At the URBACT Good Practice call the City of Ljubljana received two good practice titles, namely, for its Bee Path and for including citizens through its Citizens’ Initiatives service. Almost 300 cities sent in their applications.

The Bee Path was set up in October 2015 and today it already includes 31 members, from educational, cultural, economic and health institutions to beekeepers and beekeeping societies. The Bee Path underscores the significance of bees for our survival and food security, and its visitors can also learn about the beekeeping tradition in Ljubljana.

Today there are as many as 3 % of all Slovenian beekeepers with over 4,500 beehives in the area of the City of Ljubljana. And the honey produced here is of very high quality.

Citizens' Initiatives: the City of Ljubljana is promoting direct communication of citizens with the Mayor and the COL City Administration through different channels of communication (in person, via phone, fax, regular or electronic mail, the City of Ljubljana Facebook page and the Citizens’ Initiatives web portal) and each month during the Open Doors Day the Mayor is personally available for talks with the citizens. Since last year people can also get involved through the Information Office 65+ where comprehensive information on services and activities for the elderly and people with disabilities is available in one place. This enables citizens to actively participate in the development of our city, it strengthens their sense of belonging and at the same time their feedback serves as good basis for our further work.

Almost 300 cities from whole Europe responded to the URBACT Good Practice call. 97 good practices were selected from 25 European countries which are also going to be presented at the URBACT City Festival in Tallinn. In the City of Ljubljana we saw the call as an opportunity to present Ljubljana’s good practices to Europe and by doing so boost the recognisability of the city, deepen the participation in the creation of European policies in the field of sustainable urban development and increase the opportunities for further cooperation in EU projects.

URBACT is a European Territorial Cooperation programme aimed at promoting and supporting sustainable integrated urban development. It is an instrument of the European Cohesion Policy co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund, member states, Norway and Switzerland. The mission of the URBACT programme is to enable cities to jointly develop integrated solutions to urban challenges by networking, sharing experiences and learning from them, and identifying good practices to improve urban policies. More about URBACT on http://urbact.eu/urbact-slovenija.