Dear urban community,

We hope you are all safe in good health!

Most of us have now been experiencing lockdown for many weeks, but work on urban matters does not sleep, and we have all had to adapt in one way or another to the circumstances, finding ways of continuing our professional and leisure activities from our homes. 

Physical events have been replaced by online events, often reaching much larger audiences. More than 450 stakeholders registered for a web conference on community-led housing end of April (more on this below). The annual Urban Agenda for the EU Coordinators & (now) Action Leaders Meeting will also be taking place online, for the first time ever. Later this year, we expect the 2020 edition of the European Week of European Cities to gather thousands of participants in Brussels, provided the health circumstances allow. This event illustrates the ever-growing interest in regional policy, even during a public health crisis. 

Cities have had to work hard to develop concrete solutions to mitigate the difficulties generated by the pandemic, and we have some concrete examples for you from the fields of housing and security below.

But our focus today is not the pandemic - as we have pointed out, our work has all but come to a halt. In this newsletter you'll find tribute to that ongoing work, in the form of a wide array of news, calls and initiatives that persist and thrive despite the trying times!

The Urban Agenda for the EU Communications Team

Any questions? Drop us a line at ua.communication@ecorys.com.