24 September 2021

Community of Practice on Cities

COP-CITIES Newsletter #9

Foreword

Welcome to the 9th Edition of the CoP-Cities Newsletter.

We hope you had a restful summer break and that, as the threats of COVID-19 waves slowly fade away, you can soon go back to a more normal working life.

This gradual return to normality should, however, not make us forget about the other formidable challenges that our cities are still facing. The extreme floods, heatwaves, and fires that occurred this summer have shown that all of us, from north to south, are vulnerable to climate extremes, and highlighted the need to transition to a new model, fairer, greener, and respectful of our environment.

More than ever, we need to work together to build on our strength and innovation potential to make our cities more resilient and to start implementing solutions quickly and at scale.

We sincerely hope the CoP-Cities can contribute to bring us closer to these goals and that, with the new school-year, we can now re-energise our network and deepen our interactions. We hope you appreciate this latest edition of our newsletter and we wish you all a productive Autumn.

As usual, keep in mind that this is a bi-monthly publication, with a new edition foreseen for the end of November. For any feedback on this edition, or contributions to the following one, including highlights of your current work, upcoming publications, or events, please let us know at jrc-kctp@ec.europa.eu.

The Editorial Team

Jean-Philippe Aurambout, Patrizia Sulis, and Giulia Testori

Highlights

CityLabs Exploratory Research Activity

The Joint Research Centre is going to deploy between next October and April 2022 a new Exploratory Research Activity called:‘Space matters: How to develop a common methodology for CityLabs’.

Forthcoming Activities and Events

Affordable Housing: Challenges and Prospects seminar

The Community of Practice on CITIES invites you to the seminar 'Affordable Housing: Challenges and Prospects' where we will present and discuss a recent department paper by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) titled ‘Affordable Rental Housing: Making it Part of Europe’s Recovery’ as well as selected scientific work on housing from the European Commission.

The seminar will take place Friday 1 October 15:00 - 16:30 hrs (CEST). No registration required.

date

01/10/2021

venue

Online (Zoom)

Organiser

The European Commission's Joint Research Center and the International Monetary Fund

Registration

Direct access

document

CoP-CITIES_IMF_housing_invitat... (924 KB)

EU Digital Autumn School on the Protection of Public Spaces

Our JRC colleagues are organizing the second EU Digital Autumn School which will offer 5 sessions, including specialized workshops, on a broad spectrum of topics related to the protection of public spaces.

date

23/09/2021 - 21/10/2021

venue

Online

Organiser

European Commission

Registration

Registration for morning sessions

See also

Registration for workshop sessions

European Week of Cities and Regions 2021: “European cities localising the SDGs: experiences and lessons learned”

Organized by the city of Seville with the JRC, this workshop will present and discuss the experiences of Seville, Porto, Valencia, Bratislava, Regio Emilia, Oulu, Seville on integrating the SDGs in their local strategies and actions.

These cities, which participate to the URBAN2030 project of the Joint Research Centre, have been working on an evidence-based approach to SDGs and on supporting their policies decision by meaningful data-based analysis. Cities will report and engage with the audience on how to improve the participation of stakeholders and communities in the efforts to achieve the SDGs, considering recovery plans and actions.

date

14/10/2021

venue

Online

Registration

European Week of Cities and Regions 2021: “Lonely places and shrinking areas: challenges and opportunities for the future”

The workshop will focus on challenges and opportunities in lonely places and shrinking areas, with particular attention to cohesion policy support. The event will present 2 forthcoming reports: “From lonely places to places of opportunities” from the JRC, and “The ERDF support to areas confronted to population decline” carried out for DG REGIO by Spatial Foresight Europe.

A panel discussion will then involve representatives from Youth organisations, The European Rural Development Network, members the European Parliament and the European Committee of the Regions.

date

13/10/2021

venue

Online

Registration

Registation

Webinar: How are urban initiatives and actions supporting Green, Just and Productive Cities in the EU?

The webinars will showcase examples and initiatives from cities on how to develop resilience and further the implementation of the Green, Just and Productive city dimensions at the local level, and provide a space for discussing achievements, remaining issues and future opportunities to help cities face their challenges in a strategic way and thus contribute to sustainable urban development.

date

21/09/2021 - 04/10/2021

venue

Online

Registration

Useful Tools

JRC online tools on urban and territorial strategies

Two JRC online tools for knowledge and methodological support on urban and territorial strategies have been updated.

The Handbook of Sustainable Urban Development online provides recommendations and examples on how to design and implement integrated urban strategies and it has now a new graphic interface with direct links to good practices.

The STRAT-Board dashboard now gathers information on almost 2000 urban and territorial strategies supported by the EU Cohesion Policy during the 2014-2020 programming period. The user experience has been enhanced with the introduction of dynamic pop-ups.

Self-Assessment Tool for Sustainable Urban Development Strategies (SAT4SUD)

The JRC in collaboration with DG REGIO is drafting a Self-Assessment Tool for Sustainable Urban Development Strategies (SAT4SUD).

The tool aims at promoting self-assessment as an important learning practice to critically reflect on the entire policy-cycle, recognising strengths and identifying opportunities for improvement. The SAT4SUD will be presented to the public in an online event on the 25th of November. Further information will be published soon under the "Strategies" tab.

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

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