vilFIT – Villach Fit 4 Urban Mission

Status

completed

Initial situation / motivation

Villach, the largest "e5" municipality in Austria with gold status, is building on a solid foundation in the field of climate and environmental protection. It is well networked nationally through the "Städtebund", the Smart City networking platform and the Green Tech Cluster. Villach has developed strategy papers in several participatory processes; the central document is the urban development concept STEVI 2025, which incorporates the previous Smart City strategies. The motivation in the present project is to accelerate the transformation process and overcome obstacles. On 24 February 2021, the Main and Finance Committee as well as the City Senate of the City of Villach unanimously approved the projects vilFIT, the exploratory project vilLAB and their submission to the funding programme "City of the Future". In addition to the formally required resolution, this means - through unanimity - that all areas of activity of the City of Villach are covered by this resolution.

Project contents and objectives

The aim of this R&D service is to develop strategies, measures and the necessary capacity building for Villach to achieve climate neutrality.

Approach / Process

The strategy for implementing the goal makes use of the following three instruments, which are in constant exchange and interaction with each other, will be continued in the future and thus continuously adapted and updated:

• The Villach Climate Alliance, which is composed of stakeholders from the Villach region. They act as a driving force behind the measures and implementation projects. The topics, measures and projects are communicated to the citizens through public relations work.
• The strategy papers that were developed in the participation process. They consist of the roadmap and a structural-, capacity- and implementation plan.
• The monitoring concept developed to steer the overall process.

Results and conclusions

The Climate Alliance partners contributed a wide range of ideas, which are to be implemented successively in the next climate neutrality formats - ranked according to jointly agreed priorities. It was particularly striking that the Climate Alliance partners consider the technologies to be sufficient and the financing to be possible, but above all the lack of skilled workers and procedures that are too long and too complex hinder the achievement of the goals of climate neutrality. Furthermore, they see the Climate Alliance as a suitable instrument to improve the communication between different stakeholders and the city and thus to advance the implementation process together. In order to achieve the climate goals, courage, cooperation and innovation are needed at all levels of action so that sustainable decisions are made when making investments. In this sense, the Climate Alliance partners prioritise the creation of a platform for cooperation ideas and an offer of support for the development of cooperation models.

Outlook

The City of Villach therefore attaches great importance to the establishment of a governance structure to support climate neutrality. In the coming months, the City of Villach will expand the number of participants in the Climate Alliance according to demand and implement the project ideas together with the Climate Alliance or support the projects as far as possible. In the area of public relations, it is important to involve the general public more in the transformation process. In addition to the technical aspects, it is particularly important for the City of Villach to take the SDGs into account in an integrative manner in the decision-making processes and to attach great importance to the social component.

Project management

City of Villach

Project or cooperation partners

• Ressourcen Management Agentur (RMA)
• smartwärts e.U.

Stadt Villach
MMag.a Ursula Lackner
Rathausplatz 1
A-9500 Villach
Tel.: +43 (4242) 205 4012
E-mail: ursula.lackner@villach.at
Web: https://villach.at/