New Towns Sport Cities : good sport practices from the European perspective

The “New Towns Sport Cities” !

The “New Towns Sport Cities” project, funded by the European Erasmus+ Sport program, is designed to identify, share and promote good practices of European actors developing socio-sport activities in 4 areas:

• Promotion of sport as a health factor
• Equality in and through sport
• Consideration of sustainability and environmental issues in the implementation of policies and actions related to sport
• Urban planning to encourage the practice of sport

For more information about the cities’ good practices, please click here.

The project brings together 4 partners:

• Grand Paris Sud
• City of Milton Keynes
• Public Institute for Sport Nova Gorica
• City of Nissewaard

As a part of this project, 4 transnational meetings were organised in 4 municipalities:

Milton Keynes “Sport and health”

The city of Milton Keynes is a young territory created by an act of the British Parliament in 1967, which has been run by a unitary authority since 1992 (the county of Milton Keynes). With more than 280,000 inhabitants, it is now the largest new town in England. The municipality is well spaced out with green spaces, golf courses, parks such as the Campbell Park, as well as numerous lakes. The city, surrounded by forests and meadows, offers a diversity of landscapes that allow its inhabitants to practice urban sports as well as outdoor sports.

On November 17-18, 2021, Milton Keynes hosted the first meeting of the “New Towns Sport Cities” project around the topic of “Sport in favour of Health”.

Milton Keynes introduced a variety of sports actions that have helped the city obtain the “European City of Sports” label (ECoS). This label is an opportunity to encourage an active lifestyle among the inhabitants, particularly those who are far from practising sport, specific groups of women, people with lower resources, the elderly, the disabled and ethnic minorities… This initiative is a very good inclusion tool through the use of sport and it has created a new dynamic with the city’s local sports actors.

The English hosts also explained how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the implementation of sports activities and how the municipality was able to adapt to the new health conditions. As the experience was shared by all the partners, the meeting was an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas on how to help the inhabitants to practice their sports activities despite a deteriorated context. During the meeting, the Nova Gorica Public Sports Institute and the city of Nissewaard presented how they were promoting physical activity for seniors and Grand Paris Sud shared its experience with the opening of two sport and health centres for chronically ill people, in its territory.

Nova Gorica « Sport and urban planning »

The teams from the partner cities also visited the Milton Keynes stadium and the city’s sports facilities such as football pitches, a football academy, multi-sports areas and one of the many urban pitches built to promote physical activity for young people and children.

Nova Gorica is a Slovenian municipality with a population of 31,638 located on the Italian border. This new town was created in 1947, right in front of the Italian town of Goriza, following the post-war administrative divisions.

The transnational meeting hosted by Nova Gorica, from March 23rd to 25th 2022, had as its main theme urban planning in favour of sport activities.

During this exchange, the partners were able to learn about the inspiring projects implemented by the municipality of Nova Gorica and to share their own initiatives and thoughts on how to encourage the practice of sports through planning, a challenge shared by all the communities.

Nova Gorica is full of natural places for sports, such as rivers with currents for kayaking, mountains for hiking and biking, or even wide areas for paragliding. The city’s strategy is to take advantage of this natural wealth and to promote accessibility to these environments in order to encourage the practice of sports by the inhabitants but also to develop tourism. 

The visits to the various sports facilities in Nova Gorica and the discovery of the Slovenian initiatives to encourage the practice of sports were very enlightening and allowed the partners to realise that a sport facility can be designed in different ways with different visions.

Nissewaard « Sport and sustainable development »

Nisewaard is a municipality with a population of 84,929, created in 2015 following the unification of the municipalities of Spijkenisse and Bernisse.

The city hosted the third meeting of the New Towns Sport Cities transnational project, focusing on the theme of sport and sustainable development, from May 11th to 13th 2022.

The partners were able to exchange their thoughts on how to take into consideration the challenges of sustainable development in sport, whether it is through greener infrastructures, more environmentally friendly practices or by raising public awareness and communication.     

The city of Nissewaard shared interesting initiatives such as “Movement route “Fitnisse””, which consists in encouraging the inhabitants to use street furniture and the natural environment to favour sport practice and to take advantage of what is already available.

The municipality’s team presented the municipality’s sports agreement – a multi-stakeholder approach that has encouraged exchanges at all levels and has led to many sports initiatives. The partners had the opportunity to exchange with the members of the steering committee of this agreement and with representatives of local sports clubs.

Finally, during the presentations and on-site visits, the partners were able to discover the project involving the energy renovation of sports facilities in Nissewaard.

The latest news

The last meeting of the project occurred between the 2nd and the 4th of November 2022 in Grand Paris Sud. The Grand Paris Sud Seine-Essonne-Sénart conurbation community, located in the southern part of the Paris region, was created in 2016 and includes 23 municipalities. With its 353,998 inhabitants, Grand Paris Sud is the leading French conurbation community in terms of the number of inhabitants and one of the driving forces behind the population growth of the Ile-de-France region.

The last meeting of the New Towns Sport Cities project brought together sport professionals and municipal officials from four partner cities, representatives of local associations and other sport stakeholders to discuss the topic of “Sport and Equality”.  The participants shared their best practices on how to develop equality in and through sport, at different levels. Several topics were covered: gender equality, sport and disability, access to sport for people living in deprived neighbourhoods.

Grand Paris Sud presented its different work areas: access to sport for disabled people, media coverage of women’s sports and parasports, sport and social environment and addressing the issue of “gendered” sports.

The European partners were able to visit the sports facilities of Grand Paris Sud, including the sport and health centres. They also discovered the aquatic fluency – an innovative practice developed in Grand Paris Sud to counter the risks of children drowning.

Finally, the meeting participants visited tactical urban planning facilities designed to facilitate the sport practice in the urban environment. After the tour, they met a representative of the Art Du Déplacement association who presented this urban discipline, which was born in the Grand Paris Sud area, and they had the opportunity to attend a “Chase Tag” course – another urban sports discipline.