different buildings and neighbourhoods of the city;



Develop and implement specific plans for urban regeneration of Cimadevilla neighbourhood and rehabilitation of various areas of the city;



Beaches regeneration;



Conservation Agreement for East Coast of Gijon city, the improvement and expansion of the road in the coastal area;



Approval and implementation of the Plan for Clean Air, referring to the city's leading industries;



Installing a network of automatic stations for monitoring air pollution;



Approval and implementation of the Integrated Plan on Sanitary Measures in Gijon;



A sewerage system, sewage wastewater management and offshore outfall of treated wastewater.

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The new concept of town planning and transport in Vienna, Austria

In 1993 the city of Vienna has created a new urban development plan and a new traffic concept. The aim was that by 2010 the share of public transport would increase from 37% to 45%, while the use of individual motorized transport would decrease from 37% to 35%. Such a policy would lead to a decrease by up to 50% of CO 2 emission. For the first time, the transport management in Vienna was designed starting from an integrated approach to planning. The new method can be regarded as good practice for the following reasons: 

Give priority to improving the public transportation system;



Managing parking space within the city;



Further promote the use of bicycles and walking;



Consider balancing human settlements development and transport.

The idea behind the new urban development plan and the new concept on traffic, was to change the structure of "transportation mode", so to increase public transport by 2010 from 37% to 45%, walking from 23% to 24% and cycling from 3% to 6%. Namely, to decrease the use of individual motorized transportation from 37% to 25%. The following topics were seen as essential for urban traffic policy in Vienna: 

Reducing traffic volume;



Changing the traffic structure, in order to amend the share of different modes of transport;



Improving traffic situation;



Innovation;



Price structure, in the sense of reflecting the real costs of the adopted measures;



New forms of financing.

To be successful, such a policy focused on two principles with a "long shot", namely: Principle 1: Ensuring the integration between city planning and transport planning 

First, the uncontrolled expansion of human settlements should be avoided. The locations where new residential or commercial buildings are being developed must be located in areas where there is a high capacity of public transport. This will become increasingly important in the future years, since the number of Vienna’s inhabitants is growing. Because of the way the situation develops in neighbouring Slovenia and Hungary and because of the default migration, it was expected by 2011 that the population of Vienna increases to approximately 1.7 million inhabitants. This means an average annual increase of 10.000 people. Consequently, it is expected to need an additional 7.000 to 10.000 homes. New urban development policy must take into account the balanced distribution of urban functions.

Principle 2: Switching to modes of transport that are environmentally friendly 

To amend the traffic volume, the municipality has two options. First, it can perform a structural change in city planning, in the sense of promoting green vehicles. And secondly, it can take regulatory measures to limit the use of private cars. Public transport has the greatest potential to contribute to a green transport system. Improvement of public transport infrastructure and the limitation of private cars use by commuters are key elements of traffic strategy in Vienna.

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To increase the attractiveness of public transport system it is aimed the improvement of the services offered by the dense network of trams and buses. In this regard, the following measures would be taken: 

Providing timely and regular public transport by creating separate transport corridors and traffic signals preference for public transport;



Shortening intervals between two buses at times of low demand, improving schedules, extended hours until late at night;



Increased efficiency of basic network (e.g. every 2 minutes for the main hours within subway network);



Extending routes in the context of urban projects;



Improved rolling stock;



Flexible operating modes (e.g. collective taxis in peripheral areas);



Improvement of subjective and social security;



Improving the image of public service.

The limitation of private cars use and the promotion of walking and/or cycling are covered by the following measures: 

Providing storey car parks in residential areas, so as to extend the public space available on the road;



Gradual reduction of rear parking on the streets in favour of bicycles and walking;



Monitoring the public car park and designating special control teams;



Additional facilities for the movement and parking of bicycles, both at Vienna’s periphery and on its surroundings.

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Alphen aan den Rijn: Ecolonia –Dutch test case study on sustainable urban planning

The discussed case study refers to a sustainable urban planning project, funded by the Dutch Environment Agency in order to gain experience in ecological urban planning, and green architecture.

Ecolonia project is a major demonstrative project, developed with EU funding in the field of housing with low power consumption. The project aims to develop a range of new technologies and models/designs of houses, each focusing on different ecological issues, including: 

Rainwater use;



Use of active and passive solar energy;



Energy saving strategies;



Reduction of water consumption;



Recycling construction materials;



Organic architecture;



Sustainable materials;



Healthy building materials.

The above mentioned building behaviour is subject to testing, monitoring and continuous evaluation. The houses are arranged in groups of 8 to 18, to create a community atmosphere. Each group has a particular environmental priority.

The project is located in Ecolonia, Alphen aan den Rijn, in the Netherlands.

The project carried out at Ecolonia is a remarkable achievement and it reached the following aspects of sustainability: 

Emphasizing on heterogeneity of urban planning and architecture, in order to test different ecological approaches;



Rainwater use;



Active and passive solar energy use;



Implementation of energy saving concepts;



Reduction of water consumption;



Use of sustainable materials;



Sound insulation;



Paying special attention to aspects of healthy living, etc.

In the mid-1980s, the idea of promoting projects aimed at raising awareness about the need to protect the environment and building homes with low energy consumption took a new impetus, as inter-disciplinary planning began to be more adopted in the field of ecological urban development. The intention of Dutch demonstration project was to highlight the high quality of existing knowledge. As a result, Dutch National Agency for Energy and Environment (NOVEM) and the Ministry of Economic Affairs have joined forces in 1989, hiring a preliminary study on the feasibility of such a project.

This first step also included a survey with representatives of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment (VROM). The aim was to reach a broad consensus on guidelines applicable to ecological building and on the principles of environment conservation in order to identify the widest possible base for sustainable property.

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Once there have been taken into consideration all the instructions, laws, national plans and political relevant responsibilities, the involved ministries have asked in 1990 a group of 17 architects to sketch their ideas on a sustainable project in terms of environment. The aim was to build a residential complex with about 100 apartments. Architects had to focus on selected topics from National Environmental Policy Plan. In 1989, the Dutch government published this plan, in order to encourage policies that go beyond the statutory requirements of the policy. In the case of ecological urban planning, the national policy guidelines pay particular attention to the following principles: 

Energy extensification;



Flows management; and



Improving quality.

The Dutch demonstrative model implements these principles by considering the following measures: In the field of energy extent a.

The heat loss must be reduced by individual insulation, by installing exterior shutters and favourable position in terms of home insulation;

b.

Solar energy must be used by incorporating special interior gardens and sun loungers, and by certain share of living space;

c.

Energy consumption must be reduced by technical solutions that allow a low power consumption (building materials involving low power consumption, avoiding intensive use of energy while constructing); consumption per household/residential unit was limited to 300 MJ/m3.

In the field of flows management (integral management) d.

Particular attention should be given to reducing water consumption and reuse of construction materials (installation of toilets with a minimum consumption of water, low flow showers, water saving devices, use of reusable and renewable construction materials, maximizing the number of components that can be easily dismantled for recovery/reuse, installation of wooden floors between floors and using mineral wool for ceilings as sound insulation);

e.

Special attention should be given to the use of environmentally friendly materials and application of so-called organic architecture (a careful selection of materials and components used; for example, the use of cedar or hardwood European or Canadian origin wood instead of tropical origin one), maximum use of used cement granules and brick, a careful selection of items related to the form and structure of spaces and buildings);

f.

The planning and implementation process must be flexible, in the sense of allowing changes in design and functions (creating easily adaptable and extensible buildings, buildings used both as households and as workspaces).

In the field of improving quality g.

One of the key elements on the quality is the soundproofing, targeting both the building protection against inside noise, but also outside one (using acoustic insulation materials both for facades and also between rooms; integration of suspension system with fixed rails in order to avoid bottlenecks caused by drilling walls, using interior mobile walls);

h.

Special attention should also be paid to health and safety (placement of smoke detectors in the living space and bedrooms, the use of fireproof materials, doors with high degree of protection against fire, emergency exits in case of fire, including the attic window, the use of straight stairs, entrance with protective glass, laundry facilities on the same floor, floor heating, installing suspended kitchens and bathrooms, avoiding corners to allow dust collection);

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i.

Application of the principles and use of bio-ecological construction materials (avoid negative electromagnetic fields, using water-soluble, toxicity free paints, etc.).

In addition to these guidelines, the architects took into account that the demonstration projects must meet the requirements for buildings construction in series which does not address a specific target group, but that can attract a wide range of customers and are affordable by most of the population. Involved architects have designed eight to eighteen buildings that took into account the aforementioned integrated sustainability principles. Finally, there were selected nine companies to conduct final planning of the project.

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Bibliography and resources: Ayuntamiento de Gijon: Observatorio local. Annual Review with economic, social and urban data about the city, http://www.aytogijon.es Best Practice in Sustainable Urban Infrastructure: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/archi/programmes/cost8/ Case studies: Hannover, Vienna, Alphen aan den Rijn: Ecolonia: http://www.eaue.de Eurocities, Social Exclusion and Inequalities in European Cities: Challenges and Responsibilities, Brussels, http://nws.eurocities.eu/MediaShell/media/Eurocities_Poverty_EN_final-CGRE_10350.pdf Ecolonia: Urban Design Compendium: http://www.urbandesigncompendium.co.uk/ecolonia European Urban Knowledge Network: http://www.eukn.org/ Gateway to International Best Practices & Innovations - Urban Management, Sustainable Development and Smart Growth: http://www.epa.gov/innovation/international/urban.htm Green Urban-Planning Concepts, resolution, adopted by the 4th meeting of “Green in Big Cities”-Viena, 2007: http://archiv.wien.gruene.at/uploads/media/ResolutionBigCitiesGreensAdopted26oct2007.pdf Global Good Practices in Sustainable Urban Region Development: http://www.adb.org/themes/urban-development/ Guide on strategic urban planning, FDLSP, 1996 Integrated Environmental Management, Urban Environmental Management Plans - benefits for local authorities, European Commission, DG Environment, Ref.: 220210/2006/442710/MAR/E3: ec.europa.eu/environment/urban/pdf/iem.pdf Integrated Urban Development – a Prerequisite for Urban Sustainability in Europe, Background Study on the “Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities” of the German EU Council Presidency, March 2007: http://www.bbsr.bund.de/nn_168714/BBSR/EN/UrbanDevelopment/UrbanDevelopmentEurope/Publications/ Learning from Abroad: The European Approach to Smarter Growth and Sustainable Development, by Eric J. Siy, Global Innovations Group, 2004: www.fundersnetwork.org/usr_doc/Learning_from_Abroad-FINAL.pdf Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities, 2007 Methodological guide to integrated urban project - pilot project” - Ministry of Regional Development and Housing, Romania, developed by Lattanzio e associati s.p.a, 2010 „O șansă pentru orașul tău” –Informative guide on urban regeneration –principles and European practices, MDLPL, 2007 Participatory Strategic Planning, United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS) Regional Operational Programme 2007-2013, Romanian Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism (former Ministry of Development, Public Works and Housing) ,June 2007 Strategies for upgrading the physical environmnet in deprieved urban areas - examples of good practice in Europe, Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau und Stadtentwicklung, Berlin, March 2007 State of the Art Paper URBACT: http://urbact.eu/fileadmin/Projects/Creative_Clusters/State_of_the_art_EUlevel.pdf SURBAN, the database on Sustainable urban development in Europe: http://www.eaue.de/winuwd/list.htm Urban Regeneration of Deprived Areas across Europe, http://urbact.eu/fileadmin/corporate/pdf/FinalReports/REGENERA_Final_Report.pdf

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List of figures: Figure 1: General data of the countries involved in “Capacity for integrated urban development: INTEGR-ABLE” project 5 Figure 2: The Greater Black Sea Basin .............................................................................................................................. 7 Figure 3: Examples on urban sprawl tendency in Romania - Evolution of Floresti village near Cluj-Napoca city, Romania (NV region): left-2003, right -2009....................................................................................................................................... 8 Figure 4: Examples on urban sprawl tendency in Romania – SE region ............................................................................ 8 Figure 5: The urbanization stage of the project pilot cities, by own perception of cities’ representatives ........................... 9 Figure 6: Example: Central Vesterbro area, Copenhagen, Denmark ............................................................................... 22 Figure 7: Example: left - Mirafiori Nord neighbourhood, right – area of intervention Mirafiori Nord .................................. 24 Figure 8: Layers of analysis to select/identify an intervention area reflected in the succinct SWOT analysis for a Torino residential area.................................................................................................................................................................. 24 Figure 9: Priority development areas in Piatra Neamt, Romania, defined by Local Development Strategy 2008 – 2015 26 Figure 10: City areas defined in Focsani, Romania, and consultative meetings ............................................................... 26 Figure 11: Tqibuli, Georgia................................................................................................................................................ 27 Figure 12: Spiral stages of participatory planning ............................................................................................................. 29 Figure 13: Exercise on integrated urban development planning stages during the International Urban Development Seminar, plenary groups’ presentations ............................................................................................................................ 31 Figure 14: Planning the process stages, municipality of Aparan, Armenia ....................................................................... 38 Figure 15: Stakeholder analysis – scale power / interest .................................................................................................. 40 Figure 16: Model - table of stakeholder analysis .............................................................................................................. 40 Figure 17: GIS application ................................................................................................................................................ 45 Figure 18: Summary of criteria for identification of intervention area boundaries ............................................................. 48 Figure 19: Intervention area, Vadul lui Voda, Rep. of Moldova ........................................................................................ 49 Figure 20: The structure of a Logframe Matrix adapted for IUD ....................................................................................... 57 Figure 21: Guidelines comparing the characteristics of programmes vs. projects: ........................................................... 59 Figure 22: Sections of IUDP structure and content involving illustration / graphic representation: ................................... 66

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Glossary The terms and interpretations in this glossary are simplified and related to the central theme of the guide: integrated urban development. Certain terms can have other interpretations in other contexts.

Accessibility -

refers to the ease of reaching destinations. In addition to physical accessibility through transport infrastructure, connectivity through advanced telecommunication systems contributes to improving the intangible accessibility of areas. Accessibility depends upon the extension and quality of transport infrastructure and services. People living in places that are highly accessible can reach many destinations quickly, while people in inaccessible places can reach fewer places in the same amount of time.

The progress of telecommunication systems has created a new form of intangible accessibility which plays a significant part in territorial development potentialities. The level of accessibility is a very important factor for territorial development, especially in the present context of globalisation. (source: CEMAT32)

Activities -

the collection of tasks to be carried out in order to achieve an output.

Activity Plan/Schedule -

refers to a graphic representation similar to a bar chart (a Gantt chart), setting out the timing, sequence and duration of programme (endeavour) activities. It can also be used to identify milestones for monitoring progress, and to assign responsibility and other resources for achievement of milestones.

Actor -

an individual person as well as an organisation or institution, acting in a specific situation.

Assumption -

positively-stated external factors which are important for the success of the intervention, are probable (not certain/unlikely) to happen, and are beyond its control.

Brownfield land -

land previously used for industrial purposes or certain commercial uses and that may be contaminated by low concentrations of hazardous waste or pollution and has the potential to be re-used once it is cleaned up. Sometimes, the concept of brownfield land is also used for designating areas which were previously developed and have become obsolete, but are non necessarily contaminated. Generally, brownfields sites exist in a town’s industrial section, on land containing abandoned factories or commercial buildings, or other previously polluting operations. Small brownfields may also be found in many older residential neighbourhoods with dry cleaning establishments, gas stations, etc. While many contaminated brownfields were unused for decades, emphasis has recently been put on their decontamination and rehabilitation for other uses as demand for developable land is permanently growing. (source: CEMAT)

Development -

this long-term process begins with meeting the most basic human needs of people (food, clean water, good health, shelter). It includes the chance to get an education and earn a living in a society where human rights are respected and where women, as

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well as men, can participate fully in the life of their communities. At the same time, it also involves building an infrastructure that provides essential services for all and an economy that encourages innovation and respect for the environment. Recently a more comprehensive concept of development is associated with the notion of participation in the common-life style of society, including attachment to various institutional, social, cultural and political ties within the society, access to jobs with satisfactory income, decent housing, good health, sufficient education, satisfactory social networks, access to opportunities and freedoms.

Good Governance -

governance refers to the values, rules, institutions, and processes through which people and organizations attempt to work towards common objectives, make decisions, generate authority and legitimacy, and exercise power;

-

good governance term is used with great flexibility, encompassing: full respect of human rights, the rule of law, effective participation, multi-actor partnerships, political pluralism, transparent and accountable processes and institutions, an efficient and effective public sector, legitimacy, access to knowledge, information and education, political empowerment of people, equity, sustainability, and attitudes and values that foster responsibility, solidarity and tolerance; however, there is a significant degree of consensus that good governance relates to political and institutional processes and outcomes that are deemed necessary to achieve the goals of development. (source: based on UN)

Impact -

the long-term results brought about by the intervention, whether positive or negative, primary or secondary, direct or indirect, intended or unintended.

Indicator -

something used to measure progress in relation to achieving objectives (e.g. counts of number of service users). (source: URBACT)

Infrastructure -

refers to such things as roads, electricity, water systems, telecommunication services, and public transportation, which play a key role in reducing poverty by helping to increase productivity and improve the quality of life in a community.

Integrated urban development -

a process that responds to the following needs: o

economic development together with social balance, cultural diversity maintenance and high quality of built and natural environment ;

o

spatial concentration of resources on a territorial approach (different than the land use planning which is not sufficient to generate urban development);

o

to respond to a long term development vision embraced by the community and correlated with land and public investments resources;

o

involved private sector as to coordinate its investments and entrepreneurial capacity.

Mixed use development and mixed communities -

refers to activities with the aim is to combat social segregation especially in terms of housing, both in private and social accommodation sectors, in order to generate social cohesion and avoid a proliferation of ghettos; or refers to functions, the overlapping

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of activity networks allowing to return to what can be called the real city, and to fight against spatial segregation of activities, which reduces the side effects of one activity on another, continually encouraging displacement and forced mobility.

Monitoring -

the periodic collection and evaluation of data relative to the stated project goals, objectives and actions. Many people also refer to this as “monitoring and evaluation�.

Neighbourhood -

a small district/unit within a town or city, especially one forming a community; at this level the local residents have a sense of common identity or interests; many Community Based Organizations/Grassroots organisation operate at this level.

Ownership -

the feeling belonging to an area with a strong sense of empathy with community members; not literally ownership of land or things.

Participation -

a structured process of equitable and active involvement of all stakeholders in the formulation of development policies and strategies and in the analysis, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development activities; to allow for a more equitable development process, disadvantaged stakeholders need to be empowered to increase their level of knowledge, influence and control over their own livelihoods, including development initiatives affecting them.

Programme -

a set of coordinated projects that respond together to a goal and are implemented to meet specific objectives within defined time, cost and performance parameters.

Project -

a set of coordinated activities implemented to meet specific objectives within defined time, cost and performance; a unit of work which can be estimated separately in terms of time, cost and quality, sometimes called a task.

Resources -

refers to items required for implementing and monitoring an endeavour (programme, project); resources include staff time, managerial time, local knowledge, money, equipment, infrastructure, etc.

Results -

the effects of an intervention; such effects can be intended or unintended, positive or negative. The three levels of results are outputs, outcomes and impact.

Social cohesion -

the capacity of a society to ensure the well-being of all its members, minimising disparities and avoiding marginalisation (source: Council of Europe)

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Spatial Planning -

the process of planning of (infrastructural) projects in the broader physical environment and habitat; the planning of different resources in order to make the most economic, sustainable and social use of the scarce recourse of space.

Strategic planning -

the process of deciding where a community wants to get to and why; it usually covers the long term (a minimum of three or four years, up to ten years); it guides the overall direction of city /area development..

Urban development33 -

the sum and synergies of activities that affect individual and social prosperity through changes in the nature or intensity of land use in urban areas and the regulation of these changes; within the framework of the integration approach interventions in the area aim at following major targets: economic improvements in the form of job creation and business development, social improvements, environmental improvements.

Urban regeneration -

the term carries the implicit idea that the city or the part of the city in question has "degenerated"; it may be a case of central areas degenerating due to the ageing of the building stock and the gradual deterioration of public spaces or of popular social housing districts on the outskirts of the city; intervention almost always combines economic measures (injection of new business), social measures (addition of better quality housing, residentialisation) and urban planning measures (refurbishment, restructuring of public spaces etc). (source: Europolis34)

Urban sprawl -

referring to peripheries (suburban and outlying areas), this sprawl primarily stems from major socioeconomic and infrastructural changes, as a general increase in car use, new behavioural patterns and different daily routines based on a geographical dissociation of work, home and leisure locations; the word “sprawl” carries a certain morphological meaning, describing an urban, macroform stain gaining ground, but the outer edges of this stain are blurred, and “sprawl” can also refer to a more dispersed development or indeed a “scattering” of urbanisations (low population density, discontinuity of developments, segregation issues predominance of functionality, absence of urban fabric, rapid mutation of uses and forms, etc); associated problems and challenges are as follows: space consumption, energy spend, problems stemming from inequality and fiscal competition, and facilities management issues arising from a glut of administrative bodies; the current intention of urban development policy is to avoid the trend towards suburbanisation in favour of intra-urban development. (source: Europolis)

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References: 1 Ladi, S.”Good governance and public administration reform in the black sea economic cooperation (BSEC) member states”, Xenophon Paper no.6, International Centre for Black Sea Studies 2008.

2 More information on the “Urban development conditions assessment – at country and cities level” can be found on the Capacity for integrated urban development: INTEGR-ABLE project website at: www.integrable.org 3 14 communities were assessed in Armenia within the present project 4 11 communities were assessed in Georgia within the present project 5 19 cities were assessed in Republic of Moldova within the present project 6 Published June 2008 by WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature and Heinrich Böll Foundation EU Regional Office in Brussels.

7 European Commission (2004), Towards a thematic strategy on the urban environment, COM(2004)60.

8 EEC (1981), Final Report from the European Commission to the Council on the First Programme of Pilot Schemes and Studies to Combat Poverty, Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, Brussels 9 EEC (1985). On Specific Community Action to Combat Poverty, Council Decision 85/8/EEC of 19 December 1984 10 European Commission (2009), How to Measure Extreme Poverty in the EU, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities DG Social Protection and Integration, Brussels.

11 Eurocities (2009), Social Exclusion and Inequalities in European Cities: Challenges and Responsibilities, Brussels 12 2010 guide on “The urban dimension in Community policies”. http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/guides/ urban/index_en.htm 13 „Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities” (“Leipzig Charter”), May 2007 14 http://urbact.eu 15 http://urban-intergroup.eu/wp-content/files_mf/es2010itoledodeclaration.pdf 16 GHK. Ex-post evaluation of URBAN Community intervention (1994-1999) Final Report (August 2003, p. 34) http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/evaluation/urban/urban_expost_evaluation_9499_en.pdf 17 http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/thefunds/instruments/jessica_en.cfm#7 18 Source: Integrated Urban renewal in Copenhagen 2012, Technical and Environmental Administration Urban Design Department, April 2012 19 www.comune.torino.it; urbact.eu –Ricciardi, M., Torino City Council - Urban Regeneration and Development Sector, 2008 20 Based on Pamfil, C. The process of participatory governance: an analysis of 40 cases, VNG, Toolkit Participation. (2002).

21 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashtots_Park_Movement 22 http://www.wieninternational.at/en/content/bucharest%E2%80%99s-north-south-thoroughfare-en 23 Capacity for integrated urban development: INTEGR-ABLE, www.integrable.org 24 in a survey on urban regeneration policies conducted in all European Union 27 Member States, the three candidates states, and Norway and Switzerland, , in 63% of the countries surveyed, the implementation organizers are the "municipal authorities", in 30%, the implementation of "urban regeneration" programmes is under the responsibility of "public agencies or administrative agencies", while 15% of countries surveyed said that implementation is controlled by "public-private entities (Integrated Urban Regeneration in Europe - Summary Document, June 2010, developed by the Urban Institute at the University of Valladolid, Spain for the Spanish Ministry of Housing as part of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union) 25 Cf. Bryson John M., Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational Achievement (San Francisco, Ca.: JosseyBass Publishers, 1988) 26 More details on the framework are being presented in the implementation stage.

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27 Information extracted from a visioning report available at http://www.ads.org.uk/urbanism/features/place-visioning-in-scotland-lessons-learned 28 European Commission , “Project Cycle Management Guidelines”, 2004, http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/europeaid/qsm/index_en.htm 29 In Romania, such a plan is approved by City Council Resolution. According to the law on decisional transparency in public administration (L 52/2003), any draft must be made public at least 30 days before the meeting of the Local Council discussing (for approval); on the public announcement date, public a dministration establishes at least 10 days to receive written proposals, suggestions or opinions on the legislation draft submitted for public debate.

30 Tirrell D, Belci D. Timisoara: the historic city as a starting point for post-communist sustainable urban development. City & Time 5 (1): 6. [online] URL: http://www.ct.ceci-br.org 31 Negrutiu E. (Municipality of Oradea), Integrated Urban Development of Vital Historic Towns as Regional Centres in South East Europe South east Europe Transnational cooperation programme (ViTo/SEE EoI/A/169/4.1/X) 32 Glossary of key expressions used in spatial development policies in Europe, document presented at the 14th Session of the European Conference of Ministers responsible for Spatial/regional Planning (CEMAT), Lisbon (Portugal), 26-27 October 2006, Document by the Secretariat General prepared by the Spatial Planning and Landscape Division 33 English Glossary of Regional Development Terms, MOU s.a., as part of the Operational Programme “technical assistance 2000-2006” and co-funded by the European Union 34 Comparative glossary of urban development concepts, Europolis, 2006

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Capacity for Integrated urban Development: INTEGR-ABLE Local Development Group - GDL November 2012 This publication has been produced with the assistance of the European Union. The content of this publication are the sole responsibility of GDL and can in no way reflect the views of the European Union.

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