According to our information the following outcomes, in the form of Public Deliverables,  will be produced during the lifetime of the project.  If our information is incorrect, please contact the TWEURO team so that we can correct our list and provide links to the published material.  We are happy to host public material for projects.

All public deliverables available on http://www.municipia.org/

ABSTRACT:

General introduction mentioning the goals of the survey

MUNICIPIA aims to establish and foster multilingual and interactive communication among local actors involved in urban development by utilising the potentials of information and communication technologies (ICT), particularly the WWW.

The basic problem to overcome in fulfilling this task is to bridge the gap between the universe of the ICT-potentials and the minor degrees of usage or even awareness of these capabilities regarding urban planning and development processes. Thus MUNICIPIA should enable local actors to participate not only in traditionally accepted planning stages by just additionally using ICT and the Web; moreover actors should become activated and engaged in new ways of planning, including innovative ways of decision making about the structures and socio-economic development of a city or region.

In WP 1 the needs of "Key Local Actors" (KLA) were to be identified as well as a number of strategies that should allow appropriate usage of MUNICIPIA as a tool to meet those needs.

In order to both study and enhance prevailing degrees of usage and awareness of applying WWW communication to urban planning and development KLAs had to be selected, contacted and interviewed. These interviews were carried out according to the methodological conception described in each of the individual partners reports. They are based on a jointly developed procedure along three principles:

Contact a minimum number of three KLAs in that number of cities agreed upon in each country (Italy: 20, Austria and Spain 10, UK 4).

Use a particular questionnaire designed to obtain information in a way that allows international comparison by analysis on excel spreadsheet.

Establish communication with interviewees (KLAs) and further contact persons (local actors) to support MUNICIPIA.

In the course of conducting the interviews the experiences drawn from this threefold procedure were basically and in general as follows:

Although it was difficult to gather interviews in all the cities during the short period of time available, all the partners considered it necessary to go beyond the minimum number of interviews, and try to involve from the beginning more KLAs into the survey. This is to aim at both quantitatively and qualitatively highly reliable data.

 The questionnaire itself was first drafted in a way to match our objective to be able to ask a wide variety of relevant questions and at the same time to structure this information as to provide standardized and quantitatively comprehensive analysis. This turned out to become too time consuming, thus it was decided to continue in a two-steps approach. Interviewing is continued by using a short guideline producing qualitative information. This result became extended and completed in using further quantitative data collecting by both written questionnaires on paper and in electronic form.

 Regarding contacts to additional actors responses were extremely positive.

At the end of this experience we have obtained the information useful both for the start of WP2 and for the technical approach of the task 2.2, advancing in this way a part of the next work.

The choice to increase the survey made possible to learn and to analyse needs and strategies of KLAs in a deeper way, and this didn't absorb too much efforts but produced many additional and relevant information.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

At the middle of October - as envisaged by task  2.2 - it has been ended up with the testing phase of the MUNICIPIA Pilot WWW demonstrator and first information has been made available for the public access. As result of this phase the system is now fully operative and available to all the potential users. The WWW official address of MUNICIPIA is the following:

http://www.municipia.org

The above mentioned period permitted to the partners to better define the technical structure of the Web site. Particularly, on the basis of the requests of the end users special interactive forms - using a CGI software - have been performed. Those, at the moment, are fully operational for some of the columns individuated, namely News, Brief  and City/Local actors, but the same tool will be extended to the other columns. This requested to introduce a new section inside the Working Web (accessible exclusively by the partners), called Edit,  that allows the National Editorial Board (NEB) to filter and process the information received by local actors and then publicise them on the public web. In order to secure the best integration of the work among the partners and  accordingly to the indication of the task, since the starting of the project was been set up the above mentioned Working Web. The usefulness of this tool revealed very high in the just finished phase: it permitted a time saving and a better communication among the partners with respect to the uploading of the information into the Web. Concerning the performance of a more strict co-operation a new section, called Forum, has been implemented on it. The Forum hosts a common discussion list on proposals, suggestions and remarks aimed to increasingly improve the technical structure of the Web site. It uses a CGI software provided by Austrian partners. The enhancement obtained thanks to this methodology will enable periodic releases of MUNICIPIA Web site. So far, the schedule of releases should be as follows:

31/12/96 - Last term for proposals, suggestions and remarks on MUNICIPIA 2.0

15/02/97 - Release of MUNICIPIA 2.0

15/04/97 - Last term for proposals, suggestions and remarks on MUNICIPIA 3.0

01/06/97 - Release of MUNICIPIA 3.0

Nevertheless, both the above calendar and the technical structure of the Web site could be modified as result of emerging new user needs.

Finally, as requested by the task an operational manual for NEBs has been prepared and uploaded both on the Working Web and on the Help-Desk section of the Public Web.  Besides that, an user's manual to be distributed to the largest possible number of local actors - containing all the information needed to access the web - has been drawn up in the four languages of the country partners. It has a printed form in order to reach also the potential users who at the moment have not the necessary literacy or tools to access the network.

ABSTRACT:

Internet and the Newsletter: two parallel media

The specific characteristics of Internet do not exclude other media, rather they complement them. The exchange of information may indeed be optimised by combining more than one communication tool.

For this reason, a Newsletter will come out periodically in addition to the MUNICIPIA Internet site.

This Newsletter will include news on the latest developments of the Internet site, technical information on connections and, in the second part, examples of the site's contents.

Through the use of such a traditional approach, it may be possible to attract persons not accustomed to using new information technologies to the MUNICIPIA methodology, which entails the sharing of information among local actors in different cities.

It is our hope in this first issue that the MUNICIPIA newsletter may effectively bridge the gap between those having a knowledge of new technologies and those excluded from this new world which, paradoxically, sometimes includes decision-makers themselves.

ABSTRACT:

The success of MUNICIPIA during the 18 months since the project got under way has persuaded organisations taking part in the project to look into the possibility of carrying on the Consortium's activities. During the meeting held in Rome at the beginning of June, an official decision was taken to continue running the on-line service and to carry out new actions aimed at fostering dialogue and the sharing of experiences among the local actors of European towns and cities. The meeting was attended by a representative of Portugal Telecom S.A. in a capacity as external observer interested in joining the project. On the basis of results obtained from different countries, participants at the meeting agreed on the need to consolidate the MUNICIPIA model of intervention and render it a more permanent reference point for European cities wishing to take advantage of the opportunities offered by ICTs for discussing and collaborating on urban management questions. It was thus decided to draw up an agreement establishing basic principles that will guide the Consortium and its mission (the MUNICIPIA Charter). Local authorities and other actors can join the MUNICIPIA Community by signing this Charter. As already mentioned, a number of organisations (private companies or non-profit organisations) operating in the spheres of urban research and information technology applied to urban contexts have shown an interest in joining the MUNICIPIA consortium and assuming an active role in MUNICIPIA's activities. In order to spread the basic idea behind MUNICIPIA and illustrate its activities to other countries, RUR/CENSIS and Innova International, in their capacity as "initiators", and the partners of the TAP Programme, as "founders", have also agreed to draw up a Memorandum of Understanding for the Consortium, which will:

govern internal relations among the various organisations involved and management-related aspects;

pinpoint the responsibilities of each partner and the ways of making the Consortium's activities financially sustainable;

define the best strategies using a permanent structure to obtain the active involvement of organisations belonging to other countries, not necessarily limited to Europe.

All public deliverables available on http://www.municipia.org/