The MOT leads a workshop at the FNAU conference in Saint-Omer

October 2024

At the invitation of its partner, the National Federation of Urban Planning Agencies (FNAU), the MOT led a one-day workshop as part of the 45th national meeting of urban planning agencies, which took place in Saint-Omer from 9 to 11 October 2024. Organised by a member of the MOT network, the Pays de Saint-Omer Agency for Urban Planning, Development and Heritage, this edition focused on the theme of “public spaces”.

The workshop led by the MOT brought together around twenty participants to discuss three issues relating to “cross-border public spaces”:

How should we understand public space when it is physically located on either side of a border?
Can we draw inspiration from our Flemish neighbours’ practices regarding the development of public spaces?
What shared European vision of urban (and territorial!) policies exists across borders?
A cross-border field trip

Guided by the MOT team to address these questions, the participants first headed to the Franco-Belgian border to visit a former border post (“Callicanes”), whose regeneration was the subject of an Interreg France-Wallonia-Flanders project (“Qualicanes”), then the cross-border village of Abeele, whose main street runs along the border, as well as its cross-border garden.

The European dimension of urban and territorial policies

A tour of the town of Ypres, twinned with the town of Saint-Omer, then gave participants the opportunity to draw inspiration from Flemish practices in the design of public spaces and to observe the benefits of exchanging best practices between European neighbours. The day concluded with a discussion between perspective.brussels, the organisation responsible for the ‘urban policies’ strand of the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2024, and the European Urban Initiative, a European cohesion policy instrument designed to fund innovative solutions to European urban challenges.

Three advocacy points for each level of action

At the end of the workshop, participants agreed to advocate for measures based on the lessons learned during the day:

At local level: strengthen European exchanges between urban planning agencies and equivalent bodies to improve the transfer of good planning practices for the benefit of territories, including cross-border ones, and their citizens.
At national level: strengthen links between urban planning agencies located in cross-border contexts by creating a ‘cross-border’ working group within the FNAU (with support from the MOT).
At European level: strengthen the urban and territorial dimension of cohesion policy in non-metropolitan and peripheral areas, such as cross-border regions.

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