“See this closing event as a launch to take the results further, to meet the challenges of the society” said Herald Ruijters, director of DG MOVE at the final SUMPs-Up event in Brussels on February 19th 2020. Little did we know what kind of challenge for our European societies was just around the corner.

Just before Covid-19 forced the cancellation of all events, we concluded almost 4 years of SUMPs-Up project together with representatives from DG MOVE and INEA, but most important with six cities participating in the project many participants in Brussels.

SUMPs-Up has generated an incredible amount of knowledge and resources – starting from the comprehensive capacity development and training programme for cities and mobility practitioners around Europe, different guides and materials to support SUMP implementation and not the least, guiding the update of the SUMP guidelines, which were launched at the CIVITAS Forum 2019 in Graz.

This project has contributed greatly to the mainstreaming and further development of the SUMP concept as well as to active creation of a lively and vivid SUMP community among local authorities, which was also mentioned by Ruijters in his opening speech in Brussels. Further rooting of the concept is surely still needed, but the approaches and methods we tested and used in the project showed to be successful and hopefully also will be widely adopted by European cities.

If you ask the cities who participated in the intense 6 months SUMP Learning programmes, the majority will answer, that the exchange and connection with other colleagues from other cities was most beneficial for them. To discuss across borders and share both failures and successes created real connection between participants, which even resulted in further bilateral cooperation and project ideas. We in the UBC Sustainable Cities commission hope to continue supporting cooperation and exchange between cities on solutions and approaches leading to more sustainable mobility in our cities.

Luckily all the material is available – for free to be used also by your city!