Small and Medium-Sized Cities Platform
The Small and Medium-Sized Cities (SMC) platform aims to raise the profile of Small and Medium-sized Cities in the EU as living laboratories for transport innovation.
Due to their size, small and medium-sized cities offer an ideal ground for testing and implementing new transport technologies and services that are crucial to solve the most pressing mobility challenges.
Within the POLIS SMC platform, small and medium-sized cities discuss mobility governance issues that are specific to their size and shape. Through the SMC platform, POLIS aims to raise the profile of smaller cities in the EU as living laboratories for transport innovation. The platform calls upon SMCs to cooperate and exchange knowledge and experiences on a wide range of governance topics.
SMC Ambassadors Initiative
A political dimension was added to the SMC platform by the initiative of SMC Chair Emmen. The SMC Ambassadors Initiative was launched at the 2019 POLIS conference’s Political Group lunch meeting, inviting political representatives from SMCs to endorse the objectives of the SMC Platform by signing a declaration. It called upon the SMCs to cooperate and exchange knowledge and experiences on the above-mentioned priority topics.
More cities are invited to join the platform as SMC and become the ambassadors of the platform! Click here to find out more.
The topics being discussed by this Working Group are:
- Data and digitalisation– how SMCs can navigate the growing data demands and challenges this holds
- European Commission calls and initiatives- Guidance and capacity building for SMCs in navigating and coping with the multiple European Commission calls and initiatives
- Projects– Joint meeting with projects focused on SMCs
- Engaging in projects- and how to build on the success- and challenges- of projects, what happens after they are implemented? Ensuring projects are able to have lasting impacts beyond the “official” end date.
- Leading projects– links with capacity building, but learning from others how they have done this
- Working with regions– how to work together to combine resources and work in common direction
- Working with transport providers and establishing communication channels
- Controlling and reducing car use– with explorations of issues from the health perspective
Bologna, is the capital of the Emilia-Romagna Region (Italy). With a population of around 375,000, the POLIS member has adopted their Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) to make the city more accessible and sustainable by 2030, inreasing the share for walking, cycling, public transport.
(c) AndreeeW Hoang, Unsplash
For further information
For further information please contact Isobel Duxfield
