European Mobility Week has become a solid European appointment for all to cooperate in sustainability and improve quality of life in our cities. Every year, from 16 to September 22, the European citizens celebrate the sustainable mobility and launching a message of change and renewal of our styles of life.
This year European Mobility Week is focusing on multimodality – the mixing of transport modes within the same journey or for different trips. The citizens are required to consciously choose new ways of mobility, to improve the quality of their city lives and to stimulate the choice of a style of life I cure and sustainable.
In the field of sustainable urban mobility, the SPAcE – Supporting Policy and Action for Active Environments project has been selected as a “success story” by a panel of experts from the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture of the European Commission.
SPAcE aimed to integrate active transport programmes (i.e. walking to school, cycle to work schemes etc.) into public policy across the European Union. The overall aim of the SPAcE project was to make the healthy choice the easy choice through creating sustainable urban active environments (UActivE) in cities and towns across the Europe.
Based on quality, relevance and results, the SPAcE project has been selected due to its impact, contribution to policy-making, innovative results and creative approach in increasing population physical activity levels across European towns and cities. It also has been recognised as a source of inspiration for other projects wanting to integrate active transport programmes into public policy across the EU.
Our main role in SPAcE has been to lead the development of the Action Plan for the city of Palermo to address low levels of physical activity in the community and promote physical activity-friendly environments. The Action Plan focused on addressing child overweight and obesity levels through the development of walking and cycling programmes and the improvement of school recreational facilities to increase physical activity in and out of school.
Two main goals of the Plan have been developed:
- A School Urban Trails Programme – Urban trekking from home to school to playground that encourages children to walk and cycle to school and areas of play with the use of Walking Guides, mobile app and incorporating historical monuments of the city within the urban trails;
- An Active School Districts programme that aims to make use of school recreational facilities during after school hours and improving the facilities offered by school buildings for maintaining a physical active friendly environment within local communities.
Download SPAcE: Action Plan Palermo
Moreover, Palermo have been selected as an example of good practices across 10 EU Cities on physical activity in urban environments.
Specifically, Pedestrian Street project in the City Centre is one of the Italian case studies presented in the report Environments for physical activity in Europe a review of evidence and examples of practice. Besides the experimentation of the pedestrian area, two more events involved the citizens:
- The “Choose sport for good health” initiative, that trasformed Foro Italico into an open-air gymnasium, where twenty disciplines of different sporting activities were provided;
- “Car Free day” in Cefalù (Palermo), organized to participate in the overall initiative of European Mobility Week that showed the city commitment to reduce the number of cars on the streets and promote sustainable ways of travelling and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, noise pollution and congestion.
About the project
SPAcE – Supporting Policy and Action for Active Environments is funded by Erasmus+ Sport: Support to Collaborative Partnerships programme aims to integrate active transport programmes (i.e. walking to school, cycle to work schemes etc.) into public policy across the European Union. The overall aim of the SPAcE project is to make the healthy choice the easy choice through creating sustainable urban active environments in cities and towns across the European Union.
Partners
The project partnership holds together 10 organisations:
- University of Gloucestershire (United Kingdom, coordinator);
- University of Oxford (United Kingdom);
- University of Thessaly(Greece);
- University of Zurich (Switzerland);
- Fit for Life Program – LIKES Foundation for Sport and Health Science (Finland);
- Castilla La Mancha Regional Government of Education (Spain);
- Tukums Municipality(Latvia);
- Brasov Metropolitan Agency (Romania);
- Municipality of Trikala(Greece);
- CESIE (Italy).
For further information
Visit activeenvironments.eu or contact Rosina Ndukwe.
Follow SPAcE updates on Facebook and Twitter.
For information about the European Mobility Week, visit mobilityweek.eu.
