Municipalities are already talking about water

Members of the CTU UCEEB research teams spoke together with other experts at a conference on communication between cities and the public in implementing blue-green measures and food self-sufficiency, which was attended by dozens of representatives of public administration organizations and private companies. The programme also included the presentation of a newly published publication entitled Municipalities Talk About Water, which is freely available on the internet.

The conference Blue-Green Cities Day 2023: Effective Communication and Food Self-Sufficiency was organised by the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, UJEP, in cooperation with CTU UCEEB, KOKOZA and the Platform for Green and Blue Infrastructure. Martina Sýkorová presented the principles of stormwater management (SWM) in urban environments in a panel on communication between cities and the public in implementing blue-green measures. Nicol Staňková's presentation focused on SWM communication and its timing in the context of urban planning.

Both also contributed to the new publication Municipalities Talking About Water: Rules and Procedures for Communicating Selected Stormwater Management Measures Between Local Government and the Public, which contains recommendations for effective communication between city councils of smaller cities (roughly 30,000 inhabitants or less) and their citizens. It builds on previous outputs such as the Water in the City guide, which is also freely available online for all interested parties.

The conference and the publication were supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic under the Eta programme, 5th VS within the projects TL05000674 (Municipalities talking about water: Communicating the implementation of urban stormwater management measures).