WE DRIVE LOCAL ACTION!
We are committed to driving local action to promote peaceful, cohesive and prosperous communities.
The ACT NOW Mayors’ Network
The ACT NOW Mayors’ Network is a community of like-minded local leaders from locations in the Middle East through to Northern Europe. Many municipalities are facing similar challenges, therefore our activities foster hands-on mutual support and best practice exchange to bring about concrete local action.
Our five principles
IT IS ON US – WE DRIVE LOCAL CHANGE
WE ARE CONNECTED ACROSS BORDERS
DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH
WE STRENGTHEN SOCIAL COHESION TO COUNTERACT POLARISATION
WE INVOLVE YOUNG PEOPLE FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE
Meet the Members
United by their common goals, our members are committed to driving positive change and improving life in their communities.
Meet them here:
HOW TO JOIN THE NETWORK
Field Trips & Workshops
Every year we organise field trips to our network members in Europe, the Balkans or the MENAT region. Participants gain first-hand insights into local challenges and best practice and have the opportunity to strengthen their professional and personal skill sets in on-site workshops and training sessions.
Monthly WebinarS
Leading ideas for local innovation: Transforming visionary ideas into sustainable action
Local solutions are often the most effective way to tackle the world’s challenges. For this webinar series we invite you to join international thought leaders to discuss creative and relevant forward-looking topics.

Co-creating the Future – Tips, Tricks and Secrets of Participatory Urban Development
Speaker: Jeanette Westergaard Frisk, Architect & Urban Designer, Partner / arki_lab, Denmark

Greener and More Liveable Communities – The Key to Cultivate Cooperation and Participation
Speaker: Andreas Kipar, Landscape Architect & Urban Planner, Founder & Creative Director / LAND Srl, Italy
Landscapist, architect and urban planner, Andreas Kipar is the co-founder, chairman and creative director of the international consulting and planning firm LAND, with offices in Italy, Germany and Switzerland and practices worldwide.
He is the inventor of the “Raggi Verdi” [Green Rays] model in Milan, which connects up the various areas of the city to favor a new slow mobility from the center towards the suburbs. This model, internationally recognized as a pioneering one in green urban planning, has also had subsequent applications in Essen, the European Green Capital 2017, and in the award-winning Smart City of Rublyovo-Arkhangelskoye in Moscow. Andreas Kipar and his team have been supervising the landscaping for EXPO 2020 in Dubai, the greenery strategy for Riyadh and the German Pavilion at Expo 2019 in Beijing. He has been appointed to draft urban and peri-urban green plans in more than hundred cities and to develop territorial strategic plans, such as in the Ruhr basin, on the Karst Plateau, in the Langhe, on the Garda Lake, on various Italian islands, in the Swiss canton Ticino and South Tyrol.

Creating Resilient Local Communities – Understanding, Reducing and Preparing for Risk from a Multi-Hazard Perspective
Speaker: Alexander Mirescu, CEO / RESILIENT/CITY, Program Coordinator / UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, United States

How to Drive Change and how not to – Learnings from City and Business Leaders who Drive Sustainability
Speaker: Gerald Babel-Sutter, Co-Founder & CEO / URBAN FUTURE Global Conference, Austria

Livable Cities for the 21st Century
Speaker: Jan Gehl, Architect, Author, Founder & Senior Advisor / Gehl Architects, Denmark
Around 1960 the paradigms for city planning were radically changed. Modernism became dominant and the invasion of motorcars took off. In this process the care for the people using cities – looked after for centuries by tradition and experience – was completely left behind. Cities for People became an overlooked and forgotten dimension. This is the story told by Jan Gehl, in his book “Städte für Menchen” which goes on to describe why looking after people is crucial for the quality of life in old as well as new cities in the 21st century. City transformations and mobility strategies from Denmark, USA, Australia, South America and Russia will serve as examples of this new people oriented direction in city planning.

Inclusion as a driver of innovation – pragmatic solutions to force change
Speaker: Constantin Grosch, Founder / AbilityWatch e.V & Activist / Sozialhelden e.V., Germany

Water is our Best Teacher – The Art of Fluid Thinking for a Resilient and Liveable World
Speaker: Herbert Dreiseitl, Landscape Architect & Urban Planner / DREISEITLconsulting GmbH, Germany
Blue and Green in nature are never static but in a state of constant change. The dynamic of water and greenery is the environment’s resilient language, it’s potential to create living systems, and to enhance evolution.
In the built environment water is everywhere but not always visible and often not in our thoughts. We take water’s services for granted, making use of its enormous qualities and performance. In the short run, we might isolate the city from the environment, but to be truly sustainable for future generations, we need to be much more connected to the environment.
Fluid Thinking is an art that Herbert Dreiseitl developed throughout his career due to his deep dedication for water. Herbert Dreiseitl will share and discuss his experiences and works, which integrate regenerative processes, demonstrating a portfolio of site-responsive interventions of community-based urban planning, nature-based solutions, and environmentally sensitive engineering in cities of Europe, Asia, and worldwide.

A multi-stakeholder Circular Economy – Supporting Environmental Quality, Economic Prosperity and Social Equity
Speaker: Cynthia Reynolds, Founder & Systems Architect, Circular Regions, Norway

2 July 2021 2021, 9.15 am (CEST)
Doughnut Economics for a Thriving Local Economy
Speaker: Kate Raworth, Economist & Author, United Kingdom
More about our monthly webinars
As a response to the COVID-19 crisis and its impact on political, social and economic life in our communities we are holding monthly webinars. The webinars provide mayors and local experts with crucial learnings about successful leadership in municipalities. They create a space for dialogue which promotes the transfer of knowledge, learnings and experiences, and the rethinking and redesign of all aspects of social cohesion.
Our webinars are exclusively for members of the ACT NOW Mayors’ Network. If you are interested in participating, please get in touch with Mathis Dippon.
Mayors manage COVID‑19
Mayors and local decision-makers are currently under pressure to take swift action. This involves medical and healthcare related measures to protect the public, but also ensuring that there is cohesion within communities and people are pulling together. We are therefore collecting videos and reports from members and friends of the ACT NOW Mayors’ Network. Under the hashtag #mayorsmanageCOVID we intend to share experiences, learnings, knowledge and creative approaches.
We drive local Action
Our carefully selected collection of Best Practices covers a broad range of local solutions. We identify the ones which are most relevant to specific members based on their individual needs and develop best practice prototypes as a tool for adapting and later on implementing best practices to different local contexts. The result is a holistic process which allows municipalities to successfully plan, implement and monitor local action. To support this process, municipalities can also apply to hold an ACT NOW Local Change Lab in their municipality.
What our members say




