Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Metamorphosis (Transformation of neighbourhoods in a child-friendly way to increase the quality of life for all citizens.)

Teaser

The aim of the Metamorphosis project is to transform car-oriented neighbourhoods in into child-friendly places to increase the quality of life for all citizens, and thereby act as ‘beacons’ for other cities who wish to follow. Indeed, the core value of the project relies...

Summary

The aim of the Metamorphosis project is to transform car-oriented neighbourhoods in into child-friendly places to increase the quality of life for all citizens, and thereby act as ‘beacons’ for other cities who wish to follow. Indeed, the core value of the project relies on the premise that the presence of children in urban public space is a major indicator of a people-oriented and sustainable neighbourhood (Gehl, 2013).
The project applies an innovative and participatory approach, which encompasses the direct involvement of children as crucial players in each phase of the project – from planning through implementation, evaluation, and dissemination. During each phase of Metamorphosis children’s perspectives, suggestions, and ideas are highly valued as essential contribution to create more children-friendly cities. The partners of the project consist of seven European Partner cities, i.e., Alba Iulia (RO), Graz (AT), Meran (IT), Munich (DE), Southampton (UK), Tilburg (NL), and Zurich (CH), which seek to pursue the objectives of the project through the support of six further national research and consultancy partners.

The objectives of Metamorphosis mainly relate to:
o transforming car-oriented into children-friendly neighbourhoods, leading to behavioural change and increasing citizens quality of life;
o implementing the vision-building process needed for such transformation;
o achieving creative breakthrough innovations for streets, squares and other public spaces in neighbourhoods and urban districts, as for instance in the development, design, governance and planning procedures;
o developing and implementing children-friendly mobility solutions;
o evaluating take-up, involvement, process and impacts using innovative evaluation methodologies;
o using innovative transfer instruments to facilitate the transfer of know-how acquired, from city to city and country to country, also beyond the duration of the project.

Metamorphosis is a pan-European project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.

Work performed

Management
o 4 of the 6 project meetings were carried out successfully
o Establishment of effective project communication
o Monthly MC telcos with the stewards
o Payment of first prefinancing to partners
o Regular liaison with Commission and Advisory Board Members

User Involvement and Analysis
o General Analysis phase completed with Deliverable 2.1
o Analysis of potential measures in the form of best practice examples collected in the project website. This resulted in D2.2
o Local Analysis in the partner cities carried out. Results have been collected and summarized in D2.3.
o Ethics Report D2.4 including the three Ethics Requirements (D8.1, 8.2 and 8.3) completed, external Ethics Advisor – provided input

Innovative Concept Development
o An internal document for the partners on Communication, Innovation and Involvement was produced
o Vision building workshops held in all partner cities. In most of these workshops’ children were the main stakeholder group and the Vision Building Report D3.1 completed.
o Based on the Vision Building Process and the Local Analysis the Implementation plans in all partner cities were developed and compiled in D3.2

Implementation Trials
o The implementation trials in all partner cities have started a bit earlier than planned. 50 different Measures (that include 366 sub measures) as at the end of November 2018. 103 of the measures/sub measures were Interventions in public space (including 9 Hybrid Zones, 6 Living Labs, and 70 other interventions.), 33 Temporary Street Closures, 212 workshops (empowerment for active mobility) and 7 crystallisation points and 11 Educational Innovation Tools.
o Monthly Telcos held for a multi-level know-how exchange between the city partners. All work package leaders also join these conference whenever possible.
o The work package leader has collected information from all partner cities on their existing SUMPs or similar planning documents, analysed them and given input and recommendations to the partner cities.

Capacity Building
o Capacity building within the consortium has been carried out during special training sessions associated with the first and the second project meeting. City officials (also from Zurich) were present.
o Capacity Building within the city in local language. All partner cities carry out stakeholder workshops tailored to the specific needs of the city.
o Capacity Building among the cities is associated with the partner meetings and hosting city presents the activity field that they have the most know-how in. In Meran it was on temporary street closures. During the meeting in Vienna the activity field presented was Interventions in public space (Lendwirbel and FGM).
o Capacity building among participating educational institutions. This task is in progress with universities scanning their curricula.
o Capacity building on an international level as already started with the development of didactic materials by work package leader BUas and the first training session on an international level: the Forschungsforum Mobilität in Vienna with over 180 participants. In addition, the elaboration of webinars has started with webinars in the area of communication, education and city know-how.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Quality Assurance
o Quality Assurance Guidelines have been developed
o D6.1 General Evaluation plan elaborated as well as individual monitoring and evaluation plans (D6.2).
o Online survey focussing on process evaluation prepared to be used 3 times in total during project.
o So far 50 implementations with 266 sub measures have been implemented.

Communication, Dissemination and Promotion
o Website and Visual Identity for the project have been developed (M03)
o Social media and blog activities have started (M08) on Facebook,Instagram LinkedIn and twitter.
o The consortium is in contact with the other three neighbourhood projects. They are featured on the project website.
o Dissemination, Exploitation and Communicatio

Final results

The involvement of children during all project stage is the unique approach of the project and will trigger changes in the respective neighbourhoods through unusual user groups like children, teachers, parents and thus goes far beyond the existing practice. With this Metamorphosis methodology it will be possible to include emotional social and educational elements besides the usual technical planning approaches.
Unorthodox interventions will be used to bring about a transformation of car-orientated to child friendly.
In total at least 14 neighbourhoods in 7 cities will be transformed with e.g.:
o 40-60 temporary street closures and 120 interventions in public space
o Crystallisation points
o Educational innovation tools
o Empowerment activities
o Improvement of planning procedures
o Integration into SUMP or similar available documents in partner cities

Website & more info

More info: http://www.metamorphosis-project.eu.