Press Release Maribor meeting
Maribor, 21. 04. 2017
Maribor Development Agency hosted an international event of the project partnership, of Urban Green Belts – Smart integrated models for sustainable management of urban green spaces for creating more healthy and liveable urban environments (project UGB) between 19th and 21st of April. Representatives of project partnership from all seven project partner countries attended the event.
The main focus of the event was the discussion about the guidelines and challenges that cities of the project partnership: Maribor, Budapest, Prague, Krakow, Padua and Zadar are facing while managing and maintaining the urban green areas.
Zsófia Hamza, from Municipality of 12th District of Budapest (Hegyvidék), the project leader, said that she is "very happy with the outcome of the event, as the project partners are approaching the local challenges from both the theoretical as practical aspect". As she says, "the key to successful project implementation are strongly connected international partnerships that can ensure a good exchange of knowledge and experience, as well as generate new methodologies for tackling the issues of green spaces. UGB can proudly claim, to be doing just that. Budapest will without a doubt be richer for new models of incorporating the people of the city in the active participation of green area planning and maintaining" .
Project partners, who contribute their expert knowledge and experience in the fields of setting up and maintaining green spaces agree that "the models developed within the frame of UGB project will be a selection of adoptable models that will help local communities overcome the obstacles of smart management of urban green spaces. Part of the identified methods will also be pilot tested during the project and will contribute to the management of pats of the respective functional urban areas ", said Peter Szuppinger (Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Hungary).
Daniela Zocher from Research Studios Austria – Studio iSPACE added that "the geographical indicators play the key role in organization and spatial planning, as they are the fundament upon which we can develop the existing or planned green spaces of the cities and their suburbs".
At the same time dr. Martin Pogačar, (Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts) summarizes that "the project knowledge providers such contribute the expertise and experience from the field of community involvement in planning and maintaining the green spaces and the Maribor event helped to better understand the diversity, multiplicity and relevance of past cases of involving the community into the different levels of social and political decision making process".
