Ungheni City Hall is asking residents for their views on what the city should look like in the years to come — through an anonymous online questionnaire that takes 15–20 minutes to complete. In an announcement published on Tuesday, 14 July, on its official Facebook page, the local administration invites Ungheni residents to say what they think about mobility in the city, public spaces, green areas, digital services and quality of life.
The questionnaire is completed online, at surveys.musalab.org. Participation is voluntary and answers are anonymous — the study page states that the data contain no identifying information and are used only for research purposes. There are no “right” or “wrong” answers: the survey asks how each person sees the city today and what they think about different ideas for its future.
What CORESpaces is
The survey does not stand on its own: it is part of a European project called CORESpaces — in full, “Urban Co-Design and Dynamic Management of Spaces for Smart and Socially Connected Cities”. The project is funded by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe Programme (grant 101239095) and starts from a problem shared by today’s cities: how to better manage space, mobility and energy on the way to climate neutrality.
According to the project’s official fact sheet on the European Union’s CORDIS portal and the presentation given by ERTICO — one of the consortium partners — CORESpaces combines digital tools (AI-assisted planning, city “digital twins”) with the direct involvement of citizens in urban-planning decisions. The solutions are tested in nine “living urban labs” across Europe. The project began on 1 January 2026, brings together around 45 partner organisations and is announced as a four-year journey.
Where Ungheni fits in
Ungheni is one of the project’s nine laboratory cities. In the European documents, the city appears among the participants, and the consortium describes it as a “follower living lab” — that is, a city that takes up and adapts the solutions demonstrated in the cities leading the programme (London, Thessaloniki, Tartu, Eindhoven and Helmond). In the same category as Ungheni, which replicates and adapts the solutions, are Limassol (Cyprus), Verona (Italy), the Cluj-Napoca metropolitan area (Romania) and Fribourg (Switzerland).
At the level of the whole Union, the project is linked to the European Green Deal and to the EU Mission for smart and climate-neutral cities, which aims to help 100 European cities reach climate neutrality by 2030.
What the project changes for the city
For Ungheni, CORESpaces does not remain an abstraction: the project description published by City Hall provides for five concrete measures, with allocated budgets. The first targets the green spaces around kindergartens and the creation of green corridors (€12,000). The second is an energy-efficiency study for public buildings, street lighting and transport, which would prepare the ground for an urban electromobility hub (€15,000).
The third measure — the largest — develops “green and blue” corridors for active mobility, with demonstration actions at Delia Lake (€56,100) and at the French Park, already under full construction (€41,850), plus an app and sensors that would monitor cycling and pedestrian routes in real time (€20,000). The last two measures use air-quality and noise data for health-oriented urban planning (€13,680) and temporarily turn busy streets into pedestrian zones, with street furniture, solar charging stations and LED lighting (€56,100, including 20 benches). Added together, the amounts of the five measures in the project description exceed €200,000.
Why the answers matter
All these interventions directly affect how the city is built and used — a subject that has already sparked local debate about what is being built on the central plots, and how. This is where the survey comes in: its results are meant to show what residents actually prioritise, before the money and the works are directed.
The survey results will help identify priorities for developing cities that are more accessible, more sustainable and better adapted to the needs of communities. Ungheni City Hall, announcement of 14 July
The questionnaire link is the one published by City Hall itself on its official page, and the page that opens is that of the “Urban Transformations Ungheni” study, hosted on the surveys.musalab.org research platform. The survey can be completed in Romanian or English, can be resumed if left unfinished, and the answers remain anonymous.