Dear Friends,

Greetings from sunny Prague! Despite COVID-19 restrictions and the vacation season, we have been as busy as ever, and growing remarkably adept at managing the Zoomiverse. Read about our latest activities, including the conversation we hosted as part of the New European Bauhaus, our mobility survey, our ongoing participation in a UNEP analysis of circularity, and more.

We are also excited to announce that we have been shortlisted for the 2021 EUROCITIES Awards under the “Zero Pollution” category for the city’s Depot.Bike cycle depot project. The winner will be announced at the EUROCITIES Annual Conference in Leipzig this November. 

While the official winner will be selected by a jury, please consider voting for us in the members choice award!

Best,
The IPR Prague International Team

Florenc Cycle Depot named as finalist in the 2021 EUROCITIES Awards

In November 2020, a pilot project for the first cycle depot designed for the delivery of parcels around Prague’s city center on electric cargo bikes was launched in the Florenc section of the city. This project has recently been chosen as a finalist for the 2021 EUROCITIES Awards in the Zero Pollution category, competing for the top spot with the De Energiecentrale project in Ghent, Belgium, and the Recyclerie des moulins project in Nice, France.

In the nine months since the depot opened, couriers on cargo bikes have delivered over 50,000 parcels and covered more than 23,000 km. Following the pilot’s success, Prague is planning another bike depot in Anděl, which will start operating this September. The Florenc depot will continue operating indefinitely.

The winner of the competition will be announced at the EUROCITIES annual conference in November of this year, to be held in Leipzig. While the official winner will be selected by a jury, please consider voting for us in the members choice award!

More information about the depot is available here.  

IPR Prague leads conversation on Prague and the New European Bauhaus  

As many of you have probably already heard, the European Commission has launched an initiative called the New European Bauhaus to start a dialogue about sustainability, inclusivity, and aesthetics as we move towards fulfilling the European Green Deal. Prague Mayor Zdeněk Hřib kick-started our local conversation on June 9^th at our Center for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning, where we welcomed a panel from diverse backgrounds to a discussion of what the New European Bauhaus can mean in the Czech context.

Our panel included, from right to left, moderator Jiří Jaroš from IPR Prague, Petr Škvařil from Impact Hub, Pavla Pelčíková from IPR Prague, Regina Loukotová from ARCHIP, Jan Lukačevič from NATO 2030 Young Leaders, and Soňa Jonášová from the Institute for Circular Economy.

We were pleased to have one of our main takeaways noted in the NEB report sent around to EUROCITIES members:

“We appreciate the NEB as an instrument for starting interdisciplinary discussions about how to live happily and sustainably in our cities.”

Stay tuned for more NEB news as we continue to explore this vehicle for collaboration.

IPR Prague contributes to UNEP analysis of circularity in cities

IPR Prague is pleased to be heading up the city’s participation in an analysis of the circularity of public housing being led by UNEP. Prague will be included as a case study, along with Mexico City, and the plan is to present the results of the analysis at the EcoCity Summit in Rotterdam in September 2021.

Although the percentage of housing stock owned by the City of Prague and the individual districts is quite low compared with other European cities, we are hoping that our contribution will help further the discussion around circularity in the public sector.

Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash

IPR Prague launches mobility survey and we need you! 

IPR Prague’s Office of Transport Infrastructure has put together a short, five-minute survey to learn more about the transport models of other cities. The aim is to analyze the data collected and figure out ways to improve Prague’s model. For over 20 years, the City of Prague has been operating a multimodal transport model of the city and its surroundings within the environment of PTV VISUM.

We’d be very grateful for your input into the survey!

ESRI blog features IPR Prague's climactic modeling 

As we recently battled some of the warmest days of the year, it seems especially relevant that IPR Prague’s work on climactic modeling was featured on the blog of ESRI, the international supplier of geographic information system (GIS) software. We are always pleased when our work is featured abroad, especially on the website of such a prominent player in the GIS field.