Focus on… Valladolid
Valladolid is the capital of the Castile and Leon Autonomous Community, located in the North-West of Spain.
With a population of 302 000 inhabitants, Valladolid spreads on 197,91 km² and was founded as a city in 1072.
Automotive industry, food industry and service sector are the main engines of the city’s economy. The Chamber of Commerce and the Valladolid Business Association play a key role.
It is a very dynamic city, involved in numerous European & international projects and networks. For instance, Valladolid is part of « CreArt », a network of European cities, public and private cultural institutions, launched 8 years ago within the framework of the Culture Programme, along with Clermont-Ferrand and 10 other partners which aims was to respond to certain needs shared by European cultural institutions.
In 2019, the city was labeled as UNESCO Creative City of Film. Being part of the 246 creative cities means placing creativity and cultural industries at the heart of local development plans and actively cooperating at the international level.
As a smart city, Valladolid initiated several projects such as VallaCre@ctivos: a Programme aiming to disseminate the Smart City approach, focusing on children and students. The city is also working to implement the Valladolid Smart Destination, which is part of the Smart Tourism National Plan and Network.
Valladolid has been developing the S2CITY project, a smart system of services. It promotes sustainability and active participation of citizens and tourists in the city through smart services from a vision of an intelligent, collaborative and integrative city focused on citizens and tourists. It is also supported by mobile apps, which reward the citizens who contribute to build a more sustainable and smart city applying “gamification” techniques.
The City Council and the General Foundation of the University of Valladolid (FUNGE), have been working together since 2017 in order to facilitate student insertion in the workforce and professional development of university graduates from the Valladolid University. The goal is to improve the students’ knowledge of the labour market, to foster effective management practices in companies and entities in some sectors of interest, and the experience in its implementation.
Like many members of the INMC, Valladolid launched a participatory budget in 2017 which has been continued in the following years. Participatory Budgets are mechanisms by which citizens decide the allocation of a portion of the municipal resources, setting up priorities in terms of expenses and carrying out a subsequent control of the commitments reached. In order to involve the citizens into the local governance, and in addition to their participatory budget, Valladolid is also part of the Interreg Europe project « PE4Trans », to improve public transport policies by including citizens in the process to design and implement sustainable transport strategies and plans.
The city is also part of an European project called « URBAN GreenUP », in the framework of Horizon 2020 (the European research programme). Its objective is the development, application and replication of renaturing urban plans, with the aim to mitigate the effects of climate change, improve air quality and water management, as well as to increase the sustainability of cities through innovative nature-based solutions. They are working on the development of an interesting innovative project regarding the harvest, storage and reuse of rainwater for watering the football pitch in Zorrilla Stadium, a solution already successfully implemented in the Spartak Stadium in Rotterdam, being Valladolid the city selected to replicate this solution.
Since June 2017 and until May 2022, the partnership writes guidelines to help other cities in their environment public policy, providing examples of good practices and implementing several actions in each city.
Stakeholders can download for free « INNOLID 2020+ », Valladolid’s Sustainable Urban Development Strategy or the « Nature-Based Solutions catalogue », divided into 4 categories:
- Renaturing Urbanization,
- Singular Green Infrastructures,
- Water Interventions
- Non-Technical Interventions.
Recently, Valladolid installed a green structure on the canopy covering the fruit and vegetable market in the local Plaza España. It improves air quality via the capture of CO2 and retention of particles and increases urban biodiversity. To discover this beautiful and useful infrastructure, read the article on the URBAN GreenUP website.
