Office for International Relations

A delegation visit to Cluj-Napoca in August 2019 marked the beginning of a promising cooperation between Dortmund and the Romanian city Cluj-Napoca. Cluj-Napoca, the second most important economic center after Bucharest, is a very “young” city, among others due to its universities and a dynamic development of start-ups. Both cities have many similarities.

The municipal cooperation focuses on the issues energy and water, technology and digitization as well as local innovation ecosystems. It is supported by the German Embassy Bucharest.

Dortmund and Cluj-Napoca are collaborating on the research project "iResilience goes Europe"
Picture (Licence/photographer/designer): Stadt Dortmund

Since November 2021, the cooperation between Dortmund and Cluj-Napoca has been put on a new level with the two-year BMBF-funded research project "iResilience goes Europe". The project will exchange views on developed actions and projects to adapt to climate change and increase resilience, in which both cities learn from each other and further develop and transfer the results.

The aim of the project is to build on the results of the "iResilience" project already running in Dortmund and Cologne, to discuss and expand the innovative solutions developed for the challenges of urban resilience with Cluj-Napoca. Topics of urban resilience can be climate impact adaptation, digitalisation and smart and sustainable cities. The project focuses on international cooperation and the exchange of experiences on a practical level with Cluj-Napoca as a partner municipality. Concrete transferable measures can be e.g. the installation of rainwater reservoirs for rain retention in heavy rain and irrigation of public green areas or the implementation of advisory services such as the “heat-telephone” for heat-sensitive population groups such as seniors.

In addition to the transfer and further development of Dortmund’s processes and results on Cluj-Napoca, the aim is to develop from the experiences and results gathered in iResilience goes Europe a “rollbook”, which is transferable to other European cities, how to work with local practitioners on concrete topics of urban resilience under a participatory approach.

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the international funding line Zukunftsstadt goes Europe.

At the digital kick-off workshop, the iResilience goes Europe project introduced itself to interested local actors in Cluj-Napoca. The interdisciplinary group of participants consisted of employees from the city administrations of Cluj-Napoca, with the International Affairs and Foreign Investment Department, and Dortmund, with the Office for International Relations and the Environmental Office. Furthermore, local initiatives from Cluj, which already work on the topic of climate as well as in the field of education and culture, and researchers from the underlying project iResilience from Dortmund took part.

At the beginning of the kick-off, the two city municipalities emphasised the relevance of European cooperation and the first joint project cooperation in a short welcome speech. This was followed by a thematic introduction on climate change and adaptation to climate impacts and extreme weather events from Dortmund's perspective. The iResilience research project already running in Dortmund and Cologne forms the basis of the international transfer in iResilience goes Europe and presented a cross-section of the gained experience and results. Both methodological formats for sensitising different groups of people to the topic of climate adaptation and concretely tested measures from the pilot neighbourhoods can be transferred and further developed within the framework of iResilience goes Europe.

In the interactive part of the workshop, local projects from Cluj were collected, which will act as starting points for the transfer of formats between the cities. Topics of the exchange were besides specific initiatives to strengthen environmental awareness among children, such as a play developed for this purpose, also the relevance of concrete behavioural processes during extreme weather events and for prevention.

The complete documentation of the event is available for download below.

In the iResilience research project, measures and formats for community-based climate adaptation were tested in living-labs in Dortmund and Cologne from 2018-2022. The compiled experiences and project results on the development and process of living-labs were assembled in the form of a "toolbox", which is aimed at municipalities interested in implementing their own living-lab.

As part of the follow-up project "iResilience goes Europe" of the city of Dortmund, an English version of the toolbox has now been published - "Living-labs for climate-resilient neighbourhood development - a toolbox". This toolbox can be used in the international exchange, especially in cooperation with the partner municipality in the project Cluj-Napoca/Romania, for the distribution of knowledge, the individual transfer, and the joint discussion of living-labs on climate adaptation.