HINGE Project Wins Award as Best Practice 2024
The HINGE Project is focusing on sustainable urban mobility and was awarded the prestigious URBANISTICA 2024 Prize in the category of “Technological Innovations for Urban Management”.
The award is part of the annual Urbanpromo event organised by the Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica (INU; National Institute of Town Planning) in Italy. On the occasion of Urbanpromo, URBANISTICA, INU’s statutory magazine published since 1930, launches a competition to award the URBANISTICA Prize.
The Prize is awarded to the projects exhibited at the event, that the participants most appreciated with their votes. Online voting was held from 14 to 31 May 2024 by subscribers to the urbanpromo-website regarding all presentations made on 9th November 2023 event, which are also displayed in a multimedia gallery.
The voting categories correspond to the most important themes in contemporary urban planning:
– Environmental, Economic and Social Regeneration
– Technological Innovations for Urban Management
– New Modes of Living and Production
The HINGE Project, presented by the Province of Livorno, received significant online support and recognition for its contributions to integrated and sustainable transportation solutions across three European regions (Italy, Hungary, and Romania). The project emphasizes the shift towards holistic, regionally integrated mobility models, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for sustainable and accessible transportation options.
The URBANISTICA Prize is awarded to the top three projects in each of the three voting categories. The prize entails the following:
- Each year the winning projects are published in URBANISTICA, the historic magazine of the National Institute of Urban Planning, available in all university architecture and engineering department libraries.
- National visibility is given to the selected projects in an award ceremony (Livorno Province will receive this award certificate in a ceremony to be held during the next edition of Urbanpromo).
The award ceremony is held at the next edition of Urbanpromo in Florence from 5 to 8 November 2024.
Livorno Province recognizes the high added value of such a nationally-relevant visibility benefitting a second-level administrative institution comprised between municipalities and Regional/ Central Government, but actively engaged at European level in several cooperation programmes including EUKI.
The 2020 pandemic and the resulting polarisation towards individual modes of transport have promoted infrastructure interventions for bicycles and financial incentives to support their increased use. Cyclists for work and/or leisure and students are a target group, along with local communities̀, transport operators and public authorities, tourists, cycling associations. The main expected impact is to facilitate decarbonization, protect the health of citizens and reduce pollution from public or private transport.
Thus, Livorno Province and the other European partners, with their HINGE Strategic Action Plan, are moving from isolated investment practices to a more holistic approach for regionally integrated mobility models, improving solutions to make last-mile destinations more accessible, especially in peripheral areas. Towards project end in October 2023, partners also signed in Romania a Memorandum of Cooperation among the 3 regions to collaborate further in various fields of interest for the initial period of 5 years.
The INU, established in 1949, with headquarters in Rome and sections in the regions, promotes and coordinates studies in town planning and construction, disseminates and enhances its principles and encourages their application.