HORIZON-EIC-2023-iCapitalPrize - The European Capital of Innovation Awards
EU Prizes: Application form (prizes) The European Capital of Innovation Awards: V1.0 – 08.03.2023
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Streamlining the innovative thinking in Cork City to drive a coordinated innovation agenda.
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Strong and reinforced place brand messaging
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Outreach activities
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Amplify the economic reputation and perception of Cork as a location for business.
The innovation forum membership is comprised of Cork City Council. Cork County Council, University College Cork and Munster Technological University, Cork Chamber, and industry representatives.
CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT AND PARTICIPATION
Cork City Council understands that the citizens of Cork City have a key role to play in the development of our city, Cork City Council has involved our citizens in the policy formulation process through various public consultations and this will continue going forward.
City Development Plan – “O ur City Future ”
The Cork City Development Plan 2022- 2028 “Our City Our Future” is the single most important strategic document for Cork City, it sets the vision for Cork City and outlines the development that will occur in Cork City over the next 6 years. A vital part of the preparation phase for this plan is the Public Consultation which gives each citizen a say in how Cork City develops. Cork City understand that People are the key to successful cities. Whilst providing excellent transport infrastructure and services is vital to the future of Cork, this should be secondary to ensuring that people are the priority. The consultation was widely promoted via the City Council’s website, radio, newspapers, and social media platforms, under the “Our City, Our Future” banner. The Covid-19 public health crisis and the related restrictions on public gatherings provided a significant and unprecedented challenge to the consultation process. Notwithstanding this challenge, the Council engaged with the public and other stakeholders in several ways. There was a high level of engagement which is a tangible indication of the genuine interest that the residents of Cork have in the future of their city. Cork City Council engaged with the public and other stakeholders in the following ways:
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Submissions received to the issues paper
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Online Webinars
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An online survey
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One-to-one consultation
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A young person’s photograph competition
390 submissions to the Issue Paper were received. This compares with the 106 submissions received in response to the 2015-2021 City Development Plan Issues paper in 2013, an increase of 270%.
Citizen Engagement Survey
Citizen engagement is a priority of the collaborative Cork Smart Gateway Smart City and Region Initiative. The Cork Smart Gateway and the International Energy Research Centre (IERC) carried out a series of surveys as part of the CorkCitiEngage project to better understand Cork citizen’s opinions about the Cork region and its future development. The project used crowd-sourced information gathered by student volunteers going door-to-door and combined these results with an online survey. There were 3,599 responses to these surveys which captured the views of Cork citizens, senior citizens (over 65 years), youth (16-18 years) and local authority employees. The results of the surveys highlighted the desire of citizens to be given more opportunities to engage in activities in their city and highlighted the importance of different forms of engagement including digital methods of engagement.
Climate Neutral Cities 2030
As mentioned, Cork City was recently selected to partake in the first 100 Climate Neutral and Smart Cities 2030 programme. The goal of this EU initiative is to support, promote and highlight 100 European cities in their systemic transformation towards climate neutrality by 2030 and make these cities into experimentation and innovation hubs for all cities, thus leading to the European Green Deal and Europe’s efforts to become climate neutral by 2050. Achieving this goal will involve exten sive citizen engagement and will call upon Cork City’s innovation eco-system to deliver solutions which will help us on the city’s journey to climate neutrality. The journey
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