"Community of Practice on Cities Newsletter" Newsletter Issues

Supporting Recovery and SDG implementation at local level: governance, tools and experiences (20/07/2021)

On July 9, our JRC colleagues from the Disaster Risk Management Unit conducted a Special Event “Supporting Recovery and SDG implementation at local level: governance, tools and experiences” during the High Level Political Forum 2021.

The Session, convened by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research under the SDG Learning programme, discussed perspectives on the benefits of Earth observations (EO) for SDGs mapping and monitoring, highlighting practical applications of the Degree of Urbanisation Method and the EO Toolkit for Sustainable Cities.

City Science Initiative plenary (20/07/2021)

On the 7 July 2021, the City Science Initiative (CSI) held its plenary meeting under the umbrella of the Community of Practice on CITIES. The event included discussions from representatives from Amsterdam, Hamburg, Paris, and Thessaloniki.

EU Digital Autumn School on Protection of Public Spaces 2021 (23/09/2021)

The European Commission is organizing the second EU Digital Autumn School which will offer specialized workshops on a broad spectrum of topics related to the protection of public spaces.

Urban Sustainability in Europe (22/07/2021)

Our colleagues from the EEA just released a new report looking at factors that can either enable or hinder urban sustainability transitions. To access it, click on the link below.

Anthropogenic CO2 and air pollutant emissions for all human settlements of the world (20/07/2021)

Our JRC colleagues in cooperation with the OECD just released a new study accessing global CO2 and pollutant emissions aggregated a local level.

URBACT 2021 city festival (20/07/2021)

On the 15 to 17th of June, Urbact held it annual City Festival. The event celebrated URBACT’s experiences on the transfer of urban good practice across 23 URBACT networks of EU cities.

Foreword (20/07/2021)

Dear members of the Community of Practice on Cities,

Reminder: Invitation to the City Science Initiative plenary roundtable, Wednesday July 7 2021 (05/07/2021)

Dear member of the Community of Practice on Cities,

Invitation to the City Science Initiative plenary roundtable, Wednesday July 7 2021 (21/06/2021)

Dear member of the Community of Practice on Cities,

Foreword (20/05/2021)

Dear members of the Community of Practice on Cities,

The first CoP on Cities online plenary was a success! (26/05/2021)

We held our online CoP on cities plenary meeting last month on April 28th.

We were joined, by almost 80 members and learned of current and new developments related to cities from within the European Commission (DG REGIO, DG RTD, DG CNCT, DG MOVE), as well as from Eurocities, CEMR, and EUKN . This was a great opportunity to exchange information on current initiatives and identify synergies for future collaborations, including the upcoming Urban Observatory and the City Science Initiative.

Policy brief on tourism in Europe (25/05/2021)

JRC colleagues also published a brief on Tourism, you can access the publication through the link below.

Policy brief on broadband accessibility (26/05/2021)

Our JRC colleagues just released a new publication on broadband accessibility, you can check it out through the link below.

Leading the Digital Decade (01/06/2021)

This two-day online event will focus on defining the path to Europe’s digital transformation towards 2030.

Report launch: Local and regional indicators and multilevel governance for the SDGs (16/06/2021)

In this event, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) will present three methodological reports on the localisation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Europe.

Under the coordination of the JRC, three international experts have elaborated specific analysis, based on the experiences of European local and regional governments that use monitoring as a tool to localise the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda.

CONNECT University Summer School 2021 | Digital for our Planet (21/06/2021)

From the 21st of June to the 2nd of July, CONNECT University organises a special sixth edition of Summer School. The aim of this edition is to share knowledge and information about the way climate change is interconnected with digital transformation.

You can find more information and register through the link below.

B2G data sharing in cities: 5 online workshops (05/05/2021)

This series of online workshops is part of the Living-in.eu movement, and it is based on the findings of the report of the High-Level Expert Group on Business-to-Government (B2G) data sharing and earlier workshops. For this new series, the aim is to explore opportunities for upscaling B2G data sharing. The organisers would like to invite city experts and programme managers experienced with B2G data sharing and setting up data partnerships, to discuss how cities and the European Commission can cooperate in achieving more data sharing.

EU-US Young Leaders Seminar on the Future of Cities (25/05/2021)

As part of the EU-US Young Leaders Seminar on the Future of Cities, organised by the Fulbright Commission in Brussels, our JRC colleagues participated to “The Future of Cities: Expert Panel Discussion” and the "Technology Transforming Cities: Q&A and Working Group Discussion".

The event provided an effective platform to exchange and discuss information with the audience.

Urban Agenda for the EU: 8th Partnership Meeting – Security in Public Spaces (25/05/2021)

The 8th meeting of the Urban Agenda (UA) Partnership on the Security in Public Spaces took place on May 11-12th, 2021, with the participation of external stakeholders and experts from EC DG REGIO, HOME, CNECT, and JRC.

ELTIS newsletter (27/05/2021)

If you are interested in urban mobility, you may also want to visit the Urban Mobility Observatory and view its monthly newsletter. Eltis facilitates the exchange of information, knowledge and experience in the field of sustainable urban mobility in Europe.

Presentations from the CoP plenary (29/04/2021)

Connection details: CoP on Cities Plenary Meeting 2021 (23/04/2021)

.

Special Edition: CoP on Cities Plenary Meeting 2021 (28/04/2021)

Welcome to this special edition inviting you to the CoP-Cities Plenary meeting!

Welcome to the 6th Edition of the CoP-Cities Newsletter (23/03/2021)

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

Survey on homelessness in EU cities (23/03/2021)

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 (23/03/2021)

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.

Adaptation of structural design to climate change (23/03/2021)

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.

The demographic landscape of EU territories (22/03/2021)

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.

Save the date! CoP Plenary April 28th, 2021 (28/04/2021)

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!

Launch of the UN-Habitat Report on Cities and Pandemics (30/03/2021)

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.

Shrinking cities: what opportunities for affordable housing and to address homelessness? (22/03/2021)

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 (23/03/2021)

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 (23/03/2021)

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 (23/03/2021)

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.

A new website for the Handbook of Sustainable Urban Development Strategies (23/03/2021)

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.

New years greetings! (19/01/2021)

Welcome to the 5th Edition of the Community of Practice on Cities Newsletter!

Green City Accord - A new European Commission initiative to make cities greener, cleaner and healthier (18/01/2021)

Launched in October 2020, the Green City Accord is a movement of European mayors committed to safeguarding the environment. By signing the Accord, cities will take ambitious action in five areas: air quality, water quality and efficiency, noise abatement, urban biodiversity, waste management and the circular economy.

Mayors across the EU can join the initiative at any time by signing the Accord’s commitment document.

Improving the territorial knowledge-base: Updated maps of land use and population for Europe (18/01/2021)

The JRC's LUISA team just finalised two key datasets for on-going and upcoming territorial assessments and policy support:

-The LUISA Base Map 2018

-The JRC-GEOSTAT 2018

International migrants in Functional Urban Area  (18/01/2021)

Last December, the JRC launched a new exploratory research project looking at the link between migrant integration and local territories.

Urban 2030 project and the localisation of SDGs (19/01/2021)

Last October, the JRC kicked off the second phase of the 'URBAN 2030' project, that aims at boosting the localisation of the Sustainable Development Goals using Voluntary Local Reviews. A group of pilot cities (including Bratislava, Helsinki, Oulu, Porto, Reggio Emilia, Sevilla, Turku, Valencia) will test the use of the European Handbook for SDG Voluntary Local Reviews to improve the proposed methodology and elaborate their SDG reviews.  

Atlas of the Human Planet 2020 (19/01/2021)

The JRC Disaster Risk Management Unit just released the 2020 edition of the Atlas of the Human Planet 2020 – Open Geoinformation for Research, Policy and Action.

Ambient assisted living and European funds: a bibliometric approach (18/01/2021)

Population ageing is becoming a significant problem in the most developed countries. More than 35% of EU citizens will be over 60 by 2050. Age-associated diseases and dependency severely impact health care costs and the promotion of healthy ageing has become a key objective. Science, technology and innovation are widely perceived to provide the means for solving this demographical and social challenge. This work analyses the impact of European funding research programmes on the topic of Ambient Assisted Living by considering its status, future context, and the implications for prospective knowledge management.

Citizen Science – discoveries from a five year journey (20/01/2021)

Citizen Science evolved from a long tradition in fields such as biodiversity and meteorology, into almost all scientific fields. It is now not only prominent in research and civil society, but also well recognised in political agendas and increasingly relevant at a municipal and neighbourhood level. Recently, the Citizen Science team of the JRC Digital Economy Unit published their activity report summarizing the results of their related work of the past five years.

SMARTER 2020 Conference Webinar series (18/01/2021)

The 4th webinar of the SMARTER 2020 Conference was held online on 19 November 2020 and discussed the main finding from the 2019 edition of the report on the Quality of life in European Cities.

Recovery, Cities and New European Bauhaus (19/01/2021)

On December 3rd the Global Forum of Local Governments organised a session on "Putting the new Bauhaus to work for the recovery: smart investing in Europe's cities", in collaboration with the JRC. The event was held in Seville and online, and aimed at discussing how the New European Bauhaus initiative could inspire the thinking of local governments in pursuing a sustainable urban development against the backdrop of the recovery effort. Follow the link below to access the recording.

The New Leipzig Charter and JRC's Urban Activities (19/01/2021)

Organised in cooperation with the Territorial Development Unit of the Joint Research Centre (JRC.B.3), this webinar was held on 26 November 2020, and provided a space to discuss the findings of the EUKN study ‘The New Leipzig Charter and the JRC’s Urban Activities’, broadening the reflection on the role of science for policy post 2020.

New European Bauhaus: Commission launches design phase (19/01/2021)

On 18 January, the Commission launched the design phase of the New European Bauhaus initiative, announced by President von der Leyen in her 2020 State of the Union address. It is an environmental, economic and cultural project, aiming to combine design, sustainability, accessibility, affordability and investment in order to help deliver the European Green Deal.

The core values of the New European Bauhaus are thus sustainability, aesthetics and inclusiveness. In the design phase, you can help shape the concept through a co-creation process. Let’s connect, explore ideas, and identify the most urgent needs and challenges together!

Foreword (13/11/2020)

Welcome to the 4th Edition of the Community of Practice on Cities Newsletter!

The New Leipzig Charter and JRC's Urban Activities - EUKN Webinar for the JRC (26/11/2020)

This webinar (26 November, 14:30-16:00 CEST) showcases a recent study by the EUKN assessing JRC’s urban activities against the framework of the New Leipzig Charter, and explores how to enhance the EU science-policy interface post-2020.

The call for research and innovation projects to respond to the European Green Deal are now open for registration! (13/11/2020)

This €1 billion call is the last and biggest call under Horizon 2020 and aims to boost the green and digital transition

An info day and brokerage event for potential applicants and stakeholders took place during the European Research and Innovation Days, on 23 and 24 September. If you could not attend, all the sessions were recorded and are available here.

The deadline for submissions is 26 January 2021

The JRC research campuses become living laboratories for smart city experiments (11/11/2020)

The JRC has opened its research sites in Italy and the Netherlands as living laboratories to external companies for the testing of future mobility and digital energy solutions.

In the next months, project consortiums will be testing various smart city technologies, such as smart charging stations, automated droids, automated vehicles and robo-taxis on the sites.

A call for expressions of interest is open until December 31 for other private and public organisations that are interested in taking part.

Handbook of Sustainable Urban Development Strategies (10/11/2020)

The Handbook of Sustainable Urban Development Strategies is now available as an online platform . From the website, you can download the full report and other useful contents such as a ready-to-use presentation. Moreover, you can directly explore each chapter separately.

The Handbook is a policy-learning tool that helps cities and managing authorities in designing and implementing integrated urban strategies under the EU’s cohesion policy.

Valencia City Lab - An analysis of Urban Air Quality (13/11/2020)

A new study on urban air quality has just been carried out in the framework of the collaboration between the City of Valencia, University of Valencia, and the JRC.

A new cutting-edge global reference layer on human settlements (06/11/2020)

The Global Human Settlement Layer is releasing a new, free and open global built-up grid from Sentinel-2 Copernicus data. It shows humanity’s imprint as of 2018 at a spatial resolution of 10 meters.

Estimating structural factors in the EU-wide costs of schooling (11/11/2020)

The JRC together with the OECD and DG REGIO are working on estimating the facility and travel costs of schooling across Europe.

Local ageing projections (11/11/2020)

The JRC’s LUISA team has come back this year with an update of the LUISA EU reference scenario, with a big addition:

A fine resolution dataset of accessibility under different traffic conditions in European cities (06/11/2020)

A new article on urban accessibility and congestion in European cities has just been published by our CoP colleagues from the JRC and DG REGIO. The research gives valuable insight into how congestion can make accessibility vary, allowing comparisons even between neighbourhoods within a city.

Living Cost Gap in the European Union Member States (16/11/2020)

Our JRC colleagues just published a paper looking at living costs gap across EU member states.

A new European regional tourism typology (11/11/2020)

Our JRC colleagues just published an article classifying EU regions into five predominant tourism types: coastal, city, urban mix, mountains & nature, and rural. Each regional typology identified shows distinct profiles of tourism intensity and seasonality.

City Science for Urban Challenges (06/11/2020)

This pilot assessment report highlights the progress and achievements of the first two years of the City Science Initiative (CSI).

The report provides useful insights on how to align European research with urban challenges. It specifically addresses the connection between research, policy and design; the collaboration between scientists, urban policymakers and European institutions; the need for data exchange frameworks and the integration of the CSI with other networks.

European Mobility Week (16/11/2020)

Last September, nearly 3,000 towns and cities in Europe and beyond showed their commitment with zero-emission mobility for all.

Living-in.eu movement – 3rd meeting with signatories of the declaration (01/10/2020)

With more than 150 participants in an interactive Zoom session hosted by ENoLL, the third plenary meeting of the Living-in.eu movement held on 29 September 2020 was a big success. The chair Eddy Hartog and his colleagues had the pleasure to host more than 60 cities, partially signatories of the political declaration Living.-in.eu but also some guest cities from the Intelligent Cities Challenge programme, the organisations behind the initiative ENoLL, Eurocities, OASC, the Committee of the Regions and several services of the European Commission.

Urban Mobility Days 2020 (16/11/2020)

The first Urban Mobility Days conference, held from September 30th to October 2nd, combined two leading events from Europe’s transport calendar: the CIVITAS Forum Conference and the European Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs).

European Week of Regions and Cities (11/11/2020)

The European Week of Regions and Cities took place in October and the CoP hosted multiple sessions.

Living-in.EU movement – First meeting with supporters (04/11/2020)

The first online meeting with supporters of the Living-in.EU (LI.EU) movement took place on 22 October 2020. Supporters of the movement coming from a range of organisations across the EU (NGOs, research institutes, companies and associations) were briefed on the progress to date in implementing the commitments of the “Join, Boost, Sustain” Declaration, and discussed ideas on how they can contribute to the LI.EU movement.

Daring Cities Conference (07/10/2020)

In the process of localising the SDGs, pioneer cities have conducted their own Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) based on local data and localised indicators.

Webinars on Local work on the Sustainable Development Goals in UBC Cities organised by the Union of the Baltic Cities (27/10/2020)

The first UBC TALKS webinar explored how to get started with the Voluntary Local Review (VLR) process.

In the second webinar, the discussion focused on illustrating how the UBC member cities work with the VLR framework locally in different ways.

UDN webinar series: Six building blocks to sustainable urban development (13/11/2020)

The Urban Development Network (UDN) webinars are aimed at providing insights on how to tackle the main challenges policy-makers face when designing and implementing sustainable urban development strategies as supported by the Cohesion Policy.

SMARTER 2020 Conference - 6th webinar - Sustainable Urban Development and Innovation: aligning policies for change (03/12/2020)

The webinar of the SMARTER 2020 Conference will be held online on the 3 December 2020 from 10:30 to 11:45 CET and will address the nexus between urban development and innovation. The webinar will also explore the possible integration of different policy instruments and frameworks promoted at European level mainly through cohesion policy, and the new mission-oriented approach of the EU research and innovation policy.