Call: Action Planning Networks

Interreg Urbact acts as a European exchange and learning programme promoting sustainable urban development. It enables European cities to work together to develop solutions to urban challenges and share good practices, lessons and solutions with all stakeholders involved in urban policy throughout Europe.

Specific objectives:

• Capacity for Policy Delivery: To improve the capacity of cities to manage sustainable urban policies and practices in an integrated and participative way.
• Policy Design: To improve the design of sustainable urban policies and practices in cities.
• Policy Implementation: To improve the implementation of integrated and sustainable urban strategies and actions in cities.
• Building and Sharing Knowledge: To ensure that practitioners and decision makers at all levels have access to knowledge and share know-how on all aspects of sustainable urban development in order to improve urban development policies.

The programme will support the design of integrated strategies and action plans for sustainable urban development in European cities building on participatory approaches. This will be mainly achieved through “Actionplanning networks” in which cities and their local counterparts will receive support, from experts and peers, to develop integrated strategies/ action plans for sustainable urban development. 

The main beneficiaries of actions implemented under Objective 2 shall be cities from EU 28 Member States, Norway and Switzerland willing to develop integrated strategies and action plans for sustainable urban development. Under URBACT III, the beneficiary “city” refers to the public local authority representing:

• Cities, municipalities, towns;
• Infra-municipal tiers of government such as city districts and boroughs in cases where they are represented by a politico-administrative institution having competences for policy-making and implementation in the policy area covered by the URBACT network concerned in which they are willing to get involved;
• Metropolitan authorities and organized agglomerations in cases where they are represented by a politico-administrative institution having delegated competences for policy-making and implementation in the policy area covered by the URBACT network concerned. 

In addition, a number of non-city partners are eligible for actions implemented under Objective 2. The list of other eligible beneficiaries is defined as follows:

• Local agencies defined as public or semi-public organisations set up by a city, partially or fully owned by the city authority, responsible for the design and implementation of specific policies (economic development, energy supply, health services, transport, etc.)
• Provincial, regional and national authorities, as far as urban issues are concerned; 
• Universities and research centres, as far as urban issues are concerned.

Priority will be given to cities under Objective 2. The number of non-city partners in action-planning networks will be limited. The maximum number of non-city partners will be defined in the calls for proposals for the creation of actionplanning networks. 

• Lead Partner: City
• Possible partners stage 1: 4-6 cities from at least 3 Member or Partner States 
• Geographic Balance stage Phase 1: at least 2 cities from less developed regions or regions in transition 
• Possible partners stage 2: 8-12 (max. 3 partners that are not cities) 
• Geographic Balance stage Phase 2: at least 4 from less developed regions or regions in transition

Stage 1: 6 months

Stage 2: 24 months

• Less developed and transition regions shall receive up to 85% ERDF contribution
• More developed regions shall receive up to 70% ERDF contribution.

Budget: between 600,000 € and 750,000 € per network.

Urbact Secretariat

5, Rue Pleyel
93283 Saint Denis
France
Tel: + 33 1 85 58 61 87