General description of the project General Objective

High growth cities with different demographic dimension face important difficulties in driving economic and social development in a balanced and sustainable way. STREAM CITIES faces this problem promoting a strong participatory planning methodology, through the identification of the local stakeholders and the development of an interactive dialogue with them through public meetings in three phases:

• the analysis of the local needs and potentialities,
• the identification of the main urban challenges to be addressed,
• the development of urban action plans.

Such methodology has been specifically developed to face the urban challenges in the MEDA countries.
The overall objective of the STREAM project is therefore the development of an innovative, participatory approach in Urban Strategic Planning.
This approach represents an important answer to the new challenges of urban development in MEDA, high growing countries, and for an effective urban governance .

The tool to achieve such objective has been called “STREAM TOOL”, and will be developed by the Stream Cities partners to support the decision makers in policy definition.  It will be simple and effective, based on the concrete needs of the decision makers and all stakeholders. It should provide a total compliance of solutions and plans with the existing legislation and programmes, ensuring that all stakeholders will be involved in the decision making process

The most relevant result of the effective implementation of the STREAM TOOL will be a sustainable urban growth, with improvements in quality of life and social cohesion.

Social participation to the development of local dynamics will show its effectiveness, since the real involvement of the public guarantees the acceptance of the urban strategic and sector plans.

Such goals will be achieved through the identification of crucial urban priorities, checking their compliance with the existing legislation and programmes. In such way partnership processes - which are essential for the territorial development – will be encouraged, mobilizing public institutional partners, economic stakeholders and private investors. In order to implement those processes, the Urban Strategic Plan will establish networks and agreements between actors within the city, and will promote alliances among cities, strengthening local urban systems.

The MEDA partners will be involved in this action through a polycentric development, where the EU cities will support in the development of a common know-how.
This method has been previously experienced on a case to case basis in the EU cities involved in the STREAM project. It will be simplified, improved, fine tuned and standardized to become an easy instrument to be applied in the MEDA countries.
Key actions of the project are the ”Participatory public meetings”, which are not just “one way information to the public”, but meetings whose feedback will be held into due consideration during the policy formulation. The project and the tool developed aims to avoid the classical mistake of the public meetings, which often happen to be only information events.

Stream Cities will also contribute to improve qualifications through the transfer of key knowledge and skills for the local public administration in order to re-produce the action in other municipalities of the MEDA regions.