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The City of Zurich is participating in «Metamorphosis», the EU research project for child-friendly neighbourhoods
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Temporary street closure in the Tiefenbrunnen neighbourhood
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Whether in Romania, the Netherlands, the UK or Switzerland – children everywhere have similar needs when it comes to an attractive public space: it should be safe, clean and green, easy to get to and a place you can play in. The EU research project «Metamorphosis» is examining how neighbourhoods can be made child-friendly. Zurich is one of seven cities participating in the project – alongside Alba Iulia, Tilburg, Southampton, Meran, Graz and Munich. All participating cities implement various measures since 2017 until May 2020. The aim of the project is to make urban neighbourhoods more child-friendly, to promote pedestrian and bicycle traffic and to strengthen neighbourhood relations. Much importance is attached to involving children, because they know best when it comes to what is child-friendly.
In order to learn from each other, the seven cities hold a telephone conference every two months to compare notes, with project meetings taking place every six months. Zurich will play host to the project partners in June 2019. The experiences from the project are translated into recommendations for action for cities, property management associations, real estate owners and schools. The results are expected to be published in early 2020.
Ruth Furrer, Civil Engineering Office, Civil Engineering and Waste Management Department
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Visit by the Technical Committee for Urban Parks of the Austrian Association of Towns and Cities
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The Austrian delegation in Hardaupark
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At the invitation of Zurich’s Office of Parks and Open Spaces, the 61st Meeting of the Technical Committee for Urban Parks of the Austrian Association of Towns and Cities took place at Zurich City Gardens. The 40 or so members of the delegation of municipal park authorities from all over Austria and South Tyrol met with experts from the Parks and Green Areas business unit of the Office of Parks and Open Spaces for an exchange of experiences and in-depth consultation on trends, future developments and urban park innovations.
The participants were particularly interested in the city’s green space management (FMS). The programme also included guided tours of Sihlfeld Cemetery, Fritschiwiese and Hardaupark. The inspection of General-Guisan-Quai and visits to the parks in Oerlikon Nord (Oerlikerpark, Wahlenpark, MFO-Park), created in the early 2000s, provided insights into the development of these spaces. A visit to the Heerenschürli Sports Complex and the Chillesteig Municipal Vineyard rounded off the visit.
Ahead of the event, a senior employee of the Klagenfurt Municipal Gardens Department travelled to Zurich for a working visit to familiarise herself with the city’s practices in the maintenance of green areas. During the symposium, it became clear that all the represented cities – whether Vienna, Klagenfurt, Bolzano, Zurich or others – face the same challenges, perform similar tasks and develop comparable solutions. Delegates contributed experiences and expertise, pooling a wealth of inspiring new ideas from every city and expanding the collaborative network.
Lilian Volkermann, Office of Parks and Open Spaces, Civil Engineering and Waste Management Department
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Project partnership Zurich – Tyre (Lebanon): Collaboration in the area of mobility
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A collaboration between Zurich and the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre was officially launched in November 2017. The aim of the temporary project partnership, set up and implemented in close cooperation with UN-Habitat Lebanon, is to help the city of Tyre to more effectively tackle local challenges connected to the Syrian refugee crisis. Some 260,000 people currently live in the Tyre region, about 120,000 of whom are Syrian and Palestinian refugees.
The project partnership seeks to create additional expert positions in Tyre, as the lack of human resources at a local level is one of the major challenges facing Lebanese municipalities. Other aspects of the collaboration involve providing further training for municipal employees and fostering the exchange of expertise among colleagues, with a view to implementing additional concrete measures to benefit local residents and refugees on the ground.
An assessment was carried out in Tyre in early 2018 to define specific fields of action for building local knowledge and sharing knowledge between the two cities. To mark its completion, a workshop was held in Tyre from 2 to 4 July with the participation of the cities of Zurich and Tyre, UN-Habitat and nearly thirty other relevant players (e.g. international and local NGOs). One decision resulting from this workshop was to launch knowledge-sharing and knowledge-building regarding mobility. This will focus on developing concrete measures in the area of non-motorised traffic, to help the poorer population and refugees gain access to school, work and other important infrastructures.
Christina Wandeler, Foreign Affairs, Mayor’s Department
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Mayor of Seoul Park Won-soon and Mayor of the City of Zurich Corine Mauch at the presentation of the gift
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In the context of the location marketing campaign «Zürich meets your City», the city of Zurich will honour the South Korean capital, Seoul, with a ten-day festival next September, in conjunction with the Canton, Zurich Tourism and Zurich’s universities. Just under a year prior to the event, Mayor of Seoul Park Won-soon paid a visit to Zurich. Accompanied by a 30-strong delegation, he was not only interested in the FinTech hub, «Trust Square», on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse – Seoul has a rapidly growing start-up scene in the FinTech and Blockchain sector – but he also took a tour of Europaallee. Mayor Park’s main purpose for making a stop in Zurich on his ten-day trip of Europe was to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of the Canton of Zurich. The key themes of the stronger mutual collaboration laid out in this memorandum are e-government, science, technology, culture and tourism. It is hoped that the new friendship pact will pave the way for closer cooperation on both an official and a private-enterprise level. In any event, «Zürich meets Seoul» has already begun.
Anna Schindler, Urban Development, Mayor’s Department
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