Cities of Tomorrow: Future Urban Challenges

Workshop

Chaired by

Corinne Hermant and Christian Svanfeldt

European Commission Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy

Cities of Tomorrow

Future Urban Challenges

Future Urban Challenges – What?

Photo: Ivan Tosics

Governance challenges

Socio-economic challenges

Demographic challenges

Interrelated challenges

• Job creation, skills base, attractiveness

•

Climate adaptation, energy and resource efficiency

Copyright:

Ingela

Svedin

Sustainable mobility, pollution, land use

Eddy Adams - URBACT Thematic Pole Manager

Isabel André – University of Lisbon

Thomas Elmqvist – Stockholm Resilience Centre

Antonio Calafati, Gran Sasso Science Institute,

Sally Kneeshaw – URBACT Thematic Pole Manager

Panel 1

Future Urban Challenges – How?

Budget: EUR 330 000 000

Identify and test new solutions

Current and coming urban challenges

Studies and pilot projects

Innovative Actions in the field of

Sustainable Urban Development

Innovative Actions in the field of

Sustainable Urban Development

• Several calls 2014-2020

• ≥ 50000 inhabitants

• Max €5 000 000

• Max three years

Alessandro Balducci, Politecnico di Milano

Laura Colini, Leibnitz Institute for Regional and Structural Planning

Sonia Fayman, ACT Consultants

Claude Jacquier, CNRS

Ivan Tosics, URBACT Thematic Pole Manager

Panel 2

Thank you!

http://ec.europa.eu/cities

Panel Discussion: Future Urban Challenges in Europe

Panel members: • Antonio Calafati • Sally Kneeshaw • Thomas Elmqvist • Isabel André • Eddy Adams

Problems and challenges for EU cities in a context of crisis

• Isabel André • Professor and researcher, Institute of Geography and Spatial

Planning (IGOT), University of Lisbon

• isabelandre@campus.ul.pt

The context ‘The territorial European territorial policy is blind’ (Mark Frequin 17/02/14) Countries as Portugal, Spain or Greece (integrating the EC in the 80’s) perceive their progress as irreversible in the last decades… With the crisis this thinking falloff… Poverty, other exclusions, urban decline, new homeless, insecurity… have now returned

A pattern of cities breakdowns

First breakdown – cities based on construction/real estate/tourism (e.g Spanish Mediterranean Coast and Algarve/Portugal)

Second breakdown – cities with a large middle class greatly affected

by austerity decline of retail and services (domestic consumption)

Crisis has different impacts in different cities – it depends on urban economic fabric, social structure, local policies

Main urban problems – multiple foci

Housing

Mobility

Economy and Employment

Main urban problems A) HOUSING

Strong decrease of residential mobility related to the cessation of cheap credit – dramatic drop on housing credit loans)

Decrease of housing prices

Increase of house renting market (specially demanded by young families)

Many empty houses (before in the speculating sphere) enter in the renting market

Decrease of housing prices

Main urban problems

B) MOBILITY

Decrease of daily mobility

Reduction of public and private transport

Increase of (forced) soft mobility

Main urban problems C) ECONOMY, EMPLOYMENT

Unemployment affecting not only unskilled workers but also the middle class and very qualified young people

Emigration of those qualified young people strengthening aging process

Collapse of many shops, restaurants and other small enterprises – decline of retailing areas

Income and consumption decrease

Rising of urban poverty/new poverty (middle class)/ employed persons poverty

Main policy challenges to overcoming the crisis

Rehabilitation and regeneration in the city centre or in the oldest suburbs centre (renovating old houses unfit for use) Support for culture and the arts (indirectly promoting urban tourism) - the distinction of the city Stop the departure of young people (incentives for return) Maintain lower energy consumption and more sustainable mobility after the crisis Promoting several models of intervention in the city (co-working with neighbourhoods)

Welfare city?

Panel Discussion: Future Urban Challenges in Europe

Panel members: • Antonio Calafati • Sally Kneeshaw • Thomas Elmqvist • Isabel André • Eddy Adams

The ‘Smart Growth’ Paradigm

and the European Urban

System

Antonio Calafati

Gran Sasso Science Institute (IT)

& Academy of Architecture (CH)

www.gssi.infn.it

0. A EUROPEAN UNION URBAN AGENDA

Why do we need an ‘EU urban agenda’?

How can an EU urban agenda be implemented?

What should an EU urban agenda be?

The ‘issue paper’ that was proposed as a background to the discussion lists three questions that we are expected to discuss in this

session – and in the other two parallel sessions: Why do we need an ‘EU urban agenda’? What should an EU urban agenda be?

How can an EU urban agenda be implemented? ‘To set the scene’ I will suggest a clear-cut answer to each of these three questions

as a starting point for discussion.

1. THE ‘NEW URBAN QUESTION’ IN EUROPE

WHY DO WE NEED A ‘EUROPEAN UNION URBAN AGENDA?

We need a ‘European urban agenda’ because we have to confront with a ‘European urban question’ – that has consolidated in the past 20 years. The ‘European urban question’ can be summarised in terms of two fundamental dimensions: a) there are large and growing disparities among European cities – not only in terms of current performances but also – and notably, as I shall stress later, in terms of ‘development potential’; b) there are large and growing disparities within cities – not only in terns of income but also in terms of access to public and collective goods (spatial welfare) and in terms of distribution of negative and positive externalities. The first step towards a “EU urban agenda’ is the acknowledgment of a “European urban question”.

Why do we need a ‘European Union urban agenda?

Large and increasing

disparities among cities

In order to address the

“European urban question’

Large and increasing

disparities within cities

1. THE ‘NEW URBAN QUESTION’ IN EUROPE

THE EUROPEAN URBAN SYSTEM: THREATS AND CHALLENGES

Shrinking

welfare state

Labour market

liberalisation

Reshaping of market-state

relationships

Urban threats/challenges

De-industrialisation and unemployment;

spatial polarisation; increasing poverty;

spatial segmentation; income disparities;

social segregation; …

Internationalisatio

n of the European

economy /society Institutional

transition in Central

and Eastern Europe

Environmental

threat

At the roots of the European urban question there are at least 4 key factors, widely and rightly discussed in their political significance and macro-economic implications but not that much in terms of their impact on the economic and social state of cities: a) the reshaping of the state-market relationships; b) the internationalisation of the European economy and society; c) the institutional transition of Central and Eastern Europe, on becoming part of the EU; d) the environmental threat. These factors have profoundly and very differently impacted on European cities, by generating a constellation of economic and social disequilibria. These factors have already begun to unfold their long terms effects. But we may safely affirm that the ‘European urban question’ will continue to stay with us for a long time.

ICT technology

2. MEETING THE ‘NEW URBAN QUESTION’ IN EUROPE EUROPEAN, NATIONAL AND LOCAL RESPONSES TO THE NEW URBAN QUESTION

Over the past two decades the ‘new European urban question’ emerged and consolidated. There have been ‘reactions’, ‘responses’, ‘policy actions’ on the part of ‘policy makers’ or ‘policy actors’ at all tiers of government (and governance). It is extremely important to stress this point. Moving towards a ‘European urban agenda’ it would be without significance not to turn back in order to acknowledge and to assess the kind of interpretations of the ‘urban crises’ that have been put forward and the policies that have been designed and implemented. To simplify we can simply turn to three key policy levels: the European Union, member states and cities.

2014

1990 2000

Emergence of an ‘urban

question’ in Europe

Consolidation of an

‘urban question’ in Europe

Member states

Cities

European Union

2. MEETING THE ‘NEW URBAN QUESTION’ IN EUROPE

THE EUROPEAN DISCOURSE ON CITIES

The European Union has developed a comprehensive discourse on city in the past two decades. It is useless to signal that in the Europe 2020 strategy cities are not given a role. Starting from the European Commission’s Communication “Towards an Urban Agenda for the European Union” (1997) an articulated discourse on cities as developed in the past years. I have put in the figure only some of the episodes that have marked the construction of an encompassing ‘EU perspective’ on the ‘urban question’. In order to address the question of a European urban agenda we should not move on from the ‘Europe 2020 Strategy’ but rather from all the ‘documents’, ‘communications’, ‘declarations’ that the European Union had devoted to the ‘European model of city’ and the ‘European model of territory’. Meeting today we should be aware of the ‘European Union perspective’ on city. It would be useless to arrange a ‘EU urban agenda’ in terns of ‘principles’, ‘concepts’. I do not see what the EU can say in addition to what it has already said on this issue.

Towards an European

Urban Agenda

(European Commission)

1997

The Lipsia

Charter

2007

The European Spatial

Development Perspective

1999

The Marseille

Statement

2008 2010

The Toledo

Declaration Cities of

Tomorrow

2011

Sustainable Urban

Development in the

European Union: A

Framework for Action

1998

Territorial Agenda of

the European Union

2020 Territorial Agenda

of the European

Union

(…)

2. MEETING THE ‘NEW URBAN QUESTION’ IN EUROPE NATIONAL AND LOCAL RESPONSES TO THE NEW URBAN QUESTION

I put forward a clear-cut thesis, which is at the centre of my presentation. We should not look at the shortcomings of the European Union with regards to the ‘European urban question’, but rather to the shortcomings – and failures – that have characterised the national and local (cities) levels of the policy-making process. National governments and cities reacted very differently to challenges posed by the urban question and, to the more specific challenge of incorporating the EU perspective on cities in their urban and regional policies. I cannot go into details now– also because I do not have enough comparative knowledge in this field -, but the classification framework given above can help us to capture the core of the question. The European discourse on city was de facto a suggestion, an invitation – may be not strong enough – to develop ‘national urban agendas’ in the European Union. And we range from countries that have developed ‘smart urban agendas’ to countries that do not have even tried put the ‘urban question’ on their policy agenda. The same dichotomy can be observed with regards to cities – actors that, for reasons I cannot discuss here, have greatly increased their ‘strategic potential’. Some have articulated a ‘smart agenda’ (an effective development strategy), others have outlined incoherent and irrelevant policy measures, other simply nothing. Why has Amsterdam – jus to make an example, possibly the most obvious – developed such a comprehensive development strategy whereas Florence has not?

National strategies and responses

Single cities’ strategies and

responses

Highly different

Highly different

No national urban agenda

Consistent national urban

agenda

No strategic response

‘Perfect’ strategic response

2. MEETING THE ‘NEW URBAN QUESTION’ IN EUROPE THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GERMAN URBAN AGENDA

1999

The Leipzig Charter

)

2007 2003

Memorandum: Auf dem Weg

zu einer Nationalen

Stadtentwicklungspolitik

2007

2010

Programm:

Kleinere Städte und

Programm:

Die Soziale Stadt

2002

Programm:

Stadtumbau Ost

2004

Programm:

Stadtumbau West

Leitbild fur die Stadt

der Zukunft

(Deutscher Städtetag)

Initiative: Nationale

Stadtentwicklungspolitik

201

1

Report:

“Weissbuch

Innenstadt”

To compare at this stage ‘national urban agendas’ of the EU member states is an exercise that should be conducted straightaway. To give you an idea of what I mean let me ask you to give a glance to the Figure above: just a glance to detect the density – if not the nature – of the episodes that marked the construction of Germany’s urban agenda – one of the countries in Europe that has devoted more attention to the urban question. And I put in the figure for reasons of space constraint only some of the most important episodes. If I had made the same exercise for Italy – my country – the result would have been almost a blank page! There is a crucial question to address here: why do we observe such a disparity of reactions among European countries notwithstanding the articulated and coherent – and fascinating – vision developed but the European Union?

2008

Programm:

Aktive Stadt- und

Ortsteilzentren

Programm:

Städtebauliche Sanierungs-

und Entwicklungsmaßnahmen

Programm:

Weiterentwicklung großer

Neubaugebiete

1991

3. THE ‘SMART GROWTH’ PARADIGM AND THE CITY

DEFINING THE ‘SMART GROWTH’ PARADIGM

The title of this session is ‘The urban dimension of ‘smart growth’’ – understood as defined in the Europe 2020, where ‘smart growth’ is proposed

as one of the three pillars of the overall strategy (together with green growth and inclusive growth). The dimensions A, B and C summarize what

we may call the ‘smart growth paradigm’. A system – be it a nation, a region or a city – can be said to have a ‘smart structure’ if it is characterised

by these three dimensions.

‘Smart growth’ paradigm

A. Knowledge-based

economy

Dimensions

C. Resilient

Economy

B. Innovation-oriented

economy / society

Nations | Regions | CITIES

‘Smart economic structure’

3. THE ‘SMART GROWTH’ PARADIGM AND THE CITY

WHAT WE EXPECT FROM OUR CITIES

City [T=20] City [T=0]

Structural change

Transition

The entire discourse on cities that has developed as a response to the new urban question in Europe is about ‘change’, ‘structural change’. The ‘smart growth’ paradigm is about moving from the ‘current structure’ to a ‘smart structure’. Three parallel sessions going on right now are addressing the question of change, respectively in the economic, ecological and social dimension of city. From a policy perspective the key question to address is how to support structural changes that have to be designed and accomplished at local level. From the ‘smart growth’ perspective the question is about changing the ‘economic base’ of European cities, up-grading it to meet the new competitive context, to find a place, a role in the regional, national, European and global ‘spatial division of labour’. As to this question we should admit that the discussion is very vague. There are many ‘economic models of city’ in Europe, there are very different ‘transitions’ or ‘structural transformations’ to consider, to explore in their feasibility. The complexity of the economic changes that we are asking our cities to implement are not well understood and very often not even discussed.

Transform / up-grading the ‘economic base’

3. THE ‘SMART GROWTH’ PARADIGM AND THE CITY

URBAN DISPARITIES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Whatever shortcomings the ‘smart growth paradigm’ may have, it has the merit of having shifted the focus from ‘current economic

performances’ to ‘future economic performances’: in particular, to the necessary structural transition of the economic base – be it a

nations, a region a city. We may go a step forward saying that the ‘smart growth paradigm’ de facto implies a shift of the focus on the

‘development potential’ of a territorial unit, in our case of (European) cities. There is a long-established tradition with regards to the

economic condition of a territorial unit to measure current performances. But the most important question in a phase of profound

economic and social changes is the capacity to change, if a city observed ‘now’ has or hasn’t a sufficient development potential: the

capability to transform it economic base. The smart growth paradigm suggests a new empirical research agenda: to assess the

development potential of European cities.

1 0

‘Backward cities’ ‘Advanced cities’

Capacity to transform the ‘economic base’

‘Locked-in cities’ ‘Evolving cities’

3. THE ‘SMART GROWTH’ PARADIGM AND THE CITY

EXPLAINING CITIES’ ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL

The key step here is: explaining the heterogeneity of the European urban system; explaining the factors that have impeded or made difficult the structural transition. I propose five dimensions (among others) that we need to take into consideration to explain why we observe (today) such a difference among European cities in terms of development potentials. The European discourse on the European urban question should be completed with a more precise statement of the current state of European cities and above al their development potential. The EU has moved only the first steps in this direction. Other steps have been made at national and local level. But I think that we are still far away from a reasonable understanding of the ‘development potential’ of cities in Europe.

Willingness to adopt the

‘smarth growth paradigm’

Ability to conceive an

effective transition strategy

Endogenous / exogenous

economic resources to

accomplish the transition strategy

National institutional framework

European

cities’adjustment

capacity Political-cognitive dimension

Private sector’ adjustment strategies

4. TOWARDS A EUROPEAN URBAN AGENDA

What should a “European urban agenda’ be?

To address the European urban question from a European perspective – to try to maintain the “European model of city” and the

European model of territory’, which we seem to value so much in ‘our’ official documents and statements – the key instruments are

‘national urban agendas’. When we move from ‘principles’ to ‘policies’ and ‘actions’ it is absolutely necessary to incorporate the

specificity and the knowledge about this specificity of the concerned urban systems. The German case is a model: they have

incorporated, in the most recent up-grading of its urban agenda, the principles you find the ‘Leipzig Charter’ but against the

background of their priorities, of the resources and state of their cities. This is not an easy task, because as I have mentioned at the

beginning, there are countries that have not yet began to tackle the urban question. At this stage a ‘EU urban agenda’ should also

directly address a limited number of urban crises – in agreement with member states –, which may have a paradigmatic significance

– and experiment a complete integration of all policy instruments to accomplish the required ‘structural transformations’.

A.

A ‘device’ to promote

‘national urban agendas’

‘What should a “EU urban agenda” be?

Supporting cities’

economic transition

strategies

B.

A framework to support the

transition strategies of a

number of ‘selected’ cities

4. TOWARDS A EU URBAN AGENDA

HOW CAN A “EU URBAN AGENDA” BE IMPLEMENTED?

Benchmarking national

urban agendas

A

How can a “EU urban agenda” be implemented?

Moral suasion An institutional context

to compare the

construction of the

national urban agendas

Benchmarking cities’

development strategies

B

How can a “EU urban agenda” be implemented?

Selecting a limited

number of ‘cities in

crises’

Supporting them in terms of

economic resources and

knowledge

4. TOWARDS A EU URBAN AGENDA

CONSTRAINING NATIONAL URBAN AGENDAS

4. Assessing the current state and development potential of cities ‘as systems’

3. Addressing the territorial governance issue: from cities to ‘cities de facto’

to ‘functional urban areas’

2. Integrating the ‘urban agenda’ into the ‘territorial agenda’

5. Acknowledging the long-term nature of structural transition

1. Setting clear priorities in terms of cities

Benchmarking national urban agendas

European urban agenda

4. TOWARDS A EU URBAN AGENDA

BENCHMARKING CITIES’ DEVELOPMENT PLANS

City Self-monitoring the development trajectories

Building a social preference function

through substantive democratic processes

Using empirically sound and explicit

models to evaluate the policy actions

Evaluating the policy actions on the systems

Benchmarking cities’ development plans

European urban agenda

Integrate programmes and actions in time and space

5. TO CONCLUDE

There are cities in Europe that do not need any support: they have the intelligence (of democracy)

and command the resources to accomplish the transformation of their economic base and to

address the dis-equilibria and imbalances they may have to face.

There are cities in Europe that do not deserve any support: they command the economic and

cognitive resources but not the political capacity or willingness to change their development

trajectories.

There are cities in Europe that do not command the economic and cognitive resources to face the

threats and challenges of this time: a EU urban agenda that intends to be coherent with the

‘European project’ should focus primarily on them.

Jena (Germany), 2006

Coffee Break – 15 min

Panel Discussion: Tackling Urban Challenges

Panel members: • Ivan Tosics • Alessandro Balducci • Laura Colini • Sonia Fayman • Claude Jacquier

Future Urban Challenges Iván Tosics

URBACT Thematic Pole Manager

(Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest)

tosics@mri.hu

Urban Innovative Actions

• The EC wants to support the best urban development ideas (with max 5 mill eur/project) selected in a spatially blind way.

• Each year topics will be announced and local governments can bid. Partnerships with universities and other actors will be supported.

• The whole program will be subcontracted to a public service provider, the EC will only be independent observer not in the position to influence the selection of winning cities.

Focus on innovative solutions

• What is “innovative”? Technical aspects (innovative technology providers) may become dominating the process.

• Example from a smart cities conference: large solution providers were present but not cities. Innovative companies said that this is not a problem as they are present in all countries of the EU.

• City politicians are needed to achieve smart cities – they know how technological solutions and innovation can be turned into employment. Politicians (together with industry and university) have to find out the way to go as technology solutions do not work in themselves!

Spatially blind selection

Statement: it is important not to mix up the spatially blind initiatives with those which are for creating solidarity!

Counter-argument: place-based approaches to policy are more effective as they are tailored to the particularities of places and specifically the context-dependent nature and importance of institutions as sources of local growth. Even the best spatially blind development strategy can be undermined by poor institutional environments.

http://ec.europa.eu/research/evaluations/pdf/archive/fp7_monitoring_reports/fifth_fp7_monitoring_report.pdf

FP7, SSH programme

• SSH programmes: 560 mill eur allocated in 246 projects

• Hungarian institutions: only 2 project leaders.

• Only one east-central European university among the first 30 (Leuven University 26 projects, Amsterdam University 25 projects, LSE 22 projects…)

The spatially blind selection will lead to unequal distribution of funds and to solutions difficult to apply in those areas where the problems are.

Suggestions

• regarding the topic start from the ten key urban challenges defined in the Cities of Tomorrow reflection process

• not isolated ideas should be supported but ideas which are based on the regional development paradigm and integrated strategic development plan (like LAP in URBACT)

• at the city level coalition of the stakeholders have to be formed (like ULSG in URBACT)

• apply some ratios for cities from convergence areas or create compulsory teaming-up with convergence cities (as observers?)

• shortlist should be created by experts but the final selection should be based on hearings (Regio-Stars method)

• praise in some way the rejected but shortlisted proposals (e.g. publishing them)

• require strong dissemination of the achieved results

Panel Discussion: Tackling Urban Challenges

Panel members: • Ivan Tosics • Alessandro Balducci • Laura Colini • Sonia Fayman • Claude Jacquier

•Future Urban Challenges • Tackling Urban Challenges

Claude Jacquier

Researcher at CNRS

France

claude.jacquier7@wanadoo.fr

Urban agenda and Urban

Initiatives:

an old anticipation for the future!

Are we in optimal conditions?

What is the challenge that offers the greatest scope for

innovation and makes immediate impact ?

1 - Next crisis may be the next elections of EU Parliament Members with success of

nationalism against migrants and EU and MS democracies and… bureaucracies!

2 - No big revolution is coming (?) so how UIA or RUIA (Rurb an Initiative Action) will successfully participate to the big reforms needed by EU and member States.

UIA and RUIA have to be vectors of transition (Troyan Horses) like other programmes were in the old good days like Leader, Urban, Urbact, Interreg, European Grouping of territorial Cooperation, prevention of flood and dryness risks.

It’s a job for reformist conspirators and their accomplices within bureaucratic institutions

Bypassing bureaucratic rigidities and coproducing reforms

Focus on integrated policies for sustainable rurban development

Together or then

New organisation

Homogeneous Aereas

Strategical Approaches

"Software" Policies

European Union

Cross-border

Regions

National Regions

Rurban Regions

Metropolitan

Areas

Local Communities

Vectors

Sustainable Urban

Development

INNOVATIVE PROGRAMMES

Integrated Policies

as operators for transition

Social Cohesion Policy

CSF, SDEC, INTERREG

CIP URBAN, URBACT

Regional Politicies

PCDI, OP

Interreg, EGCT

National IPSUD

(Big Cities programme

Politique de la ville,

Soziale Stadt, ...)

CIP Urban

Area-based approaches

1 - What is innovative action in Urban or Rural field? Not just technical innovation ! But innovations concerning the way of doing with Urban and Rurban areas (governance, management) in order to integrate sectoral approaches (environment, social, economies, cultures) in sustainable strategies.

What kind of innovative actions and how could they have

leverage effect to instigate real change in cities?

2 - What is innovative project ? It is a project coproduced with communities (see CLLD) in order to create sustainable added-value able to insert or reinsert communities in the global and worldwilde value chain

Place (environment)

People and

Gender (social)

-6- Project

Outcomes (LAP Local

Action Plan) Sustainable

Added-value

-1- Community

Territory Their components

-5- Cross-

fertilization Contracts (A, B, C) (effective

LSG)

-2- The Key:

Know-How (LAT Local Action Team) Reformist Conspirators Gardeners, Clinicians

Create New Atmospheres with New Compromises

-4- Partnership

(LSG Local Support Group)

A Conflictive Cooperation

A

B

C

Coproduce Sustainable Added-Value within a Community Building Sustainable Local Action Plans (“Making the Best With”)

-3- Mobilizing Actors Traditional and New One

Inside and Outside the Community Bringing Economic, Social and

Environmental Resources

Institutions (economy politics)

Action Arena

Patterns of intégration

-7- Evaluation

URBACT – URBAMECO - C. Jacquier

SVA SVA SVA SVA SVA SVA

Strategical Link R & D

Know-How Finances

Com

Strategical Link

Marketing Sales

Maintenance

SVA links located in deprived communities or elsewhere in

the World

The Sustainable Value Added (SVA) Chain :

Each community as a link of the chain

Which parts of these links are still Located in deprived communities

or could be re-located in them?

What is the delocalisation risk for strategical links?

Connected Community

Connected Community

Deprived Community

Deprived Community

Community elsewhere in

the world

Community elsewhere in

the world

3 – We need to have to look into the black box of the makers of Innovative Actions. IA always immerge from the ground never from the top. They are not created by decrees or by funds, nor by top-down procedure.

What kind of innovative actions… (following)

4 – In Initiative Action, founding authorities as to pay more attention than in the past to Local Action Team and to local reformist conspirators (skills of practitioners and community organizers) and not just on content of actions, robustness of them, measurable effects and transferability of results (see the draft on funding innovative action). Success in Leader or Urban-Urbact initiatives fully show the pertinence of that even if nobody point it out.

5 – We need training programme and involvement of researchers in

theses “laboratories” (400 in Urbact, it’s a lot). A cofounding is

needed by DG research

Sustainable Local Action Team (SLAT)

and Sustainable Local Support Group (SLSG)

Local authority A

Local authority Z

State - EU

Other political levels

(Region Province)

Private sector

Associations

Reformist conspirators

Accomplices

Institutions and agents

SLAT and SLSG

Reformist process

Metropolitan Area Rurban Region

The problem is less the lack of funds than the disability of local communities (cities) to absorb new resources and to valorise them in order to produce innovative project i.e sustainable added-values.

The main reason of this is the lack of skills able to take fully into account the complexity of local community, to «do with» in order to produce sustainable added-value and to link them to worldwhile value chains. To do that, specific Local Action Teams (LATs) are needed.

Concluding Proposals

Cities, rurban regions, member states and EU all together have to act in a multilevel way in order to mobilise funds and associate universities and research centres to tackle this topic. Compare to other EU programme, the cost of such a strategy is not very expansive and certainly more efficient.

Concluding Proposals (following)

To reach this point we have to build strong relations between «research, training and professional actors» in various cities involved in European exchange programme, like Urbact, devoted to deal with Integrated Strategies for Sustainable Development (ISSD).

Really, we need a European ISSD university, a network of appliance laboratories all over Europe to foster the capacity building of cities.

Thank you for your attention

claude.jacquier7@wanadoo.fr

Cross-border

cooperation Building

strategical

regions

(1)

Cross-border

Coopération

Building

strategical

regions

(2)

Programmes

of

Risk

Prevention:

floods and

drynesses

Eurométropole Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai (Belgium-France) European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC)

Making the city Making the best of the

city

Horizontal conflicting cooperation (since the end of 19s)

Fragmented territory

Balkanized

‘Tart’

Horizontal cooperation

Cooperation between local authorities and organizations

Rurban Region

Making the city Making the best of the

city

Vertical conflicting cooperation (since

the 60s)

Hierarchical approach Specialised approach ‘Pastry’

Vertical cooperation Subsidiary approach Contractual policy Multilevel agreements

Making the city Making the best of

the city

Transversal conflicting cooperation (since the 80s)

Sectorised approach

Partitioned approach

‘Slices of cake’

Transversal cooperation

Transversal approach

Partnership

This last cooperation is the hardest to set up: Confrontation between various professional and cultural identities, corporatism and bureaucracy.

Panel Discussion: Tackling Urban Challenges

Panel members: • Ivan Tosics • Alessandro Balducci • Laura Colini • Sonia Fayman • Claude Jacquier

Concluding remarks