Open Cities - Build for All

On 8 September 2006 Gdynia organised a seminar "Open cities - build for all. Implementation of best practice in accessibility in public procurement". This seminar was held within the "Build for All" pilot project concerning implementation of accessibility to the built environment through Public Procurement. The main objective of the project is to mainstream disability policies through the EU Public Procurement Directives.

Apart from the seminar in Gdynia, similar workshops were organized in Germany, Italy and Spain.

The organizers of the meeting were Info-Handicap (The National Disability Council of Luxembourg) - coordinator of the "Build for All" project - and Gdynia. The representatives of local authorities, city hall employees, architects and potential users were present. The participants could get acquainted with the public procurement requirements in Poland, expectations of the natural environment users (including mostly the disabled) as well as experiences of architects designing in accordance with the universal accessibility rule. Speakers from Germany and Italy presented the implementation of best practice in accessibility into public procurement in their countries. In the course of the meeting the experiences of Poland in the Theld of municipal disability policy were also presented.

During the seminar its participants could see the exhibition "Cities without barriers". The exhibition consisted of photos and architectural projects prepared during the architectural workshops "Cities without barriers" that were held in Gdynia last year. These workshops organized in cooperation with the University of Technology in Gdansk were aimed at sensitizing students of architecture to the problems of the people with reduced mobility.