HARMONY held the second cross-metropolitan workshop on 20th October , within the CIVITAS Forum 2021 in Aachen, Germany.
What is the CIVITAS Forum?
The CIVITAS Forum is a bi-annual event hosted by the CIVITAS Initiative that celebrates, promotes and encourages sustainable cities and sustainable urban mobility advancement across Europe. The 2021 hybrid edition, hosted in Aachen, Germany, will be guided by the central theme Smart routes towards climate-neutral cities.
The coordinator Maria Kamargianni from UCL MaasLab presented the role of HARMONY in creating climate-neutral cities, as well as how local authorities can engage to shape and stimulate local economies towards the goal of creating 100 climate-neutral cities in Europe by 2030.
Why a cross-metropolitan workshop?
The main goal of the workshop was to exchange the experiences of the six HARMONY metropolitan areas based on the initial results of surveys, co-creation activities, and simulations of different components of the Model Suite. Additionally, the workshop gave urban and regional authorities from the CIVITAS community the possibility to express their needs and challenges related to sustainable spatial and transport planning, multimodality and integration of new mobility services and technologies.
Parallel Session 1 “Parking management, planning for e-charging infrastructure and innovative planning decision support” gave the opportunity to exchange expertise, ideas and best practices among the Horizon H2020 projects Park4SUMP, Green Charge, and HARMONY. In fact, the application and evaluation of the impact of different spatial or transport planning scenarios will generate evidence-based recommendations to update Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) not only in the HARMONY cities and regions, but also in other metropolitan areas on a European scale. Likewise, the challenges faced during the first demonstration with drones in Trikala, Greece and the upcoming demonstrations with drones and automated vehicles in Oxfordshire (UK) and Rotterdam (NL), along with the findings of simulations of the Model Suite, will inform roadmaps to promote and enable new forms of mobility for both passenger and freight in the EU.
Also, the CIVITAS Forum attendees’ feedback to HARMONY surveys will considerably benefit the analysis of the growing demand of platforms such as the HARMONY Model Suite in metropolitan areas dealing with the transition towards efficient, inclusive, sustainable and responsible regional transport, especially in this time of COVID-19 pandemic. The workshop will ultimately contribute to the identification of challenges and opportunities in terms of urban and regional transport planning, multimodality and integration of traditional and new mobility services at the European level. Therefore, CIVITAS local and regional public authorities will be supported by the HARMONY Model Suite as an adequate tool for informed decision-making and data-driven investing towards updated SUMPs improving smart mobility in their regions.
What's next?
Have a look at the presentation given during the workshop and keep following HARMONY to stay in the know of the project activities, such as next cross-metropolitan workshop envisaged in Autumn 2022.