SCALE-UP General Assembly Comes To A Close

The three-day General Assembly of SCALE-UP came to an end in the afternoon of Thursday, 20 April 2023 with the yearly Annual Event, which was also open to external, invited guests. All SCALE-UP partners took part in the meeting, uniting 58 professionals and 15 external speakers or guests.

All partners attended the Assembly and had the chance to exchange in person. While the first and second day consisted of meetings, focusing on the horizontal integration of measures in each of the Urban Nodes, which was prepared and deducted by the Polytechnic University of Madrid and filled with life by all measure leaders.

Furthermore, a special focus session lead by ECORYS took place on the morning of day 2 on the vertical governance integration across public authority levels in each of the Function Urban Nodes (FUAs). The session proved especially helpful to map and visualise the strengths and weaknesses of each SCALE-UP Urban Node and how they can complement each other.

As on the first day, the second meeting day ended with a site visit of the so-called Nudo Norte (“Northern Knot”) of the city and an adjacent social dinner, which was hosted by the City of Madrid:

• New bike lanes along the Castellana avenue;

• Park & Ride hub at the Fuente De La Mora station;

• Innovative mobile BiciMAD charging station.

The very last day of the meeting started with insights and feedback by the evaluation managers of the project, TML, to update and display how the measures and overall project are progressing and which activities are still coming up. It offered an important opportunity to see global feedback on the status of the project and each partner’s work impact on the whole consortium.

Finally, the second Annual Event consisted of two distinct Roundtables, focusing on Achieving successful local, regional, national and EU multi-stakeholder cooperation and Achieving notable change, nudging travel behaviour effectively. The event gathered external guests of the local ecosystem and the consortium partners together to review two of the main challenges tackled by SCALE-UP.

The consortium will meet again in one year time, after three years of project activities in the third Urban Node, Turku (Finland).

Author: Frida L. Kühl (STA)