INclusive Health And wellBeing In small and medium size ciTies

Project Information

IN-HABIT

Grant agreement ID: 869227

DOI

10.3030/869227

Project closed

EC signature date 20 April 2020

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 31 August 2025

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials

Total cost

€ 11 505 173,45

EU contribution

€ 10 496 681,21

Coordinated by

UNIVERSIDAD DE CORDOBA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - IN-HABIT (INclusive Health And wellBeing In small and medium size ciTies)

Reporting period: 2023-12-01 to 2025-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

European cities face significant challenges affecting health and well-being, such as rising inequalities and vulnerabilities, limited access to green spaces, environmental threats (climate change, heatwaves, flooding), unhealthy lifestyles, food security and accessibility issues, food waste, ageing and loneliness, animals as new ‘citizens’, and migrant integration. Interventions are necessary to improve health and well-being and to promote innovative and inclusive policymaking. Small and medium-sized cities (SMSCs) and vulnerable groups experience these issues differently. To address these particularities, the IN-HABIT pilots have worked with vulnerable and fragile groups, including some in socioeconomically deprived areas. They tested various Visionary and Integrated Solutions (VIS) to tackle urban problems in SMSCs. Besides ensuring comparability, our aim was to offer a broad spectrum of working methods and useful solutions that different cities could adopt to address some of these urban challenges and improve inclusive health and well-being (IHW), tailored to their specific challenges, focus, and context.

Focusing on four European cities, Cordoba (ES), Lucca (IT), Riga (LV), and Nitra (SK), and Bogotá (CO) as a replicating city, IN-HABIT has investigated how to boost IHW through the co-design, co-deployment, co-management and co-assessment of VIS. These actions have leveraged undervalued resources such as culture, art, food, human-pet relationships, and NBS. The project has targeted peripheral SMSCs and addressed inequalities and vulnerabilities, such as limited access to green spaces, environmental threats, unhealthy lifestyles, food security, food waste, ageing and loneliness, animals as new ‘citizens’, and migrant integration. IN-HABIT has employed an inclusive, gender, and diversity approach to testing innovative solutions in vulnerable neighbourhoods and collectives. The project has specific focuses in each city:
- Cordoba explored the role of culture and heritage, particularly represented by patios (inner courtyards), as green and social cells in the city and created an intangible corridor between the humble patios of Las Palmeras, a vulnerable neighbourhood, and the UNESCO-awarded patios of Axarquia, at the historical city centre.
- Riga analysed the transformation of the Āgenskalns market into a multifunctional food hub.
- Lucca created the first Hum-animal smart city in Europe, focusing on innovative habits and inclusive hum-animal public spaces.
- Nitra improved healthy lifestyles, social inclusion of migrants, social cohesion, and relational well-being in Hidepark and connected the Dražovce isolated neighbourhood with the city.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

IN-HABIT tested its visionary approach, which consisted of the innovative mobilisation of existing, undervalued resources (culture, food, human-animal bonds, and art and environment) to increase IHW towards social innovation processes and people mobilisation across the four cities. The project also applied an integrated approach combining soft VIS (cultural and social innovations) with hard VIS (NBS, infrastructure, technology, and digital elements) in urban public spaces to improve social acceptance and long-term care for public goods. High-quality, multifunctional public spaces, able to integrate digital, social, cultural and nature-based innovation to enhance IHW were developed: Cordoba (5 patios, central square, picnic area, corridor and homeless shelter), Riga (inside and outside market), Lucca (2 animal relational areas) and Nitra (2 meadows, corridor, Hidepark and school).

In each city, long-term, innovative public-private-people partnerships among the city, communities, businesses, and research, called IN-HUBS, were established. The IN-HUBS facilitated discussion of ideas, needs, and solutions for specific topics and promoted long-term change planning grounded in social innovations and new ways of working.

Transversal partners reinforced the work in each city through activities such as developing an inclusive Business Incubation Programme involving 223 entrepreneurs and 122 mentors to help ideas become real services and partnerships. Moreover, the project embedded gender, equity, diversity and inclusion into the work through a “gender landscape” and social experiments, engaging 470 participants on barriers to cooperation and 8,100 on motivations to invest in mental health. In parallel, it conducted a common impact assessment (baseline, ongoing, and ex post) using surveys and qualitative evidence to document changes linked to the solutions and support comparability across cities, with more than 300 participants per city in each of the two surveys. Results were exploited and shared through practical guidelines and toolkits, open digital resources, policymaker breakfasts and other policy dialogues, and a strong visual communication legacy (including short videos and infographics, 50+ videos overall, and +1,600 new followers in the final phase). Well over 50.000 people where involved in the project actions.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

IN-HABIT developed and tested a common conceptual and analytical framework to redesign and transform public spaces to increase IHW, and applied it to four different cases, providing methodological replication guidelines for the inclusive transformation of vulnerable neighbourhoods, the creation of multi-functional markets, the development of hum-animal cities, and inclusive public space interventions using art and nature and a catalogue with +50 VIS. Guidelines and catalogue have been widely shared in our replication cities, as well as with national and regional policymakers and city networks across Europe and Latin America, establishing our four cities as international ambassadors for improving IHW. 36 cities show interest in replicating our methods and outcomes.

The IN-HABIT Impact Assessment Framework assesses IHW across five dimensions: social, environmental, economic, subjective well-being, and healthy lifestyles. Each city employed common and adapted indicators, as well as common and innovative measurement methods, to monitor the impact of the VIS. The results indicate improvements across various indicators, though more time is needed to assess the long-term impact.

By introducing innovative governance models, our Participatory Action Research approach: a step-by-step method where residents and city partners co-design, co-deliver, co-manage and co-assess solutions (CO-CO-CO-CO methodology) has been tested within the cities’ IN-HUBs. Behavioural games and mindset methodologies complemented this approach.

We have advanced the theoretical concepts of Social NBS and Animal NBS, delivering outcomes, measuring impact, and providing scientific evidence that fills existing gaps in both the scientific and practical guidance.

IN-HABIT FIWARE-powered open platform offers an innovative method for measuring environmental parameters using citizen science, which has attracted the interest of other cities for replication.

The project has enhanced IHW for vulnerable groups (marginalised citizens, migrants, elders, homeless, vulnerable women, people with Down syndrome) but also involved citizens and increased societal dialogue and bonds, offering open opportunities such as training and empowerment, fighting stigma, raising their voices, and co-creating inclusive public spaces that ensure ‘the right to the city’ for all.

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