Smart & Sustainable Mobility Mission to Europe, for Indian Officials

Year: 2025  |  Client: GIZ – Green Urban Mobility Partnership (India)  |  Country: Germany, Netherlands, Spain (India delegation)

On behalf of GIZ's Green Urban Mobility Partnership, Cities Forum designed and implemented a two-week capacity-building mission to Europe for senior Indian public officials, policymakers and transport-authority staff. As Indian cities pursue ambitious mobility reforms at extraordinary scale, exposure to mature European systems, seen, questioned and debated first-hand, can accelerate learning in ways that reports cannot. The mission was built to convert that exposure into concrete policy implications for the participants' home cities.

Our approach

The programme took the delegation through Berlin, Amsterdam and Barcelona, three reference cities for sustainable and smart urban mobility, and was organised around three thematic blocks. The first addressed the decarbonisation of public transport, including electric-bus depots, charging networks and low-emission zones. The second explored Mobility-as-a-Service and multimodal integration, with deep dives into MaaS platforms, inclusive-design tools such as NaviLens, and data-driven governance. The third examined street-space transformation, covering superblocks, active-mobility corridors and public-space redesign. Each block paired technical site visits with institutional meetings with metropolitan transport authorities, operators and regulators.

What we delivered

Cities Forum curated the entire journey, technical visits, high-level meetings and structured debriefs that translated observation into implication, and embedded a team project in which the Indian delegations applied European lessons to specific domestic challenges, supported by Cities Forum mentors. Deliverables ranged from the tailored mission agenda and briefing pack to post-mission policy briefs and communication materials amplified through Cities Forum's and GIZ's networks.

Impact

The assignment strengthened Indo-European cooperation on urban mobility and left participants with a validated toolbox for accelerating sustainable-transport reform at home. Crucially, it went beyond study-tour tourism: by demanding that each delegation return with a worked application to a real problem, the mission produced tangible follow-through rather than fading impressions. For Cities Forum, the project reinforced a trusted relationship with GIZ and demonstrated the firm's ability to design high-stakes international learning journeys that connect European practice with the priorities of one of the world's most dynamic urban-mobility markets.