European Youth Meeting 2011 for Sustainable development, Day 3- Part 2- Working groups and best practices

The morning of the Day 3 at EYM continued with more positive discussions in our working groups. We were sharing best practices that we have seen, heard, experienced or done. Here are some of them in Urban Development:

• High Line in New York- green zone and leisure park in the old metro line.
• Gasometer in Vienna- four old natural gas tanks turned into apartments, movie theatre, student residence, archives etc.
• Green Factor- building approval system for architects to design buildings. Only the projects including several green factors would be approved. 
• Cycling rental systems in the cities - London, Paris, Netherlands, Riga and many other cities (London example of "Boris bikes" 
•  Old, large buildings turned into other useful venues- Strasbourg prison, London Old Billingsgate market etc. 
• Solar heating systems in universities- Montenegro private universities run their heating 80% depending on sun.
• Local farmer seasonal, organic produce to city inhabitants- examples of Germany, UK veg box schemes.
• Bottle deposit system in Norway, Germany. Each consumer buys not only a drink, but also a bottle it comes in. But once you have finished your drink, you can sell the bottle back and receive the paid money for it!
• Composting places in the city - London has not only parks, but also wildlife gardens, like Phoenix garden. In the garden there are large compost bins and people from nearby are welcomed to throw their compost there for the use in the garden later on.
• Recycling systems- many cities already have various recycling systems (London, Oslo), varying from street collection (put your recyclable items in separate, specifically dedicated bags and they will be collected in particular day and time of the week and brought to the recycling station) to recycling centres in residential areas (large containers near the apartment buildings where you can separate your rubbish) etc.
• Trash cans near the street rather than in the middle of pedestrian pathways so people driving in the car could easily get rid of their trash instead of just throwing it out from the window.
• Inhabitant initiatives like park reconstruction in Belgrade- citizens decided that they would like to have a parka and they created it themselves instead of hiring services.
• Geothermal public heating in Strumica, which would provide this service for free to inhabitants.
•  Lisbon Expo '98- great example of rehabilitation of degraded space in the city. Expo '98 was fully built from scratch, but most important part -every building was pre-sold for after-Expo repurposing thus ensuring that, after the Expo closed, the site would not be left semi-abandoned. The venue kept a free-access park, keeping the gardens, Oceanarium (Europe's then largest aquarium), observation tower, funicular, and the Virtual Reality pavilion and redesigned the rest for shopping malls, art exhibition centres, science museum and other multi-purpose spaces.
• Renovated cruise ship in Rotterdam- the old cruise ship was renovated and used as new cultural space with all the facilities already existing on the ship, but instead of floating in waters it is available in port.
• Real time monitoring of the traffic in Wroclaw- oppurtunity to plan your route according to real time facts availbale online (traffic jams, road closures, timing etc). 
• Agenda 21 for city planning- great effort to involve all stakeholders from all backgrounds tp see what are the problems and measures to deal with them. Involvement of all population is crucial in decision making. 
• Sustainability certification in the EU that provide clear goals to achieve and evaluation. 
• School competition in Macedonia- competition works well, so the pupil are competing to make their school the most sustainable in the country. In Latvia there was a similar competition on paper recycling rates in between the universities. 

These are just few of the great practices in urban development that can be quite easily transferred to any other city in the world! Aren't you inspired by them? Let's be involved, aware of what we can do and do it! Let's learn from others and share our experiences on green carpet also in future!