4.6 - CiViTAS – ELAN: Mobilizing Citizens for Vital Cities

Project Description

CIVITAS-ELAN was a large and ambitious project of great strategic importance to its project partners and funding institutions. The mayors of the cities of Ljubljana, Gent, Zagreb, Brno and Porto have agreed to a common mission statement to mobilise our citizens by developing with their support clean mobility solutions for vital cities, ensuring health and access for all.

The five cities cooperated on the basis of a clear set of common objectives, based on the principle of putting the citizen first. For each of the CIVITAS policy fields a common set of objectives and project goals has been agreed and the cities have developed a programme of in total sixty-nine measures including concrete targets. The focus on citizen participation has been deeply built into the work plan, also several Universities, NGOs and Transport Companies were part of the project consortium.

The project consortium was very experienced, some partners were involved in CIVITAS 1 and 2 from various perspectives. As requested in the call, a city from New Member States (NMS) (Ljubljana) was the project coordinator and a learning city (Brno) is also from a NMS. A further leading city (Zagreb) was from a candidate country thus bringing the CIVITAS initiative in the enlargement prospect.

As a policy-driven project, CIVITAS-ELAN made significant contributions to major global, EU and national policy processes. In responding to citizens’ needs, CIVITAS-ELAN has identified headline objectives for each CIVITAS policy field: 1 - Alternative fuels & clean energy efficient vehicles, 2 - Collective transport services & intermodal integration, 3 - Demand management, 4 - Influencing travel behaviour, 5 - Safe & secure mobility, 6 - Innovative mobility services, 7 - Freight distribution, 8 - Transport telematics.

Research Team
  • José Pedro Tavares (FEUP coord.)
  • Américo Pires da Costa
  • Carlos Manuel Rodrigues
  • Cristina Vilarinho
Financial Support
  • 7th Framework Programme, EC
Stage of Progress
  • Concluded in 2012