With an international background as a French-Ecuadorian young woman, I am interested in how regions, and more specifically, cities can cooperate to co-design a better urban future. I am participating as an INTERREG Youth Volunteer (IVY) reporter at URBACT supporting the INTERREG consultation on the European Future Cohesion Policy (post 2027), its regional policy which aims to reduce disparities between Europe’s regions through cooperation and provides support to each region to foster their development. As an Interreg programme, URBACT implements Cohesion Policy at the local level by enabling cooperation and knowledge exchange among European cities. Organised within thematic networks to foster sustainable; inclusive, smart, and green urban development, URBACT support local action combined with EU learning. URBACT enables this knowledge exchange through networks. These bring together EU cities willing to exchange ideas and produce integrated local policies and actions with the help of peers, local stakeholders, and URBACT experts.
URBACT is contributing to the INTERREG consultation on the future of the Cohesion Policy and territorial cooperation from a local, urban perspective starting with an online survey, which is running from 26 March to 31 July 2024. The outcome of the consultation will not only evaluate the current programmes’ performance, but also shape the next URBACT programme and inform the future Cohesion Policy.
As an IVY Reporter, I am supporting the URBACT consultation, through communication, and organisation of workshops and discussions to collect data. My responsibilities include writing articles for the URBACT and INTERREG websites, creating social media content, and organizing and moderating workshops and discussions to collect qualitative data. Notably, I moderated the consultation events at the URBACT Lead Partner Expert meeting in Paris (May 15-16), the National URBACT Point in Utrecht (June 12-13), and the URBACT Monitoring Committee meeting in Ghent (June 27-28). Besides, as an IVY I am particularly interested in involving the youth in the consultation, Therefore, I co-organized consultation events with Brežice, host of the European Youth Event (EYE 2024), and Ghent, European Youth Capital 2024.
The URBACT programme has always strived to respond closely to cities needs, and its method allows cities to cooperate and learn from each other to find innovative solutions to common challenges. To make a good case for the future of the URBACT programme, it is important to have as many contributions as possible from the consultation. Cities and citizens know best what they need to improve in their cities, so it is important that URBACT shapes its future programme together through the survey and the overall consultation.
– Ana Francisca, IVY Reporter at Urbact