Urbact, Corigliano-Rossano at the center of “City-to-City exchanges”

The experience of the municipality of Corigliano-Rossano continues within the European Urbact programme. The Municipality recently participated in the tender with great success City-to-City exchangessupported by the European Urban Initiative for City-to-City exchanges as part of the program which aims to bring together two European cities with the implementation challenge linked to sustainable urban development of a different EU Member State, with expertise that could help address this challenge.

Specifically, during the planning and participation in the tender, our Municipality identified the city of Piraeus in Greece as an institution with which to activate a partnership, in order to be able to benefit from an exchange that will allow the acquisition of elements and knowledge deriving from experience and by good practices funded under the Urban Innovative Action Programme.

In this regard, a delegation of municipal officials was hosted in the city of Piraeus from 3 to 5 April, while in May a delegation of officials from the Greek city will be hosted in Corigliano-Rossano. The themes underlying the comparison between the two municipalities were local tourism, port development, deseasonalization, urban regeneration, culture and safety.

The final objective is to acquire new tools useful for relaunching tourism in the area and, in particular, for enhancing the seaside villages of Corigliano-Rossano. They were very fruitful days full of initiatives which began with an informal meeting between the two delegations, subsequently the events immediately got to the heart of the events with a visit to an important construction site for the city in terms of urban regeneration, the Pireus Towera multifunctional space that sees collaboration between public and private and which has an investment of 50 million euros.

This was followed by the presentation of the city’s ICT control operations room (Municipality’s Operation Center Presentation of ICT tools used), developed both through the UIA (Urban Innovation Act) program and through the cohesion fund programs intended for Greece, in which it is possible both monitoring the urban security of the city and other smart cities tools also useful for managing risks related to civil protection, disaster recovery, but also for the complete digitization of archives, the management of libraries and the presentation of the tourism marketing portal, in addition to management of the operational methods for attracting investments.

Furthermore, the work of the Investment Agency is presented, with the projects and methodologies adopted, in particular the work carried out by the Blue/Lab laboratory, which constitutes an absolute good example of innovative actions linked to the theme of “Blue Growth Economy”in which a permanent table was established between the Municipality of Piraeus, the Ministry of Maritime Activities and the Universities, which allowed both participation in the Horizon program and other research programs and the stimulus to the creation of numerous start-ups.

The delegation from the Municipality of Corigliano-Rossano was also received by the deputy mayor Andriana Zarakeli in which the program and the exchange of good practices between the two cities were shared, he then visited the 600-seat theater and the famous Olympiacos Piraeus Multi-Sports Club.

Guided tours were also organized of the main attractions of the recently invested city (subway, cruiser dock for cruise ships, municipal swimming pool) and the commercial port managed by the Chinese giant COSCO, world leader in the sector.

“The URBACT program continues its essential mission of comparing international realities present in European territory. Collaboration and exchange – declared the deputy mayor, with responsibility for economic and strategic planning, Maria Salimbeni – sThey are essential for the growth of all territories and in the various common areas”.

“We are proud to have been the winners together with other entities of the URBACT tender and aware of how this enriches us and also other foreign entities. The meeting with a reality like the Greek one in Piraeus allows us to think about and improve the best practices and development strategies for our territories for an ever better present and future”.