28 January 2022

Community of Practice on Cities

COP-CITIES Newsletter #11

Dear Members of the Community of Practice on Cities,

We hope that you had a restful end-of-year break and we wish you a Happy new year 2022. While we were all hoping for a quick return to normal, it seems uncertainty will remain a part of our life for some time. This ongoing pandemic has taught us the importance to incorporate resilience into our systems and, looking ahead, that we now need to seriously and realistically plan for longer-term issues we know are coming.

Luckily, more and more cities are playing an active role and gaining momentum, thanks to increasing evidence, networking, and political and funding opportunities. By providing access to new information and events, we hope this latest edition of our newsletter can assist you with a productive start to the year. Furthermore, we are planning several activities for the coming months, including the annual plenary of CoP Cities and the launch of new Future of Cities briefs. We will update you about this soon.

As usual, keep in mind that this is a bi-monthly publication, with a new edition foreseen for the end of March 2022. 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

Our latest policy brief on Shrinking Cities is out!

If you thought all cities were growing, you better read this...We are delighted to announce the release of our latest CoP-Cities policy brief on 'Shrinking Cities'.

We are grateful to all the colleagues who participated in its elaboration, and we also want to thank the city councils of Ostrava, Genova and Kaunas for their valuable inputs. This is the first of our spring batch of policy briefs, other issues coming soon.

Results from the Future of Cities - Next steps survey

As anticipated in the last newsletter, here are the results from our survey on what topics the CoP should look at in 2022. Thank you very much to those of you who participated in our survey to help us identify the priorities for our next round of policy briefs.

The chart below shows the distribution of votes for the issues we pre-identified:

We will now start consulting with the colleages who provided us with their contact details to scope briefs in more detail.

If you would like to participate in any of these briefs or raise the importance of these topics, we will leave the survey open for another 2 months (until our next newsletter) to extend the opportunity to contribute to the CoP agenda.

Latest Publications

JRC Future Mobility Solutions Living Lab

This report illustrates the outcomes of the Future Mobility Solutions Living Lab (FMS-Lab) developed at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). This work promotes an innovative, human-centric approach to new policy and mobility solutions. More specifically, the report highlights the living lab methodologies applied, shares the journey of implementing a mobility Living Lab in Ispra (Italy), and also provides lessons learned and recommendations to take into account when setting up a Living Lab.

New JRC publication: A place-based approach to migrant integration

A new report from our colleagues at the JRC Territorial Development and Demography, Migration and Governance units illustrates the outcome of exploratory research about migrant integration in European municipalities. Results of this study suggest that sustainable urban development strategies, and in particular urban regeneration policies that address disadvantaged areas, can be used to foster migrant integration in the long run. Several case studies based on local urban data are also presented in the report.

New insights for sustainable development: Designing for planetary boundary cities

This newly-released report from ARUP illustrates the concept of planetary boundaries and describes some of the directions on how to design the built environment within the ‘safety rails’ established by the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s Planetary Boundary Framework (PBF). The report introduces the nine Earth system processes of the PBF, describing their importance; the drivers of degradation; the enablers of regeneration; and the actions that cities can take to bring us back into a safe operating space. It also sets out 20 regenerative actions to help achieve sustainable development within these limits, whilst restoring natural systems.

The Ljubljana Agreement: a step towards an updated Urban Agenda for the EU

The Ljubljana Agreement and its Multi-annual Working Programme, adopted from EU ministers in November 2021, represents a concrete step towards renewing and updating the Urban Agenda for the EU, with a common goal to make it more impactful and efficient. The adoption of the agreement is also complemented by several operational parameters and steps supporting the implementation of the next phase of the initiative.

Further work will be launched in 2022 to develop new partnerships on Sustainable Tourism and Greening Cities.

Forthcoming Activities and Events

CITIES FORUM 2023 – Last call for hosting cities

DG REGIO opened the call for applications to host the 5th edition of the CITIES FORUM that will take place in the first quarter of 2023. The 5th edition will be organised in a physical and hybrid format and will welcome around 700 participants for 2 days.

Cities interested in hosting and co-organising the CITIES FORUM together with DG REGIO can show their interest by submitting their application by 31 January 2022. Further information is available in the link below.

Past events

Current trends of homelessness in European cities

Our colleague Sjoerdje Van Heerden presented the JRC's work on adequate housing and homelessness at the EUKN (European Urban Knowledge Network) Urban Voices seminar series.

Useful Tools

Self-Assessment Tool for Sustainable Urban Development strategies

The Self-Assessment Tool for Sustainable Urban Development strategies (SAT4SUD) is a tool intended to be used by Local and Managing Authorities of EU Cohesion Policy. It helps to verify to what extent a strategy builds on an integrated and participatory approach. The tool focuses on a self-assessment as an important learning practice to assess the strategy’s completeness and quality, from its design and implementation, to its monitoring and evaluation.

E-learning course on Cities taking actions against climate change

Recently launched, the online course “Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy - Cities taking actions against climate change” gives participants the opportunity to discover successful stories, gain know-how and skills to develop a strong Climate Action Plan, and deliver into practice local climate ambitions. Three modules, focusing on the GCoM framework, local approach to climate change mitigation, and adaptation, are already available online. New modules on cross-sectoral questions and co-benefits and Energy access and poverty will be available in the coming month.

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

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