The City Partnership Initiative commenced in 2016 with a common initiative by the Ministry of Infrastructure (now Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy) and the Polish National URBACT Point.

At the same time, the Polish government had just started implementation of the new national Strategy for Responsible Development – of which Specific Objective II (Socially and territorially sustainable development) opened the way for targeted projects for small and medium-sized cities. The Ministry of Infrastructure already had an idea for a specific City Partnership Initiative to reach small and medium-sized cities but was not yet sure on the details of how to run such a project.

A national training session for the Polish cities involved in the first round of Action Planning Networks under URBACT III was organised. Together with non-URBACT cities, ministry representatives and URBACT experts, the three-day event brought together 80 people in December 2016.

These parallel trends all leant towards the creation of a national initiative supporting exchange and networking among towns and cities in Poland towards the identification of local solutions for integrated sustainable urban development.

The initiative aims to combine the broader European approach to national urban policies with targeted support at the local level to provide city authorities with specific knowledge to address their identified needs.

The discussions at the URBACT seminar helped formulate possible areas of interest of city networking and exchange in Poland and the appropriate working method of the City Partnership Initiative, based largely on experiences of the URBACT method and the EU Urban Agenda Partnerships topics.

All cities participating in a network were expected to develop a City Action Initiative. Like URBACT Integrated Action Plans, these should be a co-designed set of concrete solutions to previously identified local challenges and problems.

On top of that, each network as a whole had to develop an Improvement Plan with a set of recommendations for the Ministry, to feed into future urban policies at the national level.

The City Partnership Initiative was given some more specifically defined objectives by the Ministry of Infrastructure:

• Strengthening and encouraging partnership cooperation and exchange of knowledge between cities;
• Capacity building among city officers and decision-makers;
• Knowledge capitalisation and developing bottom-up system solutions;
• Dissemination of the principles of social participation in city management;
• Involving cities in the implementation of national and European urban development goals.

An initiative of this scale needed a thorough preparation of its building blocks. The Ministry worked in close cooperation with the National URBACT Point, which provided the necessary knowledge and helped with the elaboration prepared a set of the programme documents. These included “Rules of realisation of the City Partnership Initiative”, a “Guidebook for City Action Initiatives” and a “Guidebook for Local Partnerships”.

The initiative launched its first call for city networks in 2017, focused on three pilot thematic networks on:

1. Urban Mobility;
2. Urban Regeneration;
3. Air Quality.

The call was open to all urban areas in Poland, as well as associations of local governments. The initiative applied no restrictions on city size but was clearly targeted and marketed at building the capacity and knowledge of small and medium-sized cities in Poland, which are starting to experience serious waves of depopulation.

Over 105 applications were received, indicating a high demand for this type of project. Of these, a total of 34 cities and associations of local government were selected across the three networks. Each network had an appointed thematic expert, designated by the Ministry. Their role was, as in URBACT networks, to support each network with substantive knowledge.

At each phase of the works of the three pilot networks, the National URBACT Point provided knowledge and know-how based on the long experience of cooperation with cities. However, the quantity of work quickly forced the Ministry to also open a call for an external body to provide practical support in the facilitation of the CPI Local Groups and guide them on a more daily basis.

Network meetings were organised on a regular basis, as well as combined meetings of the three networks together.

The final meeting of the three pilot networks took place in October 2019. A report was prepared to summarise their achievements, to finalise the Improvement Plans of each network, to compare the effectiveness of both the PIM and URBACT programmes and formulate the broad lines of the future activities of the project.

The City Partnership Initiative is led by the Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy while the Polish National URBACT Point plays a strong inspirational role.

The initiative was allocated a budget of 600 000 Zlotys for each network (approximately € 136 400) over three years.  It is designed to support many of the same actions as URBACT networks, including exchange and networking meetings among cities, City Partnership Initiative Local Groups of stakeholders in each participating city, and thematic experts to support each network.

The formula of the project allowed for effective learning – the greatest results were achieved when the participants worked together, when they were driven by joint discussions with people with different experiences. 

Network partners had the opportunity to avoid mistakes or use proven solutions. For example, larger municipal units, more advanced in implementing policies related to air quality, urban mobility and revitalisation, showed smaller cities how to implement comprehensive policies, building the capacity and competence of officials from smaller centres.

In addition, the initiative enabled enhanced collaboration between participating cities and the national level - to streamline a new communication channel that allows better, more effective adjustment of urban policies created in the national ministries to the needs of local self-government communities.

Drawing on this experience, a new call of the Polish ‘City Partnership Initiative’ for three new networks was expected to be launched by the end of 2020 for three new networks, the topics of which are yet to be defined. Due to COVID this timing has been postponed to June 2021.

The ‘City Partnership Initiative’ is an opportunity for medium and small size cities to put themselves in the forefront of national level urban policies but also have a closer look to European level urban policies. This is important, since cities need to be prepared for the new EU perspective 2021-2027.

As this initiative has demonstrated its success to cities and the ministry responsible for urban affairs, other countries have started to work on similar initiatives, aimed at involving more cities in new ways of developing local level urban policies. Moreover, there is also a kind of a ‘reverse inspiration’ observable: the success of the CPI programme inspired URBACT to launch the National Level Transfer Initiative pilot networks, aiming for supporting other countries to create their own national initiatives.

https://urbact.eu/%E2%80%98polish-urbact%E2%80%99-%E2%80%93-first-national-urbact-style-programme-cities