After almost three years of intense cooperation, the Urban Agenda Partnership on Air Quality has recently delivered a suite of integrate tools to help cities and Member States overcome the challenge of air pollution and reduce its negative impact on health.

A joint Position paper on EU Ambient Air Quality Directives

To contribute to better regulation and implementation of existing legislation in the field of ambient air quality, the Partnership has submitted a joint Position Paper in response to the Open Public Consultation to support the Fitness Check of the EU Ambient Air Quality Directives. The joint Positioin Paper is available here.

A Code of good practice for designing and implementing Air Quality Plans

The Partnership has also produced a user-friendly Code of good practice for designing and implementing Air Quality Plans. The Code provides useful guidance to facilitate local decision-making, improve the efficiency of air quality measures selection and governance, and ultimately help cities improve public health, while safeguarding compliance with EU legislation. The Code also indicates ways to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals for the 2030 Agenda.

With clear explanations, and a collection of examples and hands-on tips, the Code of good practice for cities Air Quality Plans is a unique companion for guiding urban planning authorities through every step of the process of designing and organizing an Air Quality Plan. 

The full version of the Code is available here. Reduced versions are also available here.

A Guidance for financing air quality plans

In addition, the Partners published a guide to identify, integrate and improve traditional and innovative financing schemes dedicated to the implementation of air quality measures. Opportunities to leverage the involvement of both private and public financial resources are highlighted. The guidance document is available at this link.

A new tool for measuring benefits generated in terms of impact on citizen’s health and living environments

Based on state-of-the-art methodologies the Partners have designed and tested a new tool to measure the health gains and costs of urban planning measures and help policy-makers and practitioners improve decision-making through a better selection of air quality-related measures. The tool, with user-friendly instruction manual and a report on the use of health impact assessment tools in European cities are downloadable here.

A Communication toolbox on air quality

The Partners also invested in the development of an inspiring Communication Toolbox for awareness-raising strategies on air quality issues. The Toolbox contains a wealth of inspiring practices, solutions and practical tips to raise awareness and stakeholder engagement in air quality initiatives. It can be easily downloaded for free from this link.

Still in the pipeline for 2019!

The Partnership is also finalising a new general business model for cities air quality plans which will be published in 2019 on this website as soon as it becomes available.

To know more, you may contact us at the UA Secretariat ua_secretariat@ecorys.com and follow us on Twitter @EUUrbanAgenda and Futurium​.