Good practice:

URBACT III Ru:rban – Resilient Urban Agriculture and Landscapes

The project ‘Ru:rban – Resilient Urban Agriculture and Landscapes’, is an URBACT III initiative from the City of Rome. The project has as an objective to transfer elements of the Good practice of Rome on Urban Gardens Management to 6 other cities (A Coruna, Vilnius, Thessaloniki, Krakow, Caen and Loures). Thessaloniki, being part of the 100 Resilient cities network, and with a resilience strategy that included the promotion of urban community gardens took the opportunity and participated in the network.
The project was based on knowledge transfer through physical transnational meetings that focused on 3 elements: Capacity Building for UG management (including case study visits), Garden(organ)iser training for Urban Community Gardens managers and initiators, and Governance through a city regulation for community gardens.
The seven cities involved in the network exchanged knowledge and strengthened capacity through on well‐structured methodologies to improve the impact of their urban gardening practices focusing on the policy topic management.
The project involved a wide range of stakeholders (civil servants, Gardeners, garden Organizers, University) that have a strong relation with existing, as well as newly established gardens in the participating cities, but also people responsible for the management of city gardens on behalf of the cities.

The overall Transfer Network: 599,980 € (7 cities)
The budget included
-Transnational Meetings
-Ad-hoc experts
-Local Stakeholder meetings
-Local stakeholder coordination expert
-Communication and dissemination
Management expenses
68.000€ for the City of Thessaloniki

RU:RBAN aim was to inspire young people to be involved in community gardening & creating urban gardens as modern community hubs. Till today, Thessaloniki edited proposals for urban garden regulations which is the main aspect of the project in institutional level results.

Covid‐19 pandemic
High turnover rate of elected officials and administration personnel due to elections leading to knowledge gaps
Differentiated political support and priorities among the relevant elected officials
Bureaucratic and slow policy adoption process

The project was an opportunity for the transferring cities to improve their performance in this policy field & to make UA a valued & essential element of policy in favour of green urban infrastructures. Fruitful days of sharing, learning, adapting & adopting knowledge & experiences, managed to achieve very useful results for the citizens. The plots are expected to fulfil more social, environmental & cultural goals for the inhabitants, following clear steps for their establishment & operation, as well as their management through more concrete governance steps.These plots are valuable hubs for each local community & the management model of urban gardens is really critical for their successful operation.
The aim was the transfer of successful policies through adaptation & adoption. The policies lay the basis and facilitated the development of UGs as a “secondary” product. While the network was developed, the idea can be replicated on a regional/national level as well.