by Martina Rotolo | Sep 23, 2019 | The Urban Media Lab
In the last thirty years the
European Union understood that Member States cannot be left alone in planning
urbanization and implement policies addressing urban areas. Over the years, the
European Union managed to enact policies concerning cities, even in absence of
an explicit legal basis, since the launch of Urban Pilot Projects and the URBAN
initiative in the 1990s.
Both the European Commission,
through the DG REGIO and the DG ENV, and the Council of EU implemented policies
and issued declarations to enforce the European Urban Dimension. Cohesion
policy, the main European policy aimed at reducing disparities among European
regions, represented the main driver for policies related to urban areas. In
2007, the Treaty of Lisbon introduced the objective of territorial cohesion
which formalized an implicit EU involvement in urban matters. The Urban Agenda
for the EU represented the last step in this long process.
On 30 May 2016 an informal
meeting of EU Ministers with responsibility for urban affairs took place in
Amsterdam, at the initiative of the Dutch Presidency. During this meeting, the “Urban
Agenda for the EU”, also called “Pact of Amsterdam”, was adopted.
The Urban Agenda is an
integrated and coordinated approach to deal with the urban dimension of the EU.
By focusing on concrete priority themes through dedicated Partnerships, the
Urban Agenda seeks to improve the quality of life in urban areas. Based on the
principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, it focuses on the three key
pillars of EU policy-making: better regulation, better funding and better
knowledge.
However, the Agenda has not
established an explicit European urban competence. Conversely, it managed to
promote a European model of urban development, to create a supranational
coordination mechanism for urban policies, to empower cities at the EU level
and strengthen Member States commitment towards urban policy-making at the
national level.
The Pact of Amsterdam provided
valuable support and impetus to urban policy-thinking and dialogue in Europe. Moreover,
since European legislation is widely implemented in urban areas, the Urban
Agenda for the EU resulted necessary to replace fragmented experiences with an
integrated approach to cross-sectorial policies. The integrated approach is
linked with the consideration that policies affecting urban areas must be
complementary across different government tiers. Thus, all levels of government
must be involved in this process of policy-making by ensuring coordination between
policy-sectors, in full respect of the subsidiarity principle. As the Report
from the Commission to the Council on the Urban Agenda for the EU pointed
out in 2017, the democratic deficit that the European Union is facing nowadays,
may be addressed by reframing the governance model and offering a seat to
cities at the table of policy-making. As cities represent the closest governance
level to citizens, working with them can bring the EU closer to people’s needs,
by delivering visible improvements to their daily lives.[1]
In June 2019 the European Commission
published the report “Urban Agenda for the EU, multilevel governance in
action”[2] to
assess the impact of the Agenda on cities and, most notably, on European policy
attitudes towards urban development. The partnership mechanism resulted the
most innovative tool provided by the Agenda. Though the Pact of Amsterdam has not
ultimately introduced an explicit European urban competence, it managed to
build a connection for cities to the European policy framework through partnerships.
Therefore, the European Commission is carrying out impact assessments including
a territorial assessment to better understand how future EU legislation will impact
territorial units such as cities. It also set a platform called REFIT to
improve existing EU legislation involving national authorities and other
stakeholders, considering the need to increase involvement from local and
regional authorities.
Three years after the Pact was
adopted, Member States, cities, the European Commission and other relevant
stakeholders decided to create two new partnerships: Security in public spaces
and Cultural heritage, given their well-known relevance in the urban
development context. At the moment, the European Commission reported that a
total of 114 actions included in the partnerships’ action plans have been
proposed with 11 finalized, 21 planned and 82 under implementation.
Moreover, during Romanian
Presidency of the Council, the Urban Agenda for the EU has been reinforced by
the Bucharest Declaration, which will serve as a bridge between the Urban
Agenda, the EU Territorial Agenda and the renewed Leipzig Charter 2020. In fact,
the incoming German Presidency announced that it will revise the 2007 Leipzig
Charter on Sustainable European Cities to redefine the principles of
sustainable urban development. Indeed, the experience of the partnerships based
on multi-level urban governance, co-creation of policies and citizen
participation influenced the decision to renew the Leipzig Charter by the
second half of 2020.
More interestingly, some Member
States have been inspired by the Urban Agenda for the EU and applied similar
approaches at the national or regional level. Italy, which traditionally has
never implemented a National urban policy, shows the highest number of cities
involved in the Urban Agenda for the EU. Additionally, the Italian Agency for
Territorial Cohesion works with large and small cities to jointly implementing
this initiative.
The European Commission’s
legislative proposal for the future Cohesion Policy also provides support to
the Urban Agenda, within the framework of the European Urban Initiative which encourages
cities to innovate, access knowledge, understand policy, support networking and
capacity building. In fact, Cohesion Policy beyond 2020 will continue to sustain
integrated territorial and local development strategies through various tools
and will empower urban authorities and territorial bodies in the management of
the funds, while requiring strong local partnerships with relevant
stakeholders. The urban dimension of Cohesion Policy will be strengthened, with
6% of the European Regional Development Fund dedicated to sustainable urban
development strategies.
It would also be interesting
to observe how the new EU Commission executive, which is due to take office on 1st
November 2019, will contribute to the European urban dimension. In fact, the current
European Commissioner for Regional policy, Corina Creţu, has decided to resign
in order to take up a seat in the European Parliament. The new European
Commissioner leading the Cohesion and Reforms portfolio will be the Portuguese Elisa
Ferreira, currently Vice-Governor of Banco de Portugal. She has been a Member
of the European Parliament for many years and she was Minister for Planning and
Environment in Portugal.[3]
So far, the Urban Agenda for
the EU represented the last step in the process aimed at the construction of a
European urban policy field. In this scenario, despite its policy light nature and
no legally binding agreement, the Urban Agenda for the EU represents an
innovative framework that is successfully integrating cities in EU policymaking,
overcoming the inflexibility of treaties’ provisions. Thus, the Urban Agenda
for the EU ultimately offers to European cities the opportunity to obtain the
place they deserve in the present governance revolution which needs them at its
core.
[1]EUROPEAN COMMISSION (2017), Report from the
Commission to the Council on the Urban Agenda for the EU, available online
at: http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/policy/themes/urban/report_urban_agenda2
017_en.pdf , p.3.
[2]EUROPEAN COMMISSION (2019), Urban Agenda for the EU, multilevel
governance in action, available online at: https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/
brochure/urban_agenda_eu_en.pdf
[3]EUROPEAN COMMISSION (2019), The
von der Leyen Commission: for a Union that strives for more, available online at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_19_5542
by Cosima Malandrino | Nov 7, 2018 | Event
The Future Cities Canada Summit brings together city leaders and urban innovators working to sustain and build our cities for people to live and thrive now and into the future. Organized by Future Cities Canada, a collaborative platform that harnesses the momentum for change already in progress in cities, the Summit will gather community leaders, city administrators, and research organization in a 3 day event with discussions, conferences and interventions that will address the most pressing issues of our time and promote innovative thinking on topics such as affordable housing, smart cities, civic participation, resilience planning, mobility, and disaster reduction.
Sheila Foster, co-founder of LabGov and Professor of Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University, will be discussing the necessary governance changes our 21st century requires with leading urban innovators – including Taiwan’s first digital minister who will talk about the radically participatory process of
vTaiwan, the Vice
Mayor of Montreal who is leading the new Urban Innovation Lab and
Entremise, a civic group who is testing policy innovation regarding urban occupation.
Sheila Foster will introduce the panel, framing these approaches in their wider context, and bringing her experience from LabGov and the Co-City projects. The experimentations and research LabGov carried out in the past years are a powerful example of the way new urban solutions can be co-created by municipal government and local communities. These practical examples of governance and legal principles will provide a new conceptual framework able to foster innovation, social inclusion and local development in our cities.
To learn more about the event and to consult the schedule of the sessions click
here.
by Elisa Del Sordo | Nov 1, 2018 | The Urban Media Lab
Environmental issues are becoming more and more a key challenge for cities around the world. C40 shows that “70% of cities are already dealing with the effects of climate change”. Cities have played a significant role in accelerating risks because of the continuous and unlimited urban growth we have witnessed in the past years. They are becoming bigger and bigger, creating over 70% of global CO2 emissions, and consuming ⅔ of the world’s energy. A striking C40 data warns us of the catastrophic effects that climate change can have on urban societies in the future: “Over 90% of all urban areas are coastal, putting most cities on Earth at risk of flooding from rising sea levels and powerful storms”.
What are the consequences of these environmental risks for the future of our cities? How to manage it? What solutions can we find?
In order to avoid any simplistic explanation on a topic of such importance and complexity, we ought to make clarity on the real terms of the discussion. What is risk and how do we define it?
Ulrich Beck sees a different and more obscure dimension to development; a “risk society” based on an acute awareness of risks and loss of faith in progress.
Even more interesting, is how this reflexive modernity embodies the exegesis of the progressive disillusion with institutional and traditional politics. According to Beck this detachment from traditional rhetorics produces a “sub-politics”, concerned with issues such as consumption and lifestyle.
Following this post-modern flavor, Beck concentrated initially on environmental issues such as the problematization of energy. Unlike goods, these “bads” could not be subject to a politics of distribution. The smog produced by domestic coal-burning, affected everyone. Because of this “egalitarian” redistributive effect, environmental hazards constitute an undiscriminated threat for everyone.
Natural hazards and disaster produce increasing catastrophes in cities (just see what has blown up Italy in the last few days!). That does not mean that other kinds of hazards are incapable of producing urban catastrophes. The answer is that natural hazards are joint products of nature and society. Unlike the other threats just mentioned, they are only partly created by humans; thus their unpredictable nature contributes to an incremental and general insecurity.
Since the industrial revolution cities are risk-producers and risk-bearers, both victims and executioners. Economic activity, sprawl and proximity have caused cities to become less and less sustainable; in particular we can infer a negative correlation between economic productivity and sustainability. Take a city-state as Singapore for example; in 1965 it was a polluter’s paradise: mucky rivers, polluted canals and raw sewage running rampant. A modern “Coke Town”. Per contra, things are changing because of the efforts of enlightened personalities. The city’s pioneer generation understood that if you make a city “a nice place to live, then people will come and invest.” Lee Kuan Yew became often called ‘Chief Gardener’ for his belief in the power of plants and biodiversity to transform people’s overall mental well-being, as well as physical spaces. Huge plants crawling up skyscrapers, natural parks and water sanitation measures (just to clean-up Singapore’s river took around 10 years!) represent a significant step towards global future objectives.
The renowned 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development addresses global challenges such as poverty, inequality but also climate and environmental degradation Nevertheless, 12 years seem to be not enough to face multifarious issues. Concerns have been raised too by the ASviS (Alleanza Italiana per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile). In the recently issued report, the association expressed its concern with respect to the “too slow” progress towards the SDGs, both for Italy and the European Union, which should present a framework of policies by the end of the year.
The 7th Environment Action Program (EAP) constitutes for the moment, the legislative and guiding framework to work on, identifying key objectives such as the protection of natural capital; the transformation towards a resource-efficient, low-carbon economy; and to safeguard Union’s citizens fro environment-related pressures.
Therefore, we should prepare our institutions and environmental management strategies for the twenty-first century, especially in the mega-cities that will likely become the pivots of global society. Worth mentioning is what 100 Resilient Cities does and aims to; pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, their ultimate objective is to help cities to become more resilient to the physical, social and economic challenges – earthquakes, floods, sprawl, etc. – of the XXI century. Their philosophy is that, addressing both the shocks and the stresses, a city becomes more able to respond to adverse events, and is overall better able to deliver basic functions in both good times and bad, to all populations.
Thus, can we meet the basic needs—food, water, and energy—of a growing population and a growing economy and do better for biodiversity by 2030? If each country shows an increasing commitment towards environmental risk management, the answer will be probably an affirmative one. As James Mitchell has observed, failure to recognize natural hazards as a worsening urban problem suggests a myopic view of urban management and signals flaws in the conceptualization of sustainable development as a principle of urban management. It is to be hoped that efforts will be canalized into correcting the structural deficiencies peculiar of our risk society.
by Alessia Palladino | Nov 29, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
On December 5th and 6th, the fifth edition of Sharitaly, Platform in action, will be held in Milan, at BASE. The event organized by Collaboriamo and Trailab is a chance for scholars, operators, designers, and observers to reflect, observe and share experiences, in order to understand how collaborative practices are changing.
On December 5th, three high-level masterclass will be held at the morning, in order to deepen the techniques and knowledge of the platform model.
On December 6th, there will be a series of talks and workshops organized on 8 topics:
- Collaborative Platforms Design;
- Territorial welfare;
- Welfare Business;
- Scale up of collaborative services;
- Workers;
- Platform Cooperativism;
- New collaborative place and services;
- Collaborative cities.
Prof. Christian Iaione and Elena de Nictolis will be speakers of the Panel “Algoritmo Bologna: il Rapporto CO-Bologna sui primi tre anni di sperimentazione della collaborazione civica a Bologna”, on December 6th, from 4.00 to 5.00 p.m..
Findings of the Co-Bologna program will be presented. The panel will introduce the theoretical and methodological framework of the process, describing the actions of the program and outputs produced. It will analyze the collaborative pacts approved by the Regulation on civic collaboration for the urban commons between 2014 and 2016, carried out by LabGov in collaboration with the TrailLab, and the policy innovations dealing with urban regeneration in the suburbs and the housing.
Il 5-6 Dicembre si terrà a Milano la V edizione di Sharitaly, Platform in action. Il 6 Dicembre, dalle 16 alle 17, si terrà il Panel “Algoritmo Bologna: il Rapporto CO-Bologna sui primi tre anni di sperimentazione della collaborazione civica a Bologna”, a cura del Prof. Christian Iaione ed Elena de Nictolis.
by Ornella Martinello | Jan 22, 2016 | The Urban Media Lab
On Saturday 23th and Sunday 24th January 2016, Naples will host the seminar “Per gli Stati generali della Città e del Federalismo. Rigenerazione urbana, democratica, ecologica ed economica” (Convention on Cities and Federalism. Democratic, Ecological and Economic Urban Regeneration), organized by Radicali Italiani (Party of Italian Radicals). The aim of the event is to define and illustrate proposals for a democratic, ecological and economic regeneration of cities. It is the occasion to think about the need to re-start from the local dimension of municipalities and districts as a way to develop new forms of autonomy in order to assert the values of civil liberties, the market economy and ecological sustainability. Among the main themes that will be dealt with are: the quality of the environment and of public services delivered to citizens, competition, the adoption of binding referenda, municipal and fiscal federalism, the Rule of Law.
The debate is organized in three main sessions. Enrico Salvatori, speaker at Radio Radicale, will moderate the first session about the quality of life and of the environment, urban regeneration and smart cities. The second section will include the contributions by Luigi de Magistris, major of Naples, Emma Bonino, leader of the Party of Italian Radicals, and Christian Iaione, professor of Public Law, Director of the Laboratory for the Governance of the Commons, LUISS Roma and member of the International Association for the Study of the Commons. During this second debate on cities in Europe, federalism and sharing economy, two reports by Corte dei Conti and the National Competition Authority will be presented. Marco Pannella, historic leader of the Party of Italian Radical, will intervene during the last session devoted to the role of citizens in the decision-making processes.
The seminar is part of the campaign seeking the acknowledgement of the right to knowledge by the United Nations, raised as a means protective of the Rule of Law against the discretion of the State. Within the context of this canvas weaved by the Party of Italian Radicals, Professor Claudio Radaelli, University of Exeter, and Professor Alessia Damonte, University of Milan, presented their contribution to the debate “Per un governo locale che renda conto a…” (For a Local Governance accountable to..). They point out how it is time to act on the delegation chain in order to give a greater role to citizens in the administration of public powers, beyond the direct elections of majors and their role as users and consumers of public services. They present a proposal that is political in its nature, focused on the notion of accountability: to abolish the figure of the single, centralized supervisor and to spread the control of public acts among a plurality of actors. In order to reach this ambitious goal, new procedural instruments as well as obligations to provide information, justification and scientific evidence of every act. According to Radaelli and Damonte, the path to walk has already been cleared. First, technological changes are needed in order to reduce the costs of citizens’ consultation and participation; the development of smart cities is addressing this issue. Second, and consistently with the ‘giving reason obligation’, public policies must be constantly monitored through the use of scientific indicators of performances. Third, new rights are to be achieved through practical efforts in order to let citizens weight beyond political parties and electoral mechanisms. These efforts will result not only in good governance but also in the eradication of corruption and a renewed impulse to economic growth.
Here is the program of the event.
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Sabato 23 e domenica 24 gennaio Napoli ospiterà il seminario “Per gli Stati generali della Città e del Federalismo. Rigenerazione urbana, democratica, ecologica ed economica”, organizzato dai Radicali Italiani nell’ambito della campagna per il riconoscimento del diritto alla conoscenza da parte delle Nazioni Unite. Obiettivo dell’evento è definire ed illustrare nuove proposte per la rigenerazione delle città, ripartire cioè dalla dimensione dei comuni e delle città per proporre nuove forme di autonomia per l’affermazione delle liberta civili, dell’economia di mercato e della sostenibilità economica. Prenderanno parte all’evento i leader radicali Emma Bonino e Marco Pannella, il sindaco di Napoli Luigi de Magistris, e il Professore Christian Iaione.
Qui il programma dell’evento.
