Small Cities, Big Impact: Leading the Way Toward Sustainable Urban Mobility

Sustainable urban mobility is one of many pieces of the puzzle to design future-proof climate-neutral and resilient cities, ensuring economic accessibility and social equity while striving for sustainable growth. This task is not without challenges: local leaders must reconcile individual mobility needs and desires with broader societal imperatives ( i.e. tackling air pollution, promoting road safety, mitigating climate change, and alleviating congestion) while navigating potential tension between individual interests and collective well-being.

Small and Medium-sized Cities (SMCs) are the ideal setting for testing and implementing new transport technologies and services to address critical urban mobility issues in the quest to deploy strategic and sustainable approaches to local development. Yet, they are not mere 'locations for innovations' and should take a leading role in co-creating new solutions in partnership with the private sector to address their unique transport challenges and aspirations. This requires the active governance of private-sector innovation to make it policy-responsive.

The session, organised as EURegionsWeek close to you side event, will bring together city representatives and focus on:

1. Showcasing the achievements and innovations of SMCs, highlighting their potential as dynamic hubs for innovation to inspire other cities;
2. Engaging in discussions to address shared and unique challenges faced by SMCs in urban mobility;
3. Facilitating knowledge exchange and best practices sharing among SMCs for implementing new urban mobility solutions tailored to their needs and environments;
4. Ensuring citizen buy-in for sustainable policies.

Speakers

The session will be moderated by Guido Rink, Vice-Mayor of Municipality of Emmen, and Member of the Committee of the Regions.