Cities leading the way to a better future? EU launches new ‘State of European Cities Report’

photo by Evan McDonough (PhD candidate, University of Luxembourg)

During the European Week of Regions and Cities in October 2016, the European Commission presented a much awaited new edition of its ‘State of European Cities’ Report. By assessing and comparing demographic, economic, social and environmental trends at town and city level, the comprehensive report entitled ‘Cities leading the way to a better future’ reveals a series of key challenges and opportunities for European cities. It also introduces a new methodology for more accurately defining, quantifying and comparing degrees of urbanisation. When preparing the report, the European Commission collaborated for the very first time with the United Nations Habitat Programme.

Key insights

One of the main insights emerging from the report is that European cities are generally relatively small with only two megacities over 10 million inhabitants (Paris and London). With an average urban density of approximately 3000 inhabitants/km2 cities in Europe have, however, a healthy basis and a good starting position for coping with future urban challenges. Second, the report shows that European cities attract new residents coming both from within and outside of the EU. The main reasons for such migration flows are related to education, employment and quality of life. As a result of absorbing these new citizens, cities often face issues regarding the provision of more affordable high quality housing, the expansion of public services, the fight against discrimination and social exclusion and the bridging of the gap between training offers and job opportunities. Third, the comparison of city performances throughout Europe reveals that innovation and economic growth are generally higher in cities than in rural areas. This performance, however, requires high-quality research, good connections with the private sector and an excellent business environment. Fourth, cities are well placed to support non-motorised and public transport due to their high levels of density. Huge efforts are still required by cities to increase the energy efficiency of their buildings and to further reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Fifth, the report encourages cooperation between municipalities and good urban governance across the various policy levels. Cities should be granted sufficient autonomy and be given the necessary resources to exploit their urban advantages. 

EU Urban Agenda and Habitat III

The provision of data on the performance of European cities encourages cooperation and the transfer of best practices between cities inside and outside Europe and provides valuable input for the future development and implementation of the EU’s new Urban Agenda, consisting mainly in improving EU regulations, elaborating workable financial instruments and enhancing the knowledge base. The idea is to launch new forms of cooperation between cities, Member States, EU institutions, NGOs and businesses. These partnerships will focus on 12 key urban challenges with a European dimension such as air quality, housing, migration and poverty.

The State of the European Cities Report constitutes also an important contribution from Europe to the third United Nations Conference in Housing and Sustainable Development (Habitat III) currently underway. It particularly addresses the 2030 urban Sustainable Development Goal which aims at making cities safe, inclusive, resilient and sustainable. The analyses in the report show how European cities are forerunners with regard to adopting new courses of action to tackle economic, social, environmental or governance issues.

Cities as a more general subject of interest of global policies

The current interest in cities and urbanisation is far from being limited to the aforementioned actions taken in the framework of the European Urban Agenda or the UN Habitat initiatives on Sustainable Development Goals. The United Nations’ World Cities Report published earlier this year demonstrates that current urbanisation models are generally rather unsustainable and that they need to be changed in order to better respond to today’s challenges. UNESCO, in its turn, has issued a Global Report on Culture for Sustainable Urban Development. Based on an analysis of several international study areas, the report explains for instance the vital role of culture as a tool for poverty reduction, increased cultural diversity, resilience and sustainability. At this point, it seems also promising to look at the recent Flagship Report published by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), which addresses the urban issue as well. This study assumes that cities have a ‘transformative power’ that needs to be unlocked in order to provide global sustainability.

In sum, all of these reports support the view that developments in cities are crucial for a more sustainable development of our world, while some even carry a notion of enthusiasm (or positivism, to say the least) by claiming that cities are not the problem but rather the solution. All of them, however, provide much inspiration to think cities and regions further. With respect to these initiatives, it is safe to say that urban development will remain high on the global political agenda for the years to come.

Tom Becker

Research Assistant

University of Luxembourg

Recommended readings

• European Union’s ‘State of European Cities Report’
• United Nations’ ‘World Cities Report’
• UNESCO’s ‘Global Report on Culturefor Sustainable Urban Development’
• WBGU’s Flagship Report ‘Humanity on the Move: Unlocking the Transformative Power of Cities

Geography & Spatial Planning Opening Lecture: Professor Anna Geppert, University Paris IV Sorbonne

Vae victis! Spatial planning and the recent shift in French metropolitan governance

Professor Anna Geppert, University Paris IV Sorbonne, President of AESOP

with discussant, Professor Geoffrey Caruso, Institute of Geography & Spatial Planning, UniLu

Monday, 10th October 2016, 18:00 

“Black Box” (Ground Floor)

11, Porte des Sciences, 

Campus Belval, Maison des Sciences Humaines

France is known for its strong egalitarian tradition in spatial planning, aiming to reduce disparities between places. However, this picture is no longer true. After a series of institutional reforms, planning competences have been rescaled and the new institutional design favours the metropolitan scale, expected to deliver growth-and-jobs as well as a high level of services to the inhabitants. As a result, metropolitan institutions are strengthened and concentrate resources and powers. But inequality is growing, bringing about winners and losers across space.

The paper will address this shift in metropolitan governance. First, we will “set the scene”, introducing the institutional design at French metropolitan scales. Second, we will present the administrative reforms of the years 2010, 2014 and 2015, which have created a new governance level at the metropolitan scale. Finally, we will analyse the first outcomes of this process, in the light of the theory of rescaling.

The lecture will be followed by a reception. Please register per email: marie.delafont@uni.lu 

Anna Geppert is Professor of Spatial Planning at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (France). Her research focuses on the evolution of the French planning system, and in particular the development of strategic spatial planning at urban as well as regional scale. She is President of AESOP - The Association of European Schools of Planning (2016-2018) and board member of several international planning journals. Her works are published in French, English, Polish, German, Slovak, Czech and Korean.

Royal Geographical Society - Institute of British Geographers - Session Follow-up, entry from Prof. Dr. Susannah Bunce

Continuing some follow-up reporting on the great session we had at the Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society with Institute of British Geographers in London earlier this month, we present here the notes from our discussant, Prof. Susannah Bunce, whose book, Sustainability Policy, Planning and Gentrification in Cities is forthcoming in 2017 with Routledge.

Discussant - Feedback and Thoughts on Sustainability and Research given at the session entitled, "Be constructive! Situating sustainability research at the nexus of positivism and reflective positionality," held at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference 2016, London, U.K.

by Susannah Bunce 
Department of Human Geography and City Studies
University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada.
 
A common theme in the papers today is the search for a balance between - and the tensions inherent in - data/metrics-driven, model-oriented policies based on scientific rationalizations and/or deductions AND more place-based, contextual, intuitive and inductive, process-oriented practices. This is a tricky balance. In reference to Becker/Krueger/Hesse’s informative paper presented today on the science-policy interface, sustainability, as a dominant policy agenda, is particularly vulnerable to the production of essentialist models that can be deposited in areas of the globe in a de-territorialized, placeless way. For example, the “One Planet” sustainable planning model that was developed by Bioregional (a UK-based entrepreneurial charity that was contracted to do the sustainable design for Beddington Zero, the UK’s first master planned zero carbon community) and the World Wildlife Federation has now formed the basis for master planned communities in Australia, France, Tanzania, Luxembourg, the United States, and Canada. Becker/Krueger/Hesse comment about ‘experts’ involved in policy mobility and transfer (a sort of ‘cult of personality of policy mobility’) is important here too – not only are sustainable development models transferred but so are individual ideas of experts as well. Richard Florida’s creative city/creative class idea, which Krueger has discussed in his previous work, and the work of architect/planner Joan Busquets, responsible for the sustainable urban regeneration of Barcelona’s waterfront - which Becker/Krueger/Hesse mention in their paper - are just two individuals whose ideas have moved around the globe and have been adopted at different scales of government, policy, and planning. Joan Busquets, for example, was quickly contracted by Toronto’s waterfront redevelopment agency to reproduce a similar vision for Toronto. Having just visited Barcelona’s waterfront for the first time, I can honestly say that Toronto’s waterfront looks and feels very different from Barcelona (!) For one thing, the temperature does not fall to -20 Celsius in the winter, as it can do in Toronto, making Toronto waterfront visits during the winter not entirely enjoyable. Most waterfront residents in Toronto from November to April stay inside heated condominium buildings and rush between home and work, which also does not necessarily evoke an image of a sustainable waterfront.

Yet, as Blackstock/Waylen/Matthews/Giampietro point out, metrics are, indeed, important. I appreciate their idea of using metrics to tell a narrative. Data provides information that progressive government agencies and institutions, scholars, and media sources require in order to challenge, resist, and suggest alternatives to certain and other so-called evidence-based decisions and phenomena. Data about the story of climate change, for example, provides crucial information that is necessary for governments, academics, and media to disseminate, particularly in light of prevalent climate change denial discourses and debates over the severity of climate change – a discourse that features strongly in the upcoming American presidential elections, for example. The previous federal Conservative government in Canada, which withdrew Canada from climate change agreements, refused to attend climate change conferences, de-funded and silenced federally employed scientists, and promoted instead an economic growth model based on intensive oil production in one particular region of the country, also demonstrates how integral scientific environmental evidence is within a larger political-ecology and economy of governance in order to combat this type of damaging economic growth.

But, returning to the topic of balance, how do we mitigate the recent turn to a neo-positivism and neo-rationalism that reflects a broader neoliberal and post-political emphasis on management, evaluative performance, and demonstrative results? How do we respond to the increasing prevalence of metrics and models that tell us how to best develop, and how to ‘do more’ with less support? We now see evaluative metrics and models that assess performance and output everywhere, from sustainable city indexes to global city rankings to publication output ratings in academia, and to non-profit NGOs who now, more than ever, need to develop evaluative models and strategies in order to demonstrate performance achievements to their funding agencies in order to justify the acquisition of more resources. This negatively impacts upon ‘softer’, more qualitative and relational associations that cannot be measured and modeled, particularly in relation to policy implementation at the local scale and community-based work. For instance, how do we measure the quality of resident engagement in the restoration of a local watershed? Or, should we even do this? Can people feel free to collaborate and engage without models and measurements and focus instead on building relational associations and process-oriented results? This perhaps is a question of scale, place, and context: that it would entail a move away from positivist, rationalist, top down policy mobility, models and data in certain situations and focus, instead, on local knowledge, community engagement, and more organic solutions. I particularly like Becker/Krueger/Hesse’s advocacy of honest policy and policy that is not afraid of failure: That we learn through failure. Perhaps resisting the ostensibly perfect knowledge of the expert from another city that briefly touches down to provide their expertise in favour of local knowledge – both formal and informal practices of localized knowledge.

Lastly, I think of the idea of citizen-science: local, place-based engagement, and collaborative exchange of formal and informal knowledge, often between scientists and local residents, around science-based and environmental projects. What ‘de-growth’ scholars have referred to as ‘post-normal science’ (“a shift of decisions from ‘communities of experts’, like scientific communities and advisory councils, to decisions by ‘expert communities’” Kallis, Demaria, & D’Alisa, 2015, p. 9). Counting fish, insects and wildlife, habitat restoration, flood watching, etc. - a focus on socio-ecological transitions and different ways of learning. A notion that Bina/Pereira/Costa-Pinto mentioned in their paper, which perhaps policy-makers could learn from. A focus on a quality of process not just results, as Blackstock/Waylen/Matthews/Giampietro suggest. This is more in keeping with anti-essentialist ideas, which Becker/Krueger/Hesse refer to, and community oriented practices promoted in the work of J.K. Gibson-Graham, who Becker/Krueger/Hesse also refer to in their paper. In this way, science and sustainability work together as a process of commoning or as a process of building local environmental commons. There is no certain answer, but this may be a way to tease out different approaches to unpacking these tensions in different scales, spaces, and contexts. Blackstock/Waylen/Matthews/Giampietro mentioned that if one wants to critique something they also need to suggest an alternative – my question is: What is that alternative or alternatives? Is the suggestion of alternatives just reproducing the rationalist/positivist approach? How might a practice of reflexivity alter this approach?