Elaborator hosts 3rd plenary meeting in Zaragoza to advance sustainable urban mobility

From 3 to 6 June 2025, the city of Zaragoza, Spain, welcomed partners from across Europe for the 3rd Plenary Meeting of the ELABORATOR. The four-day event took place at Etopia – Center for Art and Technology, bringing together consortium members, observer cities, and mobility experts to share progress, align on project goals, and foster deeper collaboration across work packages.

A deep dive into innovation, data, and local impact

The first day opened with a general assembly featuring updates on innovation management and administrative matters. A major highlight was the demonstration of the ELABORATOR Data Marketplace, followed by interactive workshops focusing on visualisation tools and key performance indicator (KPI) analysis.

The afternoon spotlighted dissemination and exploitation strategies, culminating in a presentation of Zaragoza’s local intervention sites.

The day concluded with a city tour and social dinner, offering participants a chance to connect informally and explore local culture. 

City-led collaboration and knowledge sharing

On the second day, attendees visited Zaragoza’s intervention sites, getting a first-hand look at urban mobility challenges and opportunities in the city. The visit included observing the morning rush in the area where several local schools are situated, giving a good example of how the dynamics of pedestrian, bicycle, and vehicular flows during peak hours, especially in areas where many children are present.

This provided valuable context for understanding the mobility needs of families and students, as well as the potential for safer, more inclusive access to education infrastructure and the way that the city is investing to improve the infrastructure. The tour also explored the surroundings of La Romareda stadium, currently under renovation, a key feature of the local urban landscape. It was a great occasion to reflect on how major venues like the stadium influence daily mobility patterns, traffic congestion, and public transport use, with active mobility being no exception. These real-world observations helped ground the subsequent discussions in tangible urban realities and sparked ideas on how the ELABORATOR interventions could be tailored to local conditions. 

Afterwards, the partners returned to Etopia for an intensive session on city twinning. Lighthouse and follower cities shared poster presentations highlighting lessons learnt, challenges faced, and planned interventions. Organised by LIU, VTT, and EIRA, the sessions facilitated cross-city dialogue and peer learning, reflecting the project’s co-creative ethos.

The day ended with a comprehensive evaluation workshop led by IRAP, helping cities understand the assessment criteria and aligning efforts across work packages. 

Empowering observer cities through inclusion and co-creation

Day three of the plenary meeting was dedicated to ELABORATOR’s Observer Cities, with a tailored workshop programme focused on one of the project’s core principles: co-creation.

The day was carefully designed to introduce participating cities to inclusive, participatory approaches in urban mobility planning, offering them both strategic insights and practical tools developed within the project.

The sessions on Inclusion, Co-Creation, and the Active Citizen Toolkit served as a structured pathway through the co-creation journey. Each session began with brief keynotes and experience-sharing from Lighthouse and Follower Cities: Copenhagen, Helsinki, Zaragoza, Lund, Issy, Milano, and Trikala. These inputs highlighted real-life applications of inclusive design, participatory processes, and community engagement in mobility interventions.

Following these introductions, Observer Cities took part in hands-on workshops designed to let them explore and apply the methods in their own contexts, through exercises like World Café discussions, participatory method selection using method cards, and interactive sessions with ELABORATOR-developed tools like the Labkit and Platamo App.

The Active Citizen Toolkit session, in particular, gave cities the opportunity to rotate between tool demonstration tables, ask questions directly to developers, and reflect on which tools might be most adaptable to their needs. The toolkit’s modular approach encouraged cities to envision how they could scale citizen participation in a way that is both context-sensitive and actionable.

In total, four Observer Cities—Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Pisa, and Rethymno—attended in person, while Lviv participated online, ensuring a diverse range of urban contexts were represented. Their active engagement, thoughtful contributions, and reflections during the workshops underscored the value of peer learning and practical experimentation at the heart of the ELABORATOR project.

These sessions offered a practical framework for observer cities to adapt and implement similar strategies in their own urban contexts. 

Looking ahead 

As ELABORATOR moves forward, the Zaragoza meeting served as a milestone of progress, collaboration, and commitment. It provided a space for strategic planning and internal coordination, ensuring that momentum and collaboration continue strong as the project advances into its next phase. It reinforced the value of knowledge exchange, city-driven experimentation, and inclusive practices in shaping the future of sustainable urban mobility across Europe.