PolySump
Project duration / Year of implementation: 1. 5. 2012 - 31. 11. 2014
Programme: IEE - Intelligent Energy Europe
Lead partner: Marche Region, Italy
Partner countries: Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, Portugal, Austria, France in Slovenia
Surrounding areas of major European cities have been subject to huge transformations over the last 20 years. A number of new buildings have been built. Many urban areas have expanded; however, the population there is stagnating or showing a slight growth trend. It’s the so-called urban sprawl (expansion of the city or city/urban areas). Classic urban functions are still concentrated within the largest centres and shopping centres in suburbanised areas and are easily accessed by car.
The largest proportion of urban population does not live in big cities – urbanised areas, but mainly in small and medium-sized cities/urbanised areas which are not too far from one another. Traditionally, there is a network of polycentric cities and villages, where most of the population and workplaces are concentrated within a few urbanised centres. This polycentric pattern may be different today if some of these urban functions are concentrated within suburbanised centres and the growing population is located along the roads which connect these centres and, at the same time, public transport connections are bad. Such urbanised centres normally depend on the use of personal vehicles.
The POLY-SUMP project aimed to direct itself towards reducing the impacts of expanding cities and the use of personal vehicles in these areas in order to develop a new approach to “planning polycentric mobility”, with which the needs for transportation and personal vehicle use would be reduced and, at the same time, personal vehicle transportation would become less attractive or at least energetically less wasteful.
It is of utmost importance that urban mobility plans are not made separately for each city in those regions where cities are diffuse, but for the entire area by integrating planners, decision-makers and relevant stakeholders into the process from the very beginning. The project focused on the current state and offered scenarios until 2020 and 2050. The aim of the project and its main challenge was to persuade the participants to become more aware of positive impacts which integrated planning offers by including key stakeholders. POLY-SUMP methodology helped local and regional planners and decision-makers to look across the borders of their towns.
Main results of the project:
- developed POLY_SUMP methodology, which supports the preparation of sustainable mobility plans;
- developed a collective vision of sustainable mobility;
- exchange of knowledge and experience between partners and key local actors;
- promotion and transfer of good practices from the field of collective planning between local and regional institutions in Europe.
