On April 22, the Bratislava self-governing region has organised its first e-smartec hands-on training.
Similarly to the case of the Region of Central Macedonia and the other regional partners of the project, the aim of the hands-on training was to provide information and tips on marketing techniques to involve citizens and stakeholders in developing and implementing Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans.
Training communications specialists
The training, held online via MS Teams and collaboratively implemented with the use of an InVision’s online whiteboard, was attended by four communication specialists and representatives of the Bratislava Integrated Transport department (Bratislavská integrovaná doprava), one of the main mobility stakeholders of the Bratislava self-governing region. UNIZA’s Prof. Tatiana Kováčiková and Dr. Eva Malichova were selected as moderators, with the technical support of Dr. Ghadir Pourhashem.
Aligning the knowledge of SUMPs with the skills on partipatory processes
Before the training, the moderators surveyed the participants to assess their knowledge and experience of SUMPs. None of them had been involved in designing and implementing them, but all of them had worked in participative projects, with some having applied marketing techniques, too. Given such background, majority of the participants responded that
- SUMPs should concern about “Public transport increase”, rather than a broader context,
- “Involvement” is the highest level of participation,
whereas, the minority replied that
- SUMPs could also encompass “People travel behaviour (how they move)” and “Traffic congestion reduction”,
- “Collaboration”, rather than “Involvement”, in the key element for a higher level of participation.
All hands on deck
The hands-on training, focused on the real case of the Bratislava self-governing Region and its macro-strategic policy objectives, proceeded with the distribution of the marketing and engagement cards in relation to the four phases of the SUMP process envisioned for the case.
On the side, see the cards selected for Phase 4 of the SUMP process: as you can notice, cards have been translated in Slovakian, the local language, to allow a better understanding of the training and its concepts.
The result of the training was summed up as following:
with the help of a subsequent "milestone scheme":
Feedback
Based on post-training collected feedback, participants got effective insight on the participatory planning process of SUMPs and showed strong willingness into both transferring the concepts learned and allocating more effort on engagement in mobility planning.
Read the Press Release for a concise summary!