Koprivnica
City of Koprivnica is a small city with 30000 inhabitants located in the northwestern part of Croatia. Since the early 2000s, the main development focus of the city was the transformation into a functional and sustainable city that offers high quality of living for its citizens while trying to have a positive climate impact and to be a role model for other, similar sized cities in Croatia and in the region.
Despite its turbulent history, Koprivnica is a city that has preserved a significant part of its cultural and historical architectural heritage. The city and the city's sights are attracting more and more tourists and visitors.
From the transport perspective, Koprivnica has major roads crossing the city including the TEN-T Mediterranean Corridor. These roads run directly through the city centre bringing about 24 000 vehicles per day. About half of these are required to travel through the narrow streets of the inner city.
Koprivnica started to work on this situation early in the 2000s by initiating two, 4-year transport programmes - ’Town on the move’ started in 2002 and ‘Streets for people’ began in 2009. Both initiatives focused on the potential for cycling and walking due to the close proximity of most points of interest. Additionally, Koprivnica employed a Local Agenda 21 process in 2008, leading to the creation of participatory planning approaches.
Indeed, in 2007, it won the prestigious European Mobility Week Award. In 2015, Koprivnica adopted a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) – the first city in Croatia to do this.
Public transport is firmly at the backbone of the city's approach to mobility. In order to provide citizens with better public transport and even better connectivity of settlements within the city and suburban areas, free public transport with electric buses BusKo was introduced, as part of the CIVITAS DYN@MO project, with the aim of improving the quality of life of the citizens of the City of Koprivnica.
Active travel is also being rolled out at growing speeds. The Cycling Center Koprivnica is an information center of the City where all citizens and tourists can get information about cycling routes in the surrounding area and beyond and where they can borrow bicycles to explore and enjoy these routes.
The city has participated in a range of projects, including; CIVITAS DyN@MO, E-MOB, Dynaxibility4CE, LOW-CARB and Bicycle Oasis.
Sustainable mobility is a large contributor to that, and the city joined POLIS network to learn new practices and to share knowledge with others.
You can find out more on their website.
