Arebs representing the City of Seraing in European projects
Arebs is the local economic development agency of Seraing. It benefits from a multidisciplinary team and acts as an environment support organism for the City. Among others, Arebs is in charge of the implementation of the municipal Sustainable Energy Action Plan.
Arebs is linked to the city of Seraing and its management board is led by the city decision makers. It has however a part of independence at operational level which allows for quick reactions to innovative opportunities and adaptation of its action plan when necessary. It has no significant structural funding and therefore relies on the projects financed at the Regional, Federal and European levels. Arebs has a wide experience in managing and implementing such projects.
Local specificities
Seraing is located in Wallonia, in the province of Liege. It counts 63.000 inhabitants and covers 3.548 hectares distributed as follows: 1/3 housing, 1/3 industries and businesses, 1/3 forest.
Seraing has borne the brunt of the decline of the steel industry in greater Liege in the last three decades.
After a general diagnostic of the situation managed by AREBS, the city has pursued a very ambitious urban planning strategy since 2001. This project includes actions towards an improvement of the housing environmental performance, sustainable mobility and development of infrastructures which better the living environment of the population. For a closer look to the present and future projects, please visit the Eriges website.
The diagnostic phase has started in 2001 with a desk-based exercise on socio-economic analysis. It has been followed by an urban-planning diagnostic at the end of which citizens have been involved through several workshops organised by urban-planning experts with the aim to prioritize rehabilitation actions.
In addition to this, before starting the implementation of the master plan, a large awareness campaign was launched in order to create acceptance for the disturbances arising from the requalification work.
The biggest challenges today have to do with community life and coordination, social harmony and young people. Therefore, Seraing has worked on two major plans based on a global and crosscutting vision: the Urban Park Master Plan (a high quality green area 10 minutes’ walk from each inhabitant) and the Social Master Plan, as a response to each inhabitant life trajectory. The City of Seraing is now looking for the means to move on from these "plans" to implementations integrating sustainable principles and improving citizens health and well-being .
It is in this context that we are particularly interested in projects experimenting with new energy management models in sites to be redeveloped.
Types of innovative solutions we are looking for:
- energy communities
- heat network
- social and financial innovations
- urban reconversion.