[Porto 🇵🇹] Final Consortium Meeting in Porto

Final URBiNAT consortium meeting took place in Frontrunner city Porto from 7 to 9 March.

Some highlights in pictures:

As the URBiNAT project draws to a close, ending wrapping up on 31 March, this meeting in Porto brought together consortium members from across Europe and beyond, political figures from participating cities, representatives from sibling Horizon 2020 projects, and various other parties and stakeholders. Over three days, including workshops and walkthroughs of Porto’s recently opened Healthy Corridor, participants reflected on the incredible journey it’s been to get here; the challenges faced and achievements reached, sharing lessons and insights. It was an event to celebrate the fruitful collaboration and co-creation that spanned nearly six years; a tribute to the collective efforts that brought the URBiNAT project to fruition.

Opening ceremony with political representatives of the Municipality of Porto and the University of Coimbra’s Centre for Social Studies (CES).

… and a look back at the very beginnings of URBiNAT.

Pascal Bolo, 7th Deputy Mayor, Deputy Mayor of Nantes Nord & 11th Vice-President of Nantes Métropole, Michele Capitani, Vice Mayor of Siena, and Filipe Araujo, Vice mayor & City Councillor for Innovation and Environment of Porto Municipality, discussed to what extend URBiNAT was an opportunity to exchange and learn from other cities, the trust generated during the participatory process, the perceived main values of participation and potential next steps.

A World Café organized in the afternoon completed the look back on a journey through almost 6 years of co-creation. Within several roundtables, the participants both from URBiNAT and some of its sister projects took the time to look retrospectively, highlighting achievements and share key learnings with regard to citizen engagement, co-creation, co-governance, co-implementation, living labs, NBS upscaling, the NBS catalogue and the Observatory, the Healthy Corridor concept and urban plans, and especially the economic, ecological and health and wellbeing impacts.

Even if the weather was not always on our side, parallel field visits on the second day allowed us to explore some very special places related to the strategic and transformative use of NBS in Porto. Just to mention few of them:

Quinta de Salgueiros, an 18th-century building with a rich cultural history, today lies in ruins in a large abandoned garden, close VCI Inner Ring Road. The goal of the Municipality of Porto is to transform this place into the first urban laboratory forest in the country, by improving mobility and accessibility conditions and creating sports and leisure areas.

Sinergi@s, carried out by the solidarity cooperative ARRIMO – one of the main stakeholders of URBiNAT in Porto, is an educational project for young people. The project aims to develop skills that facilitate academic success and progression, promote integration in alternative educational programmes, and support the integration of young people of Gypsy ethnicity into appropriate educational programmes.

They had come up with something special for our visit: grass head crafting!

The visit of the Healthy Corridor, seeing the results of the past years of common work realised in Porto and meeting the citizens that have been involved all along was definitely a highlight of the 3-days meeting.

Falcão school is one of the six primary schools where Nature Based Solutions have been implemented, both fixed, such as a green roof and a green façade, and mobile like the green pots designed by IAAC as part of the regeneration strategy.

The collaborative tree planting effort in the Porto Healthy Corridor will show its results in a few years’ time – an opportunity to come back again! For planting, the Groasis Ecological Water Saving Technology was used – an economic and ecologic alternative to drip irrigation which has proven effective in extremely dry areas.

Local associations and citizens offered an incredible warm welcome to the URBiNAT project partners at the CampMarket, a local solidary market that normally takes place on the last Saturday of every month, in Campanhã.

CampMarket, a collective initiative initiated by URBINAT, is entirely promoted by local citizens and institutions. Local producers and initiatives provided an exceptional economic, cultural, culinary and social experience in a more than welcoming atmosphere.

Nature-based enterprises and organizations situated in the cities of Porto, Nantes and Siena exchanged experiences and lessons learned within an online Circular Cities Café.

From RAP to traditional Portuguese music – when listening to a concert with local musicians, URBiNAT partners could experience the unique ability of music to connect people from different backgrounds and cultures, and to communicate across language barriers.

The presentation and going online of the community communication platform Campanh’UP was a strong moment of the visit. Campanh’UP, a project that emerged from URBiNAT, was initiated by citizens and local associations and aims at connecting the people of Campanhã to stimulate the community’s involvement in inclusive regeneration processes through young communicators.