Active Cities

Urban planning, mobility and health are closely related. Car-centred city planning contributes to air and noise pollution as well as less physical activity, leading to thousands of premature deaths each year across Europe. The Active Cities Interreg project seeks to answer: How can we effectively redesign our cities to support cleaner, safer and healthier lifestyles?

Active Cities project will test how to tackle the twin problems of car-dependence and deteriorating urban health in cities in the North Sea Region of Europe. The project will implement eight pilot initiatives with tactical urbanism (planning-by-doing) and citizen-led, short-term, low-cost, and scalable interventions. These interventions will then feed into planning frameworks for active mobility that will become a blueprint for healthy mobility across Europe.

Central to the project’s ethos is the involvement of citizens in the green transition to sustainable, human-centric cities. Awareness campaigns, incentive programs, and co-creation schemes will also promote walking and cycling and empower citizens to take ownership of the active mobility transition in their city. 

Awareness campaigns and incentive programs will also promote walking and cycling and empower citizens to take ownership of the active mobility transition in their city. These interventions will feed into planning frameworks for active mobility that will become a blueprint for healthy mobility across Europe.

How Walk21 will redesign the way people move

For Walk21, the project is an opportunity to support cities in the redesign of urban spaces that will support all the people walking already and encourage more people to choose to be active too. Walk21 will assist the cities to engage their citizens and explore, with affordable tools, how they perceive public space and how its design is able to induce behavioural change. As a knowledge partner, Walk21 will also provide expertise to the Active Cities throughout the project and ensure the integrity and measurable impact of the projects’ overall ambition is realised.

Partners: Eight cities and three knowledge partners from the North Sea region

Partners

Cities: Leeuwarden (NL), Groningen (NL), Aarhus (DK), Bergen (NO), Hamburg (DE), Lund (SE), Mechelen (BE), Lille (FR)

Knowledge partners: Aalborg university (DK), KU Leuven Institute for Mobility , BE), Walk21 Europe (NL)

Contact details

Carlos Cañas, Walk21: carlos.canas@walk21.com

Funding

In total, partner cities have over €50M investments earmarked to harness the healthiest forms of transport and solve the most chronic mobility challenges facing European cities. 

Active Cities receives funding from Interreg North Sea Region.