The event took place in a hybrid format with participants on site in Łódź and online. In total 24 people participated. The program focused on sharing results between the projects and drawing conclusions for future innovation-oriented calls in the Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Partnership. Another focus was to create a bridge between ENUAC and DUT15minC by showing future opportunities in DUT, with a focus on innovation.

The Innovation Action call is an additional ERA-Net Cofund Urban Accessibility and Connectivity (ENUAC) call, where innovative solutions are the focal point, e.g. utilising untapped potentials and mainstreaming of measures for managing urban accessibility, making measures for managing urban accessibility accepted and participatory and more agile, effective, robust and impactful. The projects have for instance introduced digital tools for planning, operating and improving traffic management strategies, transforming streets into accessible urban oases through consensus building with digital and analogue tools, improving accessibility by active modes and making them more attractive by street transformation, and searched for road tolling schemes that can work in cities, i.e., that make cities more accessible and sustainable, while also being perceived as fair and having broad public support.

Some of (several) key findings from the projects that were shared at the final event, to implement their research, were:

• Creating consensus is hard, but can be supported by visual and playful tools. Playful tools and gamification can be impactful.
• Involvement and communication is important. You need to be active to engage stakeholders and in-depth stakeholder analyses with local expertise can be key to successful involvement.
• On-street activities help build trust and reflect on the use of the street but need to be combined with facilitated discussion on the issues.

Back-to-back with the Urban Future conference

The final event was arrenged in connection with the Urban Futures Conference “The better cities events”, an annual recurring event attracting more than 1600 people mostly from Europe. This was a opportunity for the projects to not only exchange experiences with each other at the final event, but also to meet stakeholders, municipalities and others involved in innovation and transformation in urban environments, at the Urban Future conference.

Learn more about the Innovation Action projects at our website and stayed tuned for more information on their results.