ODRAZ at CIVITAS Forum 2018 in Umeä
This year’s CIVITAS Forum Conference, which was held in Umeå, Sweden, from 19th to 21st of September, gathered the CIVITAS community from across Europe and beyond. Over three days, hundreds of policymakers, city representatives, academics, and practitioners came together to debate pressing topics surrounding sustainable urban mobility and witness the pioneering solutions bringing cleaner, better transport to Europe.
ODRAZ as a Secretariat of the CIVINET Slovenia-Croatia-South East Europe Network participated in the Forum together with some of the members of the Network from Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
Mobility for U and Me
Recognition is growing of transport’s social dimension – the level of mobility people enjoy shapes lives and prospects. It is vital that transport systems are environmentally friendly, accessible to all, and the services they offer adaptable and effective enough to meet users’ diverse needs.
Yet how can these clean, integrated, inclusive, and efficient transport systems be created? How can the measures they involve be replicated whilst ensuring economic viability? These critical questions lay at the centre of this year’s CIVITAS Forum theme – “Mobility for U and Me”.
With 2018 declared the “Year of Multimodality” by Commissioner Bulc, it is time to start thinking about journeys as a single, coherent whole with integrated, last-mile solutions that ensure everyone and everything gets from A to B.
Enriching and exchanging knowledge
Thematic sessions on these and the other most urgent mobility topics provided participants with fora to discover and discuss outstanding examples of work across and beyond the CIVITAS Initiative.
Alongside these were the take-up and transfer sessions, the most interactive element of the programme. They enabled participants to experience cutting-edge urban mobility tools and methods in action.
A series of distinguished speakers spanning public and European authorities, academia, and business addressed the Forum’s opening and closing plenary sessions. They includedLena Erixon, Director of the Swedish Transport Administration; Maja Bakran and Matthew Baldwin, the Deputy Director-Generals of DG MOVE; David Zipper, Resident Fellow at the German Marshall Fund; and Stina Nilimaa Wickström, Vice President of Product Design at the Volvo Group.
Umeå – a city with an inclination for innovations
Umeå is a smart and sharing city with an inclination for innovation. Located in northeast Sweden, it is one of the country’s leading examples of sustainable urban development and has impeccable green credentials. Site visits allowed visitors to experience first-hand why this is so.
This commitment to cleaner, better, inclusive transport and urban development, alongside its involvement in the CIVITAS Political Advisory Committee, made Umeå an ideal Forum host.
More information about CIVITAS Forum 2018 is available at: http://civitas.eu/forum2018