In UBC Sustainable Cities Commission, two new projects have just begun, and we are excited to share good news! In the second call of the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme 2021–2027, we look into two subjects of achieving climate-neutrality: green mobility and climate budgeting process in the municipalities.

Both topics are crucial for the cities actively working on reducing their carbon emissions and reaching the carbon neutrality goals in the coming years and decades. They are also aligned with the UBC Sustainability Action Programme 2030, fulfilling the goals and vision of our cities.

SUMPs for BSR – enhancing effective Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning for supporting active mobility in BSR cities

SUMPs for BSR project supports cities shifting their planning practices towards people-centered sustainable urban mobility planning focusing on active mobility modes to fight the climate crisis. The project aims to increase the uptake of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP) as a strategic tool for sustainable mobility planning by developing tools and offering extensive capacity building for local authorities, especially in small and mid-sized BSR cities. A common framework on monitoring and evaluation for sustainable urban mobility planning will be developed to set up sound local processes suitable to smaller cities. Together with a unified model for testing and experimenting with innovative mobility solutions, it will help to evaluate the performance of the local mobility system and to provide crucial information for planning and decision making.

The project consortium is lead by UBC Sustainable Cities Commission and has a strong representation of UBC SCC member cities, including Turku, Gdansk, Cesis, Gdynia, Gävle, Panevezys, and Greifswald.

Climate-4-CAST equips cities with a support tool for progressing towards climate neutrality

Climate-4-CAST project contributes to climate neutrality by empowering local public authorities to integrate climate concerns into urban governance processes. The project equips administrations with a decision support tool to allow both a visualisation of the impacts of individual measures regarding carbon in different scenarios, and a cost-benefit analysis of the measures’ performance against city goals. Through transnational co-development and piloting, the tool will be adapted to local contexts and needs to ensure usability as a governance instrument for climate budgeting.

Among UBC member cities, Aarhus and Riga are actively involved in the partnership, with more cities joining with an associated status to follow and validate prepared outputs: Växjö and Luleå, Hamburg, Turku, and Gdansk among other cities.

UBC Sustainable Cities Commission coordinates the Work Package 3 transfer activities with selected measures to ensure the multiplication and transfer of the outputs further for cities in the Baltic Sea Region.