Municipality of Vicenza / Comune di Vicenza

Vicenza is a city in northeastern Italy, in the Veneto region, approximately 60 kilometres west of Venice and 200 kilometres east of Milan. Vicenza has been enlisted as UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994 and has been part of the Covenant of Mayors network since 2011 and of the Mayors Adapt network from October 2014. With a total area of about 80 km2 and a resident population of 113.673 inhabitants, Vicenza is in fact a compact city, from the old town to the outskirts, enclosed in a dense belt especially in north, east and west quadrants.

The size, contained, and morphology, flat, make Vicenza a city oriented path, where the Municipality strongly believe that it is possible to create the conditions to prefer moving by bus and bike instead of private car. In August 2012 the City Council approved a Urban Mobility Plan, which focuses on the development of public transport and cycling. The historical center of Vicenza has been closed to traffic since 1996 and freight logistic in the central area is exclusively managed through Electric Vehicles (Vicenza Eco-Logistic Center initiative - VELoCe, inhouse company owned by the Municipality and all trade unions).

SOLEZ project iscarried out by the Urban Planning and Mobility Departments, in close cooperation with the European Policies Office, and with the collaboration of Aim Mobility, the in house public transport company that actually covers the city of Vicenza and its first belt of 12 smaller conurbation towns (that from September 2015 will merge with the province public mobility company). Vicenza Municipality also has well-established relations with the 12 conurbation towns of the first belt around the city and with the local chamber of commerce, especially after the participatory approach started thanks to the European project CONURBANT. These long-lasting relations and previous cooperation projects ensure the capability of Vicenza Municipality to actively involve such actors in project participatory activities.