Participation or Inclusion?

According to planning guidelines the more participative urban planning is, the better the outcomes are. However, in reality the link between more/deeper participation of residents and more positive social and environmental outcomes is not at all straightforward – public participation has many pitfalls, as shown on examples of public square planning in Budapest and Berlin.

New labour markets: how cities could lead

Wingham Rowan, Director of Beyond Jobs, argues that cities have a key role to play in making new labour markets work.

“I agree, if city governments really grasp this, it would change everything. But I don’t think they will.” The speaker – last Friday – works for one the world’s biggest technology companies. Now he leads their thinking around the future of “Sharing Economy” transactions.

The crude image of governments slow to adapt to changing labour markets is widespread. It is a problem because Silicon Valley is channeling billions of dollars on the assumption public bodies are either irrelevant to “Sharing Economy” markets, or just a problem to be overcome.

But this part of city economies is important. Demand for hour-by-hour labour and resources could total 5% of GDP when World Bank data is analysed. Bookings are in sectors like: on-demand care at home, collecting a neighbour’s shopping, people doing odd hours at peak times in a café/shop/bar/distribution centre, babysitting, renting out possessions or accommodation, ad-hoc cleaning, repairs or home tutoring. There are thousands of categories like this where citizens seek non-regular earnings.

Crowdfunding City Futures?

What has crowdfunding got to do with urban development? What part of the future funding mix could crowdfunding play for European cities strapped for cash yet needing to respond to change and deliver sustainability?

Why ‘Think Global, Act Local’ is no longer enough

How can cities refresh the message ‘think global, act local’ and build common purpose amongst stakeholders – citizens, communities, elected representatives, businesses, civil servants – to achieve the impacts that are needed in towns and cities across Europe and across the world? 

Young People and Jobs in Europe’s Cities: What actions can cities take to better engage employers?

"It is employers who create jobs" If cities are to help young people to get the jobs they need, then engaging with employers is pivotal to success. Success requires the creation of more and better jobs for young people to do. It means employers, large and small, public and private, from local start-ups and microbusinesses to national and international corporations with branches in the city, recruiting more young people, retaining them, developing them and providing opportunities for them. So, employer engagement needs to be at the heart of city action to meet the youth employment challenge.

Cities using their purchasing power to facilitate social innovation

Some cities are developing new approaches to ensure that resources are available to experiment with new solutions to their problems. They are using their buying power to orientate, speed up, amplify and sometimes systematise the development of these social innovations. The experiments show that social innovation is not only for wealthy communities, which can free up the necessary time, financial resources, human resources and interest, but is accessible to all cities that want to take risks and experiment.

Roma Community Building through Gardening

URBACT Expert, Bela Kezy, reports from Hungary on an effective way to work with Roma communities

The distribution of firewood and used clothes was a big event in Huszártelep, segregated neighbourhood, home of 1800 Roma people in Nyíregyháza, North-Eastern Hungary. Families lined up at the gate of the schoolyard. People waited patiently and chatted with each other. Rumour was, that the firewood was a present from the company doing the reconstruction of the buildings and from the director of the local school.

Everybody arrived well-prepared: they knew they needed means of transport – but not what one may expect. Actually, the area in front of the schoolyard gate looked like an exhibition of vintage strollers – representatives of different models from the past 30 years were all showcased. None of them carried babies this time, however; their duty was to transport the firewood to the homes of the people.

Preserve, Contain, Improve: Towards Integrative Policies For Urban Growth Management

The consequences of the unleashed urbanization process before the real estate crisis are today very explicit on the building stock as well as on the spatial configuration of cities. As for the building stock, the number of vacant dwellings in Spain, for instance, amounts to a total of 3.443.365, as recorded in the 2014 census. Besides that, uncountable extensions of already urbanized but not built neighborhoods are filling the outskirts of our cities.

Functional territories for better integrated governance: Towards spatially coordinated development in metropolitan and urban-rural area

The growing territorial mismatch (between the administrative and the real-life boundaries of urban areas) and the conflicting relationship between urban and rural territories within the same areas become more and more serious impediments to integrated urban development.

This short paper aims to explore existing knowledge about these problems and examples on attempts for solutions. All these should help to find out what would be the best way for URBACT to help cities to design integrated (policy crosscutting) urban development strategies for their functional areas, improving also the urban-rural links.

Post-Crisis Urban Planning: Innovative Local Solutions to Fight Environmental Degradation

Due to the financial crisis the heavily indebted public actors are not able any more to launch large-scale programmes to handle difficult environmental problems. Thus they have to find new, innovative ways, experiment with more flexible environmental standards and regulations.