News

In mid-February, the CIVITAS SUMP-PLUS team converged on the city of Lucca (Italy) for its second general project meeting.

What followed were three days of vigorous debate, deliberation and exchange among the project’s six local authority and ten technical partners. Working across six co-creation laboratories, they are laying the foundations for a new generation of SUMP cities and putting sustainable mobility at the heart of urban transformations.

Central to these activities is a new typology developed for sustainable mobility in European cities, which was presented on the first day. This draws on the needs assessment of the CIVITAS SUMPs-Up project and is crucial to devising the context-specific mobility transition pathways in the project’s co-creation laboratories.

The six cities – Antwerp (Belgium), Alba Iulia (Romania), Greater Manchester (UK), Klaipėda (Lithuania), Lucca (Italy), and Platanias (Greece) - then presented governance challenges.

For instance, suburbanisation in Klaipeda means transport services now cross city boundaries to new housing developments, necessitating cooperation with the wider Klaipeda District. As Lucca has separate mobility and public transport departments, various methods are needed to ensure effective collaboration.

The next two days saw the cities working through the six co-creation laboratory plans. These cover a multitude of topics, ranging from developing SUMPs with limited resources and strengthening mobility’s role in multi-sector climate action to implementing sustainable logistics solutions in city centres.

The meeting also included a tour of the city centre and demonstrations of its mobility measures. Automatic number plate recognition aids implementation of Lucca’s limited traffic zone. If a vehicle is not on the list those of allowed to come into the city centre, a fine is issued. Freight vehicles can have two time slots per day to enter the zone. Once in,infrared sensors ensure they do not park in places that disrupt traffic flow.

Since the SUMP-PLUS team met in Lucca, the public health situation there has become critical, as it has in Italy and in many other places across Europe and beyond. The SUMP-PLUS team hopes that all remain safe and healthy in these uncertain times.