PROJECT NEWS

Kick-off of the EU Task Force for Climate Neutral and #Resilient Historic Urban Districts

23^rd June 2021

Three sister projects i.e. SHELTER, ARCH and HYPERION kicked off the “EU Task Force for Climate Neutral and #Resilient Historic Urban Districts” on June 23rd 2021.
The mission of the EU Task Force for Climate Neutral and Resilient Historic Urban Districts is to co-ordinate EU efforts to make historic and contemporary urban districts climate neutral and strengthen their resilience to the effects of climate change and natural hazards as well as the resilience of the communities depending on those areas.

It has been established by the Horizon 2020 projects ARCH, HYPERION, and SHELTER in response to and support of the Horizon 2020 ‘Heritage Alive’ orientation to “[increase] resilience and sustainable reconstruction of historic areas to cope with climate change and hazard events”, following in the footsteps of earlier projects.

The meeting started with a presentation of the motivation which stands behind the task force, which is based on the idea that resilience in historic areas is a challenge but also an opportunity. The main aim is to bridge the gap between urban development, resilience planning and heritage management. Objectives of the task force are to accelerate dissemination and the uptake of harmonized strategies developed, especially focused on local communities.

A session on the policy perspective for resilient historic urban districts followed together with an introduction Action 9 of the Partnership for Culture and Cultural Heritage – Urban Agenda for the EU was then presented followed by discussions.
Scientific gaps in achieving resilience for historic urban districts were addressed, leveraging the experiences of other relevant projects in the domain such as RURITAGE (https://www.ruritage.eu), Adapt Notherm Heritage shared three tips ( https://adaptnorthernheritage.interreg-npa.eu ), HERACLES project (http://www.heracles-project.eu), STRENCH project (https://www.interreg-central.eu/Content.Node/STRENCH.html).

On-the-ground challenges for resilient historic urban districts were outlined and brought to the discussion with representatives of various European cities as well as Case Studies representatives from Ravenna (Italy), Hamburg (Germany), Regensburg (Germany), Valencia (Spain), Rhodes (Greece) and Venice (Italy).

The kickoff meeting saw more than +77 participants including the partners of the three projects, invited guests from the European Commission, UNESCO, ICOMOS, national Ministries of Culture and Cities representatives as well as other relevant key stakeholders.