When the current pandemic started to have an impact on our daily lives, ECTP-CEU (European Council of Spatial Planners – Conseil Européen des Urbanistes) felt the need to reflect on the possible effects of this crisis on our future living and working environment. An ad hoc working group was installed during spring 2020. During the General Assembly of 30th October 2020, the RE-START-EUROPE document was approved. It contained a declaration for a just and inclusive post-covid future for all communities.
This Declaration seeks to harness the creative power and technical expertise of spatial planners in tackling the social and economic crisis created by the Covid-19 pandemic. It has amplified inequalities and exposed the fragilities in societies across Europe, impacting the short term, but threatening the medium and long-term wellbeing of communities across Europe.
After the work of producing this Re-Start-Europe Manifesto, Europe’s planners community thought it would be necessary to make it more tangible and concrete. In other words, how could we in our day-to-day practice implement this declaration?
Through the international network, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and ECTP-CEU found each other and signed on 1st April 2021 a contract for a joint project. The objective was to collect best practices, harnessing the power of spatial planning for a just recovery across Europe, underpinned by a wider agenda for resilience, renewal and growth.
The central objective was to highlight qualitative responses to Covid-19 which is accelerating trends and creating new trajectories that are re-shaping our towns and cities. Revitalised spatial planning is needed to manage the new economic geography of Europe being created by new business practices, home working and more localised and diversified supply chains.
Call for Case Studies
So, a call was launched among the ECTP member organisations to highlight and share local case studies at all levels of territorial and sectoral governance, showing the need and scale of change in policy and practice to implement the principles of Re-Start Europe in terms of:
- Renewing existing commitments to zero-carbon transport and energy networks;
- Scaling up existing programmes to rebalance the economies of Europe;
- Creating new initiatives for sectors and communities particularly affected by the Covid-19 crisis
The call had a clear objective: to document, share and discuss relevant case studies within ECTP’s learning network organisation, with an outreach to local, regional, national and European bodies and private actors.
It was launched on 19th May 2021. The Working Group selected 8 interesting projects, whose coordinators were asked to prepare a five pager and a presentation during the autumn General Assembly of 6th November 2021 in Athens.
Presentation of the case studies
All eight projects were presented and discussed during the Saturday session of the November General Assembly. The same day, the young planners workshop was also presenting the results of the work our young planners network produced over the last year. As the quality of the presented work was high — and given the fact we agreed upon to take on board up to 10 projects — it was decided to invite the three of the young planners’ projects to join the ECTP-CEU/Lincoln project and rework their contribution, based on the set up format for implementing the Re-Start-Europe Manifesto.
The ECTP-CEU Re-Start-Europe Manifesto is also reflected in the work of the UN-Habitat Professionals’ Forum (HPF). A Consultative Document has been published earlier in 2021, and has been translated into a Roadmap for Recovery in 2024. Therefore, in addition to disseminating the findings of this report to the wider ECTP-CEU membership and related bodies, the information that has been collected and set out in this report will help in informing this.
Team
Europe-Re-Start Manifesto Implementation working group: Vladan Djokic, Miran Gajsek, Chantal Guillet, Janet Askew, Michael Stein, Joao Teixeira, Petter Wiberg, Vincent Goodstadt, Joris Scheers.
Co-ordination: Vincent Goodstadt, Armando Carbonell and Joris Scheers
Photo
Featured image: Protomagias Square mapping workshop, Athens (Eirini Vallindra – TIE Lab, Technical University of Crete, 2021).