Genova is a great city – an important Mediterranean port, with a rich history, a beautiful old city, and amazing food. It is also the capital of the Liguria Region, one of the ESPON stakeholders in the URRUC project. URRUC stands for urban-rural connections in non-metropolitan areas. The other three stakeholders come from the Scarborough Borough Council (UK), that is also the Lead Partner, Marina Alta (Spain), and Västerbotten County (Sweden).

Those four non-metropolitan areas face common challenges in their efforts to provide better mobility solutions to their citizens, that will improve the connection between remote places and urban centers, internally within their administrative borders, but also externally connecting them with the rest of the world.

URRUC will highlight good practices in Europe and produce policy recommendations that will help them identify new approaches and solutions that will trigger more targeted project investments. The project is also a tool to facilitate the dialogue with their local and national stakeholders and push forward their local transport agendas.

The aim of this meeting was to discuss the outcomes of the project, as the draft final report has been already delivered and the final one will be submitted in June.

Having stakeholders around the table is always an inspiring experience. It is an opportunity for us to feel how ESPON projects are used and understand the dynamics created between policymakers and researchers. The aim of this meeting was to discuss the outcomes of the project, as the draft final report has been already delivered and the final one will be submitted in June.

During the meeting, the experts team from the Coventry University, Nordregio, Politecnico di Torino and the University of Valencia, presented their methodology and results of the research. They explained how policy recommendations will be structured on regional, national and EU level and the main maps that will be included in the final report. An interesting deliverable will be also the tailormade policy recommendations guidebook that will be produced for everyone of the four stakeholders.

Besides the excellent discussion that we had, one of the highlights of the meeting was the presentation by Piero Pelassa, Mayor of Mendatica, the main municipality of the valley of Arroscia, a remote area on the mountains of Liguria. The mayor presented us in a very lively way the problems they are facing in connecting with the main urban centers as decisions are taken away from them, where they have no influence.

But he also described the local solutions they are implementing to maintain accessibility for their villages. We resist to further depopulation trying to develop local transport solutions he said. Maybe this is already the first policy recommendation from the URRUC project.