Presenting Vilawatt at the URBACT City Lab

The 2007 Leipzig Charter established the EU’s urban policy principles. In the second half of 2020, Germany will once again hold the EU Presidency, and in anticipation, work is underway to revive the Leipzig Charter’s relevance for Europe in the 2020s and beyond. URBACT’s City Labs, which are linked to the Charter’s principles, are supporting this process. That’s why URBACT organised a city lab at the beginning of July to explore the practical ways cities understand and implement the concept of sustainable urban development. This is the second in a series of URBACT City Labs exploring the state of integrated sustainable urban development in Europe. The first, which explored the principle of participation, took place in Lisbon in September 2018. The second, held in Brussels on 2 and 3 July, examined the principle of sustainable development. The final City Lab scheduled for Berlin in the spring of 2020 will combine the key messages.

In addition to examining the principles of sustainability in urban development and how cities tackle the challenges of air quality and mobility, energy and climate adaptation, and the growing role of food policy, the Lab brought experienced voices from practitioners and policymakers across Europe. In this sense, a parallel workshop on Climate Adaptation and Energy Transitions was held, and Viladecans was part of it, talking about Vilawatt and other strategic projects. The aim of these parallel workshops was to address the key City Lab questions in relation to sustainability:

• What are the key challenges cities in Europe face?
• Where are cities finding solutions? What inspiring examples can we share?
• How can we encourage higher levels of transfer and replication around what works?
• Where are cities struggling? What can be done to help them? What role do the key actors play here?

With active representation from cities of all sizes from across Europe, as well as from the European Commission and Member State governments, an interactive and lively exchange was designed so that the participants could share their perceptions of the challenges, show some key activities their cities are undertaking, outline lessons learned so far and provide some tips and messages to others based on their experiences. In Viladecans, we are very creative and original, so we explained Vilawatt in a very playful way by using some objects to illustrate our speech:

• Keep calm, but first, build love: It might seem obvious, but working with people and building community requires a lot of stewing. You also need to involve your organization as much as possible if you want to get to the core. We brought some crochet whole to explain this idea.
• Practice a true circular economy: With Vilawatt, we promote the circular economy, offer training and employ our citizens. People can clearly see the benefits. To present this concept, we used the key from the Vilawatt office.
• Stay quiet until you know the correct answer: The worst thing is to give contradictory messages, and this can happen when you are innovating and have no referents. “Think – wait – think again – check – communicate”. Why don’t we take some medicinal herbs to make us calm and concentrated?
• Boost your detective abilities: Innovating requires a lot of legal analysis to find out where you can actually act, because it is not always easy. A magnifying glass might be useful!
• Use political will as the dressing for your salad: It is difficult to boost innovative, complicated projects if there is no political will.
• Analyse things from all perspectives: Our coloured glasses will be perfect for this mission because the project is constantly evolving, and new and different doors are always opening. The local currency is a good example of this.
• Be different! As a local energy company, we have defined a clear, differentiated strategic positioning: We are the first energy company also made for children. If we want the energy transition process to be really efficient, we have to start from the early ages, so let’s read an energy book for kids!