Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona

The USUDS project was an initiative of the MedCities network that brought together Mediterranean cities interested in defining and implementing urban sustainable development strategies. The project began in October 2011 and ended three years later, in October 2014.

The objective was to promote urban sustainable development and social cohesion in Mediterranean cities through the following actions:

• the creation of three new urban development strategies in the cities of Sousse (Tunisia), Saida (Lebanon) and Larnaka (Cyprus).
• the creation of a network of cities interested in the construction and implementation of urban sustainable development strategies.

The project established three Centres for Knowledge Transfer: one in Malaga (Spain), one in Al-Fayhaa (Lebanon) and another in Sfax (Tunisia), all designed to help forward the spread of strategic urban thinking throughout the region and to recognise best practices and relevant cases studies that might be of use and apt for replication in other cities.

The decentralized management structure of the USUDS project was an example of the sort of networking and cooperation between partner cities the project sought to promote, practices that help cities strengthen their medium- and long-term management capabilities. The project involved sharing of knowledge and practices between cities in order to strengthen the development processes of each city.