News

After 42 months of equipping cities to deliver zero carbon and achieve their mobility visions, the final conference of the SUMP-PLUS project took place on 26 January 2023 in Brussels, gathering over 40 in-person participants and 20 online participants.

The event began with a welcome and summary of project results by project coordinator Marijke De Roeck (Director of Communications, City of Antwerp) and project partner Eleonora Ercoli (Project Manager, MemEx), followed by a keynote by Pia Peitl (Policy officer, DG MOVE). The next section - the carbon reduction mobility challenge - covered the approaches developed during SUMP-PLUS, with a particular focus on transition pathways and cross-sectoral links, presented by Prof. Peter Jones (UCL), Dr. Charlotte Halpern (Sciences Po) and Stuart Blackadder (TfGM).

The afternoon session enabled SUMP-PLUS partners to present the SUMP-PLUS tools (including an analytical tool, the carbon reduction strategy support tool, stakeholder engagement tools and more) and discuss them further within smaller break-out groups. Representatives from the six cities - Antwerp (Belgium), Alba Iulia (Romania), Greater Manchester (UK), Klaipeda (Lithuania), Lucca (Italy), and Platanias (Greece) – then presented the learnings and successes of their experiences within the SUMP-PLUS City Labs. Last but not least, the partners presented their policy recommendations - via a panel discussion - to the audience.

While the SUMP-PLUS project may be ending, the journey towards carbon-zero cities is not. Find out more about the sustainable mobility resources and tools as well as the SUMP-PLUS approaches developed within this project.

Read the SUMP-PLUS policy briefs to learn more about the policy recommendations presented:

• Policy brief 1: Planning a long-term zero carbon transition pathway
• Policy brief 2: The role of cross-sector collaboration in reducing the need to travel
• Policy brief 3: Building Governance Capacity To Achieve Sustainable Urban Mobility Transitions
• Policy brief 4: Stakeholder Engagement – an essential steppingstone for achieving an integrated vision for sustainability
• Policy brief 5: Data sharing to facilitate and strengthen partnership working
• Policy brief 6: Delivering the Change: Developing a Comprehensive Implementation Strategy for Smaller Cities

To re-live the event, view the PPT presentation used.