• Opengela will participate on 19 October along with other European projects in the conference ‘Urban Regeneration in Southern Europe: a recovery tool with a high social impact’.
• The conference, organised by Housing Europe, will be online and will feature urban regeneration projects from Spain and Italy, including Opengela and AGREE from the Basque Country.
• The session is part of the EU Sustainable Energy Week, which will be held in October under the theme ‘Towards 2030: reshaping Europe’s energy system’.

Urban regeneration has -and will continue to have- a central role in European energy policies. And to guide them, it is necessary to draw on success stories, which serve as a guide and as proven experiences for subsequent projects. The EU Sustainable Energy Week 2021 (EUSEW) is being organised this October and Opengela will be part of the programme. It will participate in the conference ‘Urban Regeneration in Southern Europe: a recovery tool with a high social impact’. The event will be held online on 19 October and is organised by Housing Europe (the European Federation of Public, Cooperative and Social Housing). It aims to bring the multifaceted aspects of urban regeneration to the European landscape, with particular emphasis on the profound social impact that regeneration projects – currently supported by European funds from the Next Generation EU Programme – can have in the Southern European countries where the pandemic has had the most devastating effects. In addition to representatives of Opengela, other European urban regeneration projects from Spain and Italy will be present to demonstrate, through these real and ongoing examples, how holistic interventions focused on the built environment and the transformation of neighbourhoods can catalyse a fair and inclusive energy transition. Two experiences of urban rehabilitation and regeneration in the Basque Country will be presented: Opengela and AGREE, a project led by the Basque Government. The EuroPACE initiative from Catalonia and Regenerate from the Balearic Islands will also be present. Two other projects from Italy will also participate: Sharing Cities and Innovate. Among the participants, Ignacio de la Puerta, Director of Territorial Planning and Urban Agenda of the Basque Government and coordinator of the Opengela project, will be a highlight. Other speakers will include Julien Dijol, deputy secretary general of Housing Europe; Adrian Joyce (Renovate Europe), Cecilia Hugony (Teicos Group), Patricia Molina, senior researcher at Tecnalia (on behalf of AGREE); Andoni Hidalgo (representative of Opengela), Sofia Salardi (Mantova City Council, member of Innovate), Mart Jacobs (GNE Finance, member of EuroPACE) and Eugenio Morello, professor of Urban Planning at the Politecnico di Milano. Bottom-up initiatives The conference highlights the need to accompany EU policy strategies and actions with bottom-up initiatives. The aim is to demonstrate that progress is feasible and that transformation can happen in a sustainable way, involving citizens and leaving no one behind. Participating projects will be key to demonstrating this, with a focus on different governance and management solutions, innovative financing solutions and co-creation mechanisms deployed to foster inclusive citizen participation. The event is part of the extended programme of the EU Sustainable Energy Week 2021 (EUSEW) organised by the European Commission, which will be held from 11 to 21 October 2021, as a prelude to the main conference EUSEW 2021, which will take place from 25 to 28 October and has as its main focus the theme ‘Towards 2030: Reshaping Europe’s Energy System’.