UIA in Perspective

During five calls for proposals organised between 2015 and 2020, UIA has funded a total of 86 projects. UIA projects have tested a diversity of experimentations in line with broader EU policy objectives and covering the variety of 14 urban topics directly linked with the Urban Agenda for the EU. The UIA projects featured many different types of innovations involving the development and testing of new products, processes or services, innovative use of technology to inform and influence decision-making, number of social innovations, new ways to mobilise citizens or stakeholders, as well as territorial governance and organisational innovations.

Accordingly, Laura Colini, UIA expert, agrees that "UIA projects give the chance to accompany ideas unfolding from project to reality, to access the stories of people engaged in experimenting new solutions to collective problems with a progressive, socially conscious and ecological approach, and to provide humble feedback, capacity building and exchange opportunities through practices and experiences coming from other contexts."

Moreover, most projects were not focused only on single innovations but embraced the New Leipzig Charter with an integrated approach to urban life and its inter-connected challenges. Projects have also mobilized local alliances that could last and bring extra benefits in the long run on the innovation ecosystem dynamics.

As Laura also points out, "all projects I have encountered, have started from simple but courageous ideas grounded in the socio-political and economic local contexts and specific time.  Some of them are born from innovative proposals such as the idea of reusing soil from the Grand Paris metro excavation for building materials (UIA- EARTH CYCLE Paris); or the social housing and cohabitation of feminist, life and death - care oriented associations, Community Land Trust in Brussels; the guaranteed minimum income for the poorest in  Barcelona; or inventing a city wide tenants cooperative never experimented before in Spain. They created a precedent, they are a concrete testimony that something new can be experimented, with due learning from lights and shadows."

Indeed the five calls have attracted a high volume, quality and diversity of applications. Cities from 20 Member States were supported with funding and among them cities of varying sizes across different locations in the EU. UIA has enabled cities to experiment on an equal footing regardless of the strength of their varied national innovation contexts. The Initiative proved that the potential to innovate is not limited to the biggest cities or the ones located in the most developed regions, but rather to the ones which, being aware of their local challenges, were open and in need to explore new ways of addressing them. Successful examples of smaller and medium-sized cities implementing UIA projects should serve as an inspiration for the future EUI applicants.

Have a look at what our cities have learned from UIA:

"The UIA Initiative gave us the opportunity to carry out a really ambitious and innovative project which aimed to carry out a behavioral change in relation to energy at city level: by means of promoting renewable energy, reducing the energy bill, boosting the local economy among the people who are associated with the project, promoting the culture of energy saving & energy efficiency, and developing a local public-private-citizen platform to integrate all local efforts in the way of energy transition. It set the ground to start a change of the energy model in the city and it has now become one of the main drivers to achieve Viladecans’ mission to become a carbon neutral city by 2030. We will follow with enthusiasm the new EUI!"

Carles Ruiz, Mayor of Viladecans

More from the City of Ghent:

"The UIA Initiative 2014-2020 was very fruitful. We had the chance to have three granted UIA projects on three different topics: (1) mobility as a service (TMAAS); (2) renovation of private houses of vulnerable house owners (ICCARUS); (3) digitalisation of cultural heritage to bring people together (Coghent).

The three projects allowed us to tackle challenges we face as a local government in close collaboration with many different stakeholders: private companies (including start-ups), civil society organisations and knowledge institutions. Such multidisciplinary collaborations are very fruitful to bring in expertise from outside as well as to look at possible solutions from different angles and to allow us to experiment with innovative strategies.

One major highlight to share is that the UIA projects – specifically within the CoGhent project – have allowed us to set-up collaborations between internal teams and services of the City of Ghent that did not collaborate with each other before as Coghent is a very multidisciplinary project bringing together digitalisation, cultural heritage, citizen participation, etc.

We are indeed looking forward to the opportunities the new EUI will bring us. We hope to have new granted projects that will allow us to experiment and innovate in a multidisciplinary context with external partners to tackle the important future challenges." 

The EUI, with its first innovative actions call to be launched soon, will build on such UIA experiences and lessons learnt. It will also further emphasize several of its components and introduce some new features such a closer definition of targeted urban innovations and expected impacts, focus on the sustainability of proposed actions, and support to transfer solutions to other urban areas across the EU.

From our partner, URBACT:

“Over the years, we have worked closely together to foster innovation throughout Europe. The most recent Transfer Mechanism pilot has combined the successful experience of the UIA cities and the transfer methodology from URBACT, an interesting adventure for all who were involved! This is a new chapter for all of us and URBACT embraces the new European Urban Initiative in the upcoming programming period. We are looking forward to joining forces, collaborating and to keep driving change for better cities.”

We are looking forward to this new, exciting journey and an opportunity to support even more projects with their real-life experimentations and ambitions to go beyond the usual state of play with how we approach and address sustainable urban development challenges together with our cities and partners.