26 March 2021

Community of Practice on Cities

COP-CITIES Newsletter #6

Foreword

Welcome to the 6th Edition of the CoP-Cities Newsletter

Dear Members of the Community of Practice on Cities,

Spring has officially started, and brings with it a sense of hope, despite the current restrictions in place in many European cities. We hope that as the weather gets warmer and vaccination campaigns progress across Europe and globally, that continued steps will be taken to ease all our lives while ensuring continued safety.

Cities have a key role to play in ensuring awareness, acceptance and efficient distribution of vaccinations amongst their citizens. They will also be vital in the implementation of the Member State recovery plans, which bring with them a strong push for urban regeneration.

This newsletter aims to keep you all up-to-date on recent relevant events, webinars and on-going research projects, as well as forthcoming activities. Please do let us know if you have any items you would like to share in a following edition or any suggestions via the Community of Practice coordinator.

We hope you appreciate this edition, and wish you all a productive Spring and a relaxing and revitalising Easter break. We also look forward to seeing many of you at our first CoP meeting of the year on the 28th of April.

The Editorial Team

Ine Vandecasteele, Jean-Philippe Aurambout, Patrizia Sulis

Highlights

Survey on homelessness in EU cities

To help us better understand homelessness in EU cities, the JRC has put together a new survey.

If you represent a city, please feel free to respond to and distribute the survey to colleagues working on homelessness.

A manual to define cities, towns and rural areas

The European Commission, FAO, UN-Habitat, ILO, the World Bank and OECD just released the manual "Applying the Degree of Urbanisation — A methodological manual to define cities, towns and rural areas for international comparisons".

The manual explains how to classify an entire territory along the urban-rural continuum into one of three distinct classes: cities; towns and semi-dense areas; and rural areas. This report follows the recommendation of the 51st Session of the United Nations Statistical Commission that endorsed a new methodology to define the Degree of Urbanisation.

Spotlight on CoP Work

Adaptation of structural design to climate change

The buildings and structures we design today will need to withstand the climate of 2070. To help us get ready, the JRC established a network to promote an interdisciplinary collaboration between the fields of climate change, structural design, standard and policy.

Latest Publications

The demographic landscape of EU territories

The new EC report on the demographic landscape of EU territories has just been released.

Follow the link below to learn more about the territorial diversities of ageing across the EU and how they relate to various factors.

Forthcoming Activities and Events

Save the date! CoP Plenary April 28th, 2021

We will be hosting this years's Community of Practice Plenary Meeting on Wednesday the 28th of April from 14h30-16h30.

The aim of the meeting is to present the workplan of the CoP for the coming year, as well as highlight some of the current and upcoming work members of the Community are doing.

We will send you more details on the agenda and how to register for the event in our Special Edition of the newsletter by mid-April

Please save the date!

Date

28/04/2021

Launch of the UN-Habitat Report on Cities and Pandemics

The new UN-Habitat Report on Cities and Pandemics: Towards a more just, green and healthy future will be launched on Tuesday 30 March 2021 at 12:30 – 15:00 Brussels time.

Date

30/03/2021

Organiser

UN-HABITAT

See also

Event programme

Past events

Shrinking cities: what opportunities for affordable housing and to address homelessness?

On 25th February 2021, the Housing Solutions Platform hosted a debate on the opportunities of depopulation and shrinking cities for solutions to homelessness. Click on the link below if you would like to view the recordings or download the presentations.

Bloomberg CityLab 2021

The Bloomberg 2021 CityLab event was held from March 1st to 3rd. It brought together city leaders with cross-sector urban thinkers, experts, and artists to connect and share scalable solutions for cities’ most pressing challenges.

In case you missed it, the event highlights can be found in the link below.

Pre-meeting to the Regional Forum on Sustainable Development

On 11 the March, the JRC participated in the pre-meeting to the Regional Forum on Sustainable Development for the UNECE Region on Tools and instruments supporting urban recovery from the COVID19 pandemic and promoting the achievement of the SDGs.

Rural Vision Week

The urban and rural dimensions are complementary in territorial research and analysis. Find out insights from the recent Rural Vision Week - Imagining the future of Europe's rural areas.

Useful Tools

A new website for the Handbook of Sustainable Urban Development Strategies

The new website of The Handbook of Sustainable Urban Development Strategies is now online!

In its web version, the various components of the Handbook can be easily navigated. Embedded links allow to move from one chapter to the other, to access the STRAT-Board and external contents.

This is the bi-monthly newsletter of the Community of Practice on Cities.

If the COP-CITIES newsletter was forwarded to you and you wish to register, please Subscribe.

You can unsubscribe from this newsletter at any time by updating your profile page.

The European Commission is committed to personal data protection. Any personal data is processed in line with the Regulation (EU) 2018/1725. Please read the privacy statement.