Program

Lead Organizations

French Urban Authority Euroméditerranée in Marseille (EPAEM), Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC), Center for Mediterranean Integration (CMI).

Partners

European Investment Bank, French Development Agency

Challenges

• Through annual conferences, workshops and field visits on pilot projects, the Network aims at building a framework for action and sharing common objectives about sustainable, integrated urban development in the Mediterranean.
• The Network promotes an integrated approach of urban development, focused on operational, concrete issues specific to large urban projects, from the early stages of the projects to their running and operation on the ground.
• It brings the stakeholders of urban development in the Mediterranean together to share experiences and to identify common challenges faced by urban developers, taking into account their specific contexts and needs.

Program Objective

Regarding its members’ challenges for the implementation of large, sustainable urban projects in the Mediterranean, the Network aims at:

• Organizing professional meetings and conferences focused on these specific, operational challenges to build sustainable and environmentally performing cities, based on solid financial and operational engineering;
• Facilitating the implementation of members’ urban projects on the ground, in coordination with individual invited experts and partners (IFIs, multilateral institutions). 

Selected Results

The Network appears as a platform for sharing experiences among sustainable urban development professionals in the Mediterranean. It provides expertise and acts as a facilitator, drawing on and capitalising on the experience of its members, with the aim of identifying the necessary conditions and financial, institutional and operational resources for building sustainable cities around the Mediterranean.

Last 2013 and 2014 annual conferences brought more than 40 practitioners, financing institutions representatives and experts in Marseille.

• 2013 Conference – The sustainable metropolis of tomorrow ; building cities for all in the post-Arab Spring context
   
• 2014 Conference – Implementing economic development strategies in in Large-Scale Urban Projects in the Mediterranean
  The 2014 conference was also the occasion to organize a field visit of La Ciotat Shipyard (lead by SEMIDEP local urban authority), France.

The Network’s events allow all participants to:

• Share innovative approaches and tools for the strategic positioning, the management and the implementation of complex urban projects. The Network’s sessions and workshops lead to better understanding of the role of urban developers in reinforcing their projects’ credibility on specific topics as structuring project ownership and coordination between technical/operational management and political leadership, reducing fragmentation and financing cities for all, achieving balanced economic development through urban projects or integrating new sustainable development issues in their urban projects.

• Deepen their knowledge by discussing, in a comparative approach, the specific constraints and the dedicated solutions of urban developers for the implementation of their projects.  In the long run, the Network will gather together a set of best practices essential to the technical qualification of urban projects in the Mediterranean region. Apart from knowledge sharing, field visits will increase the  operational feedback of these best practices, helping developers to capitalise on contextualised pre-operational solutions, classified by typology, in line with proven, targeted needs.

• Facilitate decision making for the management of urban projects: the Network’s events help the developers and the representatives of financing institutions to identify steps along the critical path of development of sustainable cities and to facilitate the coordination of work on the ground.

• Improve their contacts with other urban developers, representatives of financing institutions or representatives of other regional urban initiatives in the Mediterranean. The conferences also contribute to the reinforcement of the urban projects’ visibility to a community of professionals and to the financing and institutional partners of the Network.