Riga's fact sheet (PDF) Riga is the capital of Latvia and the largest city in the Baltic States. With its central geographical position and concentration of population, Riga has always been the infrastructural and transport hub of Latvia. Therefore, smart and environmentally friendly transport and sustainable mobility are among our key strategic development priorities. Furthermore, the cities.multimodal project contributes to implementation of our strategic goal to reduce ecological footprint of urban transport in our city.
Pilot area: VEF Neighborhood
Riga’s pilot area – “former VEF industrial complex and adjacent territory”, also referred as the “VEF neighbourhood” is strategically located neighbourhood close to the city centre, bordering the Historic Centre of Riga (the UNESCO World Heritage site). It is an economically active, multi-functional area with over 11 200 employees working, mainly, in ICT companies, 1 700 residents and over 17 000 daily visitors of the area. Dominating land uses are mixed city centre building (commercial, public and residential), industrial building and infrastructure building (technical and transport). The pilot area includes a commercial zone where the majority of the businesses are located, residential and public areas (housing, vocational school, secondary school, kindergarten, etc.) and a former industrial zone which currently is in deprived state.
VEF neighbourhood is one of the priority development areas of the city due to its strategic importance and detected insufficiencies of spatial structure – such as poor connections among residential and commercial zones, lack of pedestrian pathways, lack of green and blue zones, lack of bicycle infrastructure, etc. This area was chosen for cities.multimodal pilot activities also thanks to strong, self-established local community, motivated to take part in development of the neighbourhood, as well as local businesses willing to collaborate with the city authorities towards rising overall urban qualities of their neighbourhood – such as liveability, comfort and attractiveness.
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