From 9-11 February 2026, pilot city partners from across the Urban ReLeaf project came together in Mannheim, Germany, for a face-to-face meeting.
Hosted at the Technisches Rathaus, the three-day gathering marked a crucial milestone in consolidating learning and shaping the final phase of the project’s implementation and evaluation.
Bringing City Experiences Together
The meeting brought together all pilot city partners and relevant work package leads to share experiences, validate approaches, and to enable the translation of city-level lessons into wider policy outputs. With Urban ReLeaf now in its final project phase, this was an essential opportunity to capture what is working on the ground and ensure that collective learning benefits local communities and stakeholders across Europe.
The agenda was designed to support several key deliverables, including the local Insights and Reflections Workshops, the Urban ReLeaf Toolkit and Roadmap, Pilot Impact Evaluation, and the Accelerator programme.
Three Days of Collaboration
Day one featured detailed pilot presentations from each city, offering 30-minute insights into their campaigns and progress. These presentations, created a shared understanding and sparked guided discussions between city teams facing similar challenges.
Day two shifted to collaborative learning through a World Café format, where key topics identified across pilots were jointly explored in more depth. The afternoon focused on planning the local stakeholder workshops that will take place in each pilot city, ensuring communities remain at the heart of the project.
The final day addressed innovative governance models at city level and explored cost-value reflections to develop future pathways from a city perspective, feeding directly into the Urban ReLeaf Roadmap.
Throughout the meeting, graphic recorder Sandra Schulze captured discussions visually, helping to transform complex conversations into accessible formats.
Co-Creating Knowledge for Impact
A core principle of the gathering was treating all city partners as co-investigators in the collective learning process. Inputs from preparatory exercises, meeting sessions, and follow-up contributions will inform publications ranging from meeting reports to peer-reviewed journals, with contributions from all partners duly recognised..
This collaborative approach ensures that the real-world experiences of cities implementing citizen science approaches for greener, inclusive more resilient directly shape the tools, guidance, and knowledge that will support other urban climate adaptation projects across Europe and beyond.
Moving Forward Together
The Mannheim meeting demonstrated the strength of collaborative learning and the value of bringing diverse city experiences together. As Urban ReLeaf moves into its final implementation phase, the insights and connections forged during these three days will help ensure the project delivers meaningful, lasting impact for cities and communities across Europe.