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The euPolis project – Citizens’s Experience

The euPolis project (www.eupolis-project.eu) has reached an important milestone. Four Front-Runner (FR) cities: Copenhagen, Lodz, Belgrade, and Piraeus have conducted voluminous surveys among the citizens of chosen demo locations in each city, along with educational workshops, aiming to map the people’s daily urban challenges, but also to ensure broad participation, as one of the main euPolis’ pillars is bottom-up decision-making in the urban planning process.

As a reminder, the euPolis introduces innovative urban planning philosophy through nature-based solutions (NBS) to invigorate natural biodiversity in cities and thus improve public health and the overall well-being of citizens.

Engaging with citizens in all four FR cities revealed different sets of challenges their inhabitants deal with.

The Łódź demo location (Passage of Anna Rynkowska and Greenstone of the Gdańska and Wólczańska Str,) is nowadays mostly used as a shortcut between more active neighborhoods with vibrant social life. Most of the users do not spend there more time than the daily commute requires from them. They either visit the demo location on their way to work or drop their kids at the kindergarten located there. That is because neither the presence of the kindergarten nor the fact that the area is mostly inhabited by older residents creates a vivid and welcoming atmosphere. In fact, at the first glance, the demo location makes quite the opposite impression. It is dark with devastated urban furniture (i.e. old benches disfigured with graffiti) and unattended greenery (i.e. trees in need of dendrologist attention and bushes asking for a trim). During two stakeholder meetings (at 28th July and 5th August 2021), we learned that there is big support among users of demo site for implementation of various types of greenery and any water-collecting devices, and solutions for improving safety of the place.

The euPOLIS is also a part of four cluster projects that include GO GREEN ROUTES; IN-HABIT and VARCITIES, funded under the H2020 “Visionary and integrated solutions to improve wellbeing and health in cities”. Besides that, euPOLIS experts are constantly making connections to other possible clusters.

All these data and joint efforts with other projects are to provide the holistic euPolis innovative approach which aims to integrate the NBS with social aspects of healthy living and well-being in urban environments. For example, according to mapped challenges, our experts’ team will create a unique NBS impact for each demo location in each Front-Runner and Follower city. These experimental Blue-Green NBS parks will then serve as a knowledge base for all other cities around the world, to alter their urban planning matrix.

euPOLIS web: www.eupolis-project.eu

euPOLIS social media profiles and handles: https://www.facebook.com/eupolis2020/ (@eupolis2020) https://twitter.com/eu_polis (@eu_polis) https://www.linkedin.com/company/eupolis/