and economic structures. Hence, there is a need to maintain economic competitiveness in this era of global competition and a shift in economic and political power from G718 to E719 states, as well as to maintain, even to improve upon, citizens’ social welfare. This latter is complicated by a number of factors. In general, urban Europe suffers an increase in inequalities concerning e.g. housing, education, work, health, transport/mobility, and ICT. Marginalisation and polarisation tends to affect specifically youth, migrants, and ethnic minorities. Reflecting the contrasting developments of south-eastern and north-western Member States, Europe continues to experience considerable migratory flows. Young, mobile and often well-trained people are leaving their home regions in search of employment and educational opportunities; changing the demography of their home regions, reducing the skill base and exacerbating economic decline, whilst increasing sociocultural diversity as well as opportunities for growth and innovation in their destination cities. Meanwhile, less mobile youth in declining economies are increasingly faced with long term unemployment prospects and insufficient opportunities and supportive structures to help themselves – to innovate and exercise their entrepreneurial capacity. Reflecting low fertility rates and increased life expectancy, Europe’s population is also aging. This places greater pressure on the welfare state and also poses challenges in terms of inclusion and connectivity. As wealth is increasingly concentrated, income inequality and levels of poverty are increasing; leading to social polarisation and exclusion. Finally, although functional redevelopment of land-use increases, urban sprawl remains a challenge. This is a challenge not only for a resource efficient public service but also for e.g. biodiversity and water sustainability. For further information on these and related global and European urban challenges, we refer the interested reader to the SAB’s Megatrends Report20. 18 The Group of Seven (G7, formerly G8) is a governmental political forum of leading advanced economies in the world. It was originally formed by six leading industrial countries and sub-sequently extended with two additional members, one of which, Russia, is suspended. Since 2014, the G8 in effect comprises seven nations and the European Union as the eighth member. 19 The E7 is a group of seven countries with emerging economies. The E7 are predicted to have larger economies than the G7 countries by 2020. 20 O. Coutard, G. Finnveden, S. Kabisch, R. Kitchin, R. Matos, P. Nijkamp, C. Pronello, D. Robinson: Urban Megatrends: Towards a European Research Agenda; A report by the Scientific Advisory Board of JPI Urban Europe, March 2014. The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe -4- THE URBAN POLICY DEBATE: CALLING FOR REVITALISED EFFORTS TO IMPROVE URBAN SUSTAINABILITY These urban challenges are addressed on various policy levels and high emphasis is given to gain social and economic benefit from the urban dynamics by calling for integrated urban development and intensifying efforts to realise models for a transition towards truly sustainable urbanisation. On a global scale, the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-HABITAT) focusses on housing and sustainable urban development. In its latest progress report on the implementation of the outcomes of UN-HABITAT II, UN-HABITAT clearly stress the importance of strengthening urbanisation as the engine for global sustainable development; of overcoming the current unsustainable model of urbanisation. Since current forms of urbanisation are deeply unsustainable new conditions need to be defined to achieve inclusive, human-centred and sustainable global development.21 Habitat III, the UN conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development will take place in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016 and is set to focus on securing renewed political commitment for sustainable urban development and to assess the accomplishments to date, address poverty and identify and address new and emerging challenges which will result in a forward looking document highlighting policy requirements on a global scale. This New Urban Agenda will guide the efforts in support of cities by national governments, urban stakeholders, international development funders and others with the objective of integrated sustainable development of cities and urban areas worldwide. In a European context, cities play a pivotal role in the territorial development of the European Union and for reaching the EU 2020 objectives, an European Urban Agenda is currently under development, with the aim of strengthening and fastening policy responses at European level. By integrating and aligning the diverse strategies and policies at European level, EU policies should be highlighting measures with high effectiveness for “sustainable development, better participation and contribution of urban areas in achieving common EU goals, as well as exchange of knowledge and increase in learning”22. Besides this, the EC strategy 2014-2019 includes numerous elements of sustainable development with a strong impact on the urban dimension. In particular the Juncker 21 UN, Progress to date in the implementation of the outcomes of the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) and identification of new and emerging challenges on sustainable urban development. Report of the Secretary-General of the Conference, A/CONF.226/PC.1/5, 26 July 2014. 22 Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development of the Republic of Latvia: Declaration of Ministers towards the EU Urban Agenda, Riga, 10 June 2015, . Plan calls for a new start for Europe in terms of jobs, growth, fairness and democratic change23. The policy areas identified in the Juncker Plan have a high relevance for urban research, technological development and innovation. As hubs for the regional development, European cities play a pivotal role in tackling challenges at hand. Therefore, within this Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, the policy areas in the “Juncker plan” are reflected in the thematic research priorities of JPI Urban Europe’s priorities. Urban research, technological development and innovation can support boosting jobs, growth and investment in certain areas, such as large scale infrastructure projects, a resilient energy union with a forward-looking climate change policy, and a deeper and fairer economic and monetary union. JPI Urban Europe’s ambition is to contribute to the priorities of the EC strategy and the Juncker Plan by providing evidence for policy making and strengthening science-policy cooperation on urban transition towards sustainable and liveable futures. In line with the Juncker Plan a cooperation of research, technological development and policy can help tackling issues such as migration and the effects of the increasing movement of people towards the European Union or the development of a Union of democratic change. As European cities are becoming even more important for implementing the policy measures, JPI Urban Europe aims at teaming up with the European Commission in certain research areas and developing an aligned set of research, technological development and innovation measures to strengthen the European research community and achieve highest impact and relevance for our urban areas. One particular action is the contribution of JPI Urban Europe to the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities to support the implementation of sustainable technologies as part of a human-centred approach, better coordinated policies, actors and governance levels and improve the understanding of policy making contexts in urban development. The urban policy debates underline the importance for new urban agendas with the aim of supporting sustainable urban development. Furthermore, the efforts taken by the European Commission as well as UN-Habitat stress the need for integration and coordination of sectoral organised endeavours and actions. In this regard, urban research, technological development and innovation with the objective of supporting the transition towards a holistic concept of sustainability are asked to keep the close link to the current urban policy debate and support administration and governments with applicable results and recommendations. 23 J-C. Juncker, A New Start for Europe: My Agenda for Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change. Political Guidelines for the next European Commission, European Parliament plenary session, Strasbourg, 15 July 2014, . The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe -5- THE LANDSCAPE OF TRANSNATIONAL, URBAN-RELATED RESEARCH COOPERATION IN EUROPE JPI Urban Europe aims to coordinate research and make better use of Europe’s public funds in order to address common European urban challenges more effectively. Strengthening and aligning urban research, technological development and innovation means at the same time to build upon existing expertise, technologies, networks and results. In the frame of the European Research Frameworks FP5, FP6 and FP7 substantial funding has already been provided to foster urban-related research on transnational level, supporting research, technological development and innovation in various urban fields and disciplines and generating networks among scientists, industry and public authorities. A solid understanding of the gained achievements allows to position JPI Urban Europe against this background. A recent report24 showed that nearly 600 projects related to urban research were funded from FP5 to FP7; most of which were conducted collaboratively. The urban research community has grown from a rather small, but strongly connected community, to a larger, more loosely connected one. While the number of funded projects dropped after FP5 due to changing priorities and funding schemes in the framework programmes, the amount of project funding increased from 273m to 430m Euros from FP5 to FP7. Half of the projects were conducted in the areas of urban transport, energy and urban environment receiving two third of the total project funding. Furthermore, the structural characteristics of the network of urban research project changes from F5 to FP7. While very strong collaboration clusters have emerged for some topics, such as urban transport, ICT-systems and services, energy or security; other topics like urban governance or urban sustainability are much more fragmented. In general the transnational collaboration pattern can be described by a core- periphery structure. Countries, like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy established themselves as the key partners for European collaboration on urban issues. Other countries show weaker interactions or are more focused in their participations. Such specialisation was identified, e.g. for Swedish actors in the energy cluster, Norwegian partners in urban climate or Spanish organisations in socio-economic development. 24 B. Heller-Schuh, M. Barber, T. Scherngell: Urban Research in the European Framework Programmes, Final Report, April 2015; see also Appendix 1. Since JPI Urban Europe highly emphasises transdisciplinary research and a multi-stakeholder involvement the collaboration pattern of different actor groups was investigated as well. The analysis showed that the participation of different stakeholder groups varied widely depending on the respective topic. However, there is a rather low involvement of non-commercial (societal) actors and in some cases of cities. A pertinent conclusion from this is that the identified collaboration patterns clearly call for specific framework conditions to strengthen and support cooperation between research and cities, societal actors and/or industry, depending on the particular thematic area. Summarizing the analysis it can be stated that JPI Urban Europe can build upon a differentiated and in many cases well established urban research community but that efforts are needed to link the different clusters, competences and experts and strengthen the community on urban sustainability and related fields through inter- and trans-disciplinary research. To support urban transition from an integrated perspective, JPI Urban Europe aims at -- building upon the achieved results, technologies and expertise and connecting them more closely with national activities, -- benefitting from transnational cooperation by connecting the competences of a strong core community to those of more specialized European countries, and -- developing framework conditions that facilitate a multi-actor engagement and a balanced and early involvement of cities and urban stakeholders in research projects to ensure high impact and a mutual benefit form transdisciplinary research. The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe -6- BUILDING UPON AND ALIGNING NATIONAL STRATEGIES THE BENEFIT OF TRANSNATIONAL COOPERATION Analyses of European cooperation patterns in the field of research, technologies and innovation for urban development demonstrated the importance and role of national strategies and programmes – addressing national needs and priorities and preparing the national community for European level collaboration. Transnational cooperation takes advantage of these national activities by connecting them on a European scale, enhancing profiles and competencies, increasing efficiency, fostering innovation and implementation and benefitting from sharing experiences. Figure 3 summarizes the objectives and expected added value of developing and implementing the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe. Figure 3: Alignment objectives and added value of transnational cooperation In the case of JPI Urban Europe this alignment strategy is based on the landscape of national urban research programmes that has developed over the last years. Thematic, urban related programmes are established in many European countries; or else urban research and technological development may be funded under open responsive calls for proposals. Analysis of urban research programmes of 9 JPI Urban Europe countries including 32 national programmes covering all phases in the research life cycle, from basic research to technological development, piloting, demonstration and training, suggests a shift from rather sectorial programmes and calls to a more integrated approach to urban research, technological development and innovation. Indeed, some thematic clusters are identified that provide a sound basis for joint calls as well as future bi- and multilateral calls and alignment activities, such as the Smart City Cluster or a Future Mobility Cluster. A corresponding alignment strategy is under development reflecting the thematic priorities of the SRIA and the national potentials and priorities in current or future research, technological development and innovation programmes. ENHANCING PROFILES & COMPETENCES - Connecting national strengths - Cover national gaps - Establish knowledge cluster - Rethink national strategies INCREASING EFFICIENCY & INNOVATION - Sharing research infrastructure - Exchange of experts - Harmonising research frameworks for better solutions - Joint calls and evaluation panels MUTUAL PRACTICE & LEARNING - Comparative research - Sharing models and experiences - Improving practice and reducing non-successful projects -7- JPI URBAN EUROPE: GLOBAL URBAN CHALLENGES – JOINT EUROPEAN SOLUTIONS The ongoing policy debate on urban development clearly indicates that: (1) sustainability remains high on the agenda; (2) efforts should be both intensified and enlarged to develop and implement better integrated and more comprehensive sustainable development pathways; (3) to support this endeavour, fragmentation in policy and in research needs to be overcome; requiring multi-stakeholder involvement in a process of co-creation. The Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe has the ambition to support the transition of European urban areas towards sustainable, resilient and liveable ones by establishing a transnational mission-oriented research, technological development and innovation programme and acting as the European hub on sustainable urban development; supporting collaborative research, technological development and innovation within and beyond Europe. We know that urban areas are complex systems, or indeed systems of systems, whose emergent physical, social and economic structures depend on the interactions of the cities, administrative bodies, firms and individuals that inhabit them, as well as on their interactions with other cities in this era of globalisation. Cities are vibrant loci of education, employment and commerce, social encounter and recreation; they are the nerve centres of the modern global economy and as such they continue to attract migrants in search of a better quality of life for themselves and their families. This economic and social activity entails the metabolism of energy, matter, finance and information, highly influenced by the increasing digitalisation and new urban technologies. The throughput of these resources can have negative implications for raw materials depletion, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. To minimise this dependency, we need to radically improve our understanding of how the functioning of our urban areas can be made more sustainable and resilient to climate change, and which role technological and social innovations can play, the current economic asset of Europe in global markets. Urbanisation brings with it other societal challenges. Increased disparity in income and in social inequality can adversely affect social capital and cohesion and in the worst of cases exclusion of access to home ownership, education, welfare and healthcare. We need to better understand how we can balance economic growth with social and economic equality, to balance vibrancy with accessibility, within carefully defined and measurable environmental limits. The demand for new urban governance concepts, new approaches for urban planning and development and low cost technological solutions following such an integrated approach has been confirmed by city representatives as well as local and European The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe policy makers25. Economic disparities that lead to social ones, pressures on urban development and services provision due to financial constraints and in-migration, the need for economic growth and improved employment prospects, the call for more social innovation and an increased participation of civil society, the need to set and achieve greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. These are related challenges that have been identified as research, technological development and innovation priorities needing multi-stakeholder involvement and a better understanding of urban complexities. Through a better coordination of national research, technological development and innovation funds and the application of dedicated instruments and measures, we aim to achieve the following objectives: -- Enhancing capacities and knowledge in sustainable urban transitions by developing (radical) new ideas and solutions that meet the needs of cities and citizens. -- Reducing the fragmentation in the funding and delivery of research, technologies and innovation, in policy formulation and implementation; building critical mass. -- Increasing the visibility of European urban science, technological development and innovation at the global scale: providing international leadership in the planning and practice of sustainable urban transitions. To this end a set of principles has been identified which build the fundament of the JPI Urban Europe programme: -- A mission- and demand-oriented, long-term programme addressing city and societal needs. To achieve sustainability requires a long-term strategy, whilst also providing a framework for innovation in the achievement of shorter term complementary needs. This requires a combination of multi-timescale research, technological development and innovation activities. -- Interdisciplinary approaches to enhance understanding of urban complexity and generate radical new knowledge and concepts to tackle urban society’s multifaceted challenges. Relevant expertise and knowledge from the range of urban-related disciplines needs to be better and more systematically brought to bear (natural sciences, the social and economic sciences, engineering and technology, planning, architecture, the arts…) in our quest for cities that are more vibrant and resilient hubs of economic and social activity, whilst minimising unintended social and environmental consequences. -- Transdisciplinarity, in order to ensure impact and relevance. Urban research should develop understanding, knowledge, tools and evidence to underpin the formulation of effective urban transition policies and strategies. It should also support subsequent implementation and contribute sociotechnical innovation to this end. This requires collaboration between interdisciplinary research teams, businesses, cities and other urban stakeholders; to ensure that the entire research, technological development and innovation cycle is addressed, that a milieu for co-creation is established and that outcomes successfully inform 25 B. Heller-Schuh, M. Barber, T. Scherngell: Urban Research in the European Framework Programmes, Final Report, April 2015; see also Appendix 1. policy and implementation and subsequent monitoring of effectiveness. These aims may be supported through shared resources including integrated urban models, datasets, urban observatories and urban living labs. A PROGRAMME ON TRANSITION TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE AND LIVEABLE URBAN FUTURES The conceptual framework of the JPI Urban Europe SRIA has been informed by ongoing policy debates, national urban research strategies and priorities, international research activities and the outcomes of recent EU-funded projects and initiatives26, together with the outcomes of dedicated consultations with urban stakeholders in a process of co-creation. This framework is summarised in Figure 4 and described in the text that follows. 26 In particular the EU-funded projects SEiSMiC and Urban-Nexus are considered. The conclusions of the Urban-Nexus project (www.urban-nexus.eu) provide an important reference for the elaboration of the research priorities. In addition the still ongoing project SEiSMiC (www.seismicproject.eu) focuses on social innovation needs for urban development and brings the societal view into the strategic debate. Figure 4 Framework of the SRIA The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe TRANSITIONING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY AND LIVEABILITY: A LONGITUDINAL PROGRAMME The dominant theme emerging from debates of the challenges faced by European urban society is the need to improve upon its sustainability, in all of its complexity; to better understand how we can create economic growth and social and economic equality – vibrancy and accessibility, within carefully defined and measurable environmental limits. The core issues at hand are: -- Enhancing our understanding of the complexity of urban sustainability in the nexus of economic-social-environmental issues. -- Providing a framework to assess and monitor urban sustainability. -- Identifying and quantifying the levers that influence sustainability and its constituent factors as well as the interrelationships between them. -- Preparing and testing context-specific transition strategies. -- Providing tools and methods that support cities in this decision making process, as well as to support the implementation of the most promising strategies. -- Taking advantage of new data sources, the opportunities provided by big data and their potential for urban decision making and governance. There is at present no theoretically rigorous and empirically grounded definition of and framework for evaluating urban sustainability. Sustainability is here understood as the nexus of economic-social-environmental issues faced by urban regions, societies and governments. At the same time, global ecological crises call for a substantial reworking of, in particular, how urban regions are planned, built, governed, managed, practiced – and therefore researched. The development of an advanced framework is therefore required to define and measure sustainability and to determine where a city lies in its transition towards the achievement of its sustainability goals; be these short, medium or long term. These transition targets should be ambitious yet feasible as well as inclusive; representing for example the range of city specialisations, spatial scales, economic growth trajectories and geographic contexts and the interests of the range of core stakeholder groups. Of equal importance to identifying, understanding and quantifying the factors influencing all key aspects of sustainability is identifying, understanding and quantifying the policy interventions that can bring about change, be these positive or negative, and the potential interrelationships between them. Whilst these may take many forms, it is important to understand where the greatest potentials, or indeed risks, lie to help prioritise transition strategies. This requires a decision making framework that enables the effectiveness of city-specific transition strategies to be studied; to identify the most promising transition pathways from cities’ current to target states. To inform urban governance and policy making processes, it is important that relevant stakeholders have access to and utilise decision support systems with which to test and compare alternative strategies to improve services and performance. These services might relate to healthcare, mobility, welfare, energy supply; whilst performance might relate to the interconnections between social (cohesion, inclusion, housing provision…), economic (employment levels, income equality, local authority indebtedness…) and/or environmental (greenhouse gas emissions, urban heat island…) measures. Such decision support frameworks require that data of different scales (region (whether national or transnational), city, district, street, neighbourhood, building, household) and rates of change (from slow changing infrastructure to instantaneous flows of traffic, energy and water) be managed and integrated. Science is at an embryonic stage in investigating the potential of big data for urban operations and development. Data acquisition, analysis and management for decision making as well as for urban planning and governance, needs to be investigated to support sustainable urban transitions. THEMATIC PRIORITIES The following themes have been identified as particular priorities, where JPI Urban Europe and the research effected directly or indirectly under its auspices, can make a significant and lasting contribution. This contribution can take the form of new methodologies, new insights and data evidence allowing an increased understanding of urban systems, new technologies, and implementation of innovative solutions: Vibrancy in changing economies: Cities are engines of economic growth and the places where innovations emerge. Yet some cities are economically more successful than others. Across Europe we find cities with rapid economic growth and severe decline as well as cities with a re-growing economy. These trajectories as expressions of vibrancy are closely related to population dynamics in terms of growth or shrinkage. We need a better understanding of the factors that drive the economic success or failure of cities. We need to know how innovation shifts the size and segmentation of labour markets and how migration patterns change in response to these shifts. Furthermore new strategies are necessary to combine the creation of economic opportunities with social innovation in order to create open, inclusive, cohesive and more liveable cities. In short we need to find new ways of achieving and sustaining socio-economic vibrancy and equality in cities with changing economies. Welfare and finance: Stimulated by post-2008 austerity measures, civic services and the size of the welfare state are reducing as civil society is being increasingly called upon to fill the void through bottom-up voluntary efforts. This leads to changing roles of public services and the need to redefine the contribution of and cooperation with community-based activities. It also results in the call for new business models. The role of social entrepreneurship, local economy and shared economy is under debate and frameworks are needed to tap the full potential of these opportunities, as well as social innovation. New business models and financing schemes are also required to support sustainable urban transitions and smart cities developments, potentially with solutions that transcend vertical structures from individuals, through cooperatives, to firms, and local and central government; possibly augmented with policy and regulation to support and incentivise the effective uptake of the investments arising from these models. The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe Environmental sustainability and resilience: Urban areas are dependent on inflows of materials, energy, food, water, products and services. Through this metabolism cities are causing negative environmental externalities at a planetary scale. But cities are also themselves victims of these externalities through e.g. climate change and extreme weather conditions, poor air quality and declining ecosystem services. Cities must both change this metabolism in order to satisfy Europe’s commitments to curb climate change (to keep warming to within 2oC of pre-industrial levels through reduced greenhouse gas emissions) as well as to adapt to climate change and to be resilient to less probable events with potentially severe consequences. Partly because of climate change, water scarcity will affect increasing numbers of the world’s population. Water quality, air quality and the resilience of ecosystem services are issues that cities must handle in order to continue to be attractive and vibrant. Technological and social innovations will play a pivotal role in enabling cities to do so. Accessibility and connectivity: Cities’ economic competitiveness and citizens’ quality of life in urban areas are directly influenced by the accessibility of urban amenities and services within and beyond cities as well as by connectivity. Accessibility is a function of proximity to destinations and the directness of routes to them (the connectivity of the network), but it also depends on travellers’ ability to utilise this network, which may for example diminish as travellers become older and less physically able or emotionally secure or simply through changing economic circumstances. The mobility of goods and people is often assumed to be in conflict with environmental sustainability. But analysing transport systems through the lens of accessibility and connectivity can facilitate the joint pursuit of mobility and sustainability goals. This change of paradigm requires new research relating to: a) travellers’ needs, their behaviours and locational proximity; b) the design of new technologies supporting improved integration of land use and transport systems; c) bridging the gap between travellers’ needs and behaviours to improve urban performance. This paradigmatic shift also requires an improved understanding of the sectorial changes at stake, their interrelationships and their overall effects on urban performance. Urban Governance and Participation: Strategies to transition cities to a more sustainable and resilient future state will, if they are to be successfully designed, adopted and implemented, arguably rely on collaborative processes involving all key stakeholders, from public and private organisations to concerned civil society. New forms of governance are also called for by the changing nature of urban issues, especially the increasing importance of ‘real time’ in urban governance and management, e.g. in the face of the growing importance of extreme events. This will involve an enabling environment of new collaborative governance and policymaking frameworks to ensure productive and creative engagement. The utilisation of big data, new enabling technologies and methods to support these participatory approaches hold great potential here. -8- RESEARCH THEMES Motivation Population (P, Capita = Ca) and economic activity (A, GDP/Ca) as well as the environmental impacts per unit of economic activity (T, e.g. tCO2/GDP) – are thought to be proportional to environmental impact (I, tCO2 in this example): I=P.A.T. But this is not a forgone conclusion. Following the 1973 oil crisis, Europe’s energy expenditure and CO2 emissions reduced considerably. This was due to improvements in for example: standards of energy conservation and efficiency in buildings; industrial process efficiencies (and reduced industrial activity); vehicular mechanical efficiencies; deployment of renewable energy technologies; use of more efficient energy conversion technologies in power stations. By reducing the environmental impacts of our economic activity, it could be possible to accommodate both population and economic growth without increasing impacts on our global and local environments. This is an important observation, as both population and economic activity are on average increasing. Since the majority of our future population will reside in towns and cities, it stands to reason that these settlements will play a pivotal role in the quest for more sustainable living. New ways of accommodating more and wealthier people must be invented, having increased standards of living in towns and cities, with reduced environmental impact. A key global and thus European challenge is to radically transform how cities function; to improve their environmental sustainability whilst simultaneously increasing their resilience to the vagaries of social, economic and environmental shocks. SUSTAINABLE TRANSITION PATHWAYS The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe Just as global fortunes are changing, with E727 states set to overtake the G7, so there are considerable changes in fortune within Europe, with migratory flows and increasing social diversification, as well as aging due to healthcare improvements, accompanying these changes. The nature of the state is also changing; public services are being rolled-back and the welfare state is being cut as economies liberalise; changing the social characteristics of urban locations. After a century of societies becoming more equal and egalitarian, cities in many cases are becoming more socially polarised, with growing wealth inequalities, increased segregation between groups, and rising social tensions. Sections of society are being denied full participation in everyday activities and marginalised with respect to resources such as housing, work, social services and the political sphere. This is often manifest in social stratification and fragmentation, segregation to certain parts of the city, alienation, and undermines social cohesion leading to social unrest, protest and riots; as witnessed recently in a number of European cities. Such issues pose significant threats to cities’ long-term social stability, unless adequately addressed. To summarise then, whilst cities are the engines of economic activity, of resource metabolism and its adverse environmental consequences and of social mobility, there is a dearth of understanding of the forces influencing the associated dynamical flows of finance, information, energy, materials and people; the impacts on firms’ and individuals’ wellbeing and of strategies for improving them. There is an urgent need for transformative interdisciplinary research to radically improve our understanding of the complex, interrelated and competing factors influencing cities’ social, economic and environmental sustainability, underpinned by quantitative and qualitative research into cities’ functioning and the effectiveness of strategies and policy measures for improving upon this functioning. TOPICS TO BE ADDRESSED To achieve the anticipated improvement in our understanding of cities’ functioning and sustainability, and the considerable complexity that this entails, we see two core challenges: 1 To better understand what we mean by city28 sustainability: to define, measure and rate or categorise city sustainability. 2 To support city actors in defining sustainability targets and in making the transition towards their achievement. Our efforts in defining, measuring and labelling or categorising sustainability will define the present state of a city; but city actors will need support to define a future target state which is ambitious yet achievable and more particularly to determine the most promising strategies to be employed to achieve these transitions and to translate these into realisable projects. We describe below a research programme designed to improving our understanding of city sustainability, the setting of suitable targets and transitioning towards their achievement. 27 See footnote 19 28 For linguistic simplicity in this section we use ‘city’ in place of ‘urban’, acknowledging that the latter, which should be our focus, is broader than the former. Understanding sustainability There have been numerous endeavours to rate aspects of city sustainability, with environmental sustainability having received particular attention. But the results are neither comprehensive – accounting for the environmental, social and economic pillars and their myriad factors – nor are they rigorous – having been developed upon solid theoretical and empirical foundations. Theoretical advances should be combined with analysis of empirical evidence from a representative cross section of case study sites to define a new methodology for characterising the overall sustainability of a city; isolating the influences of the principle underlying factors to help identify where efforts should be focussed for further improvement. It is also important to identify what the forces are that influence these factors and how they relate to one another (for example, understanding the relationships between economic growth, inwards migration and social cohesion) and how negative effects can be mitigated and positive effects reinforced. It is similarly important to understand how and to what extent social and economic factors influence environmental factors of sustainability (for example firms’ and individuals’ perceptions of their environmental footprint and their willingness to reduce it) and vice versa (such as health impacts arising from environmental impacts). But as noted earlier, cities should not only strive for a more sustainable future, they should also be resilient and able to absorb, adapt to and recover from external or internal forces for change; be they social economic or environmental in nature; fast or slow in character. This will help to ensure that cities’ transition strategies are robust to these forces, that they continue to evolve towards a more sustainable future when subject to them; that they do not diverge towards less favourable future states. Transitioning towards sustainability: targets and strategies By far the most onerous pillar of this proposed research programme is the identification of transition targets and the most promising strategies and accompanying action plans, translated into realisable projects, to be employed in achieving them. Informed by the outcomes from the above a process should be established to identify social, economic and environmental transition targets, ensuring that these are ambitious yet feasible and that they are inclusive; representing for example the range of city specialisations (culture and tourism, industry, innovation…), spatial scales (small to medium sized cities, mega-cities and city regions), economic growth trajectories (declining and depopulating, through stability to growing and populating) and geographic contexts (coastal, inland, mountainous…) and the interests of the range of core stakeholder groups. Of equal importance to identifying, understanding and quantifying the factors influencing social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability is identifying, understanding and quantifying the levers that can bring about change (by quantifying here we refer to the response to a given lever change), be these positive or negative, and the potential interrelationships between them. These levers may for example be social (peer influences), educational (public engagement; primary, secondary and tertiary teaching), socio-technological (more efficient utilities and transport infrastructure; e-governance tools), regulatory (planning instruments; construction regulations…) or financial (taxation, subsidies, loans). Whilst these may take many informs, it is important to understand where the greatest potentials, or indeed risks, lie to help prioritise transition strategies. The next logical step is to integrate the knowledge gained from the previous steps into a decision making framework that enables the effectiveness of city-specific tran The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe sition strategies to be studied; to identify – through a transdisciplinary approach – the most promising transition pathways from cities’ current to target states. This implies that we first characterise the current (social, economic and environmental) state of our city and then adapt the typology-dependent targets to the particular context of this city. A decision-making framework to support the evaluation of transition strategies might take many forms. It may simply involve a deliberative exercise amongst key stakeholders in which city-specific candidate transition strategies are identified, followed by the application of multiple decision making criteria to iteratively exclude the less promising until the most favourable candidate solutions remain. An alternative would be to complement this process through computer simulation, with which the impact of specific transition strategies on the performance of the city would be simulated. This would require that the knowledge gained elsewhere in the programme of funded work be embedded within a (physical and social) simulation framework: the phenomena influencing resource flows and the levers to bring about change in the behaviours of the firms and individuals responsible for these flows; perceptions of sustainability and its numerous component parts. Encoded at an appropriate level of abstraction, this would provide powerful decision-making support – providing quantitative feedback on the effectiveness of alternative strategies as part of a multi-criteria decision making analysis process involving key city stakeholders. The final step in involves supporting stakeholders in translating specific strategies into actionable implementation plans and associated financing strategies, to transition cities along the pathway from current to target states. This co-creative transdisciplinary process should also incorporate plans to monitor the effectiveness of implemented transition strategies; socially, economically and environmentally. ROADMAP SUSTAINABLE TRANSITION PATHWAYS UNDERSTANDING urban sustainability, consideration of different city typologies FRAMEWORKS, METHODS AND TOOLS for target setting, scenario development and decision support TRANSITION STRATEGIES AND VALIDATION of tools, methods and frameworks INTEGRATED URBAN MODELLING FRAMEWORK, considering differtent spatial scales or time horizons Motivation Cities are engines of economic growth and the places where innovations emerge. Yet some cities are economically more successful than others. Across Europe we find cities with rapid economic growth and severe decline as well as cities with a re-growing economy. These trajectories as expressions of vibrancy are closely related to population dynamics in terms of growth or shrinkage. Economically prosperous cities experience in general in-migration of people from declining regions but also immigration from abroad. In contrast, economically declining cities experience population loss, mostly of the young generation which increases the average age of the remaining population. Both cases have links between economic performance and labour market outcomes which are complex and context specific. Not every citizen profits from the economic opportunities which exist in a city in the same way. VIBRANT URBAN ECONOMIES: GROWTH AND DECLINE OF EUROPEAN CITIES The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe Major innovations such as new production and service systems can lead to more employment opportunities in cities. To pursue this target, circular economies including “green economies” and the close collaboration with practitioners and stakeholders are decisive. For example, new infrastructure types need to be identified that include citizens as producers and consumers and in addition integrate different services in a new cycle. These developments not only impact the economic performance of cities but also the living conditions of the population. More localised economies can enhance the equal access of citizens to new services and infrastructures, and increase their responsibility in terms of sustainable consumption. Thus there is a need for sustainable production and consumption patterns to drive social cohesion within vibrant urban dynamics and to avoid negative outcomes such as increased exclusion and polarisation. We need a better understanding of the factors that drive the economic success or failure of cities. Cities themselves evolve into economic actors by taking over an active role in offering innovative and creative environments and defining their future perspectives. We need to better understand how innovation shifts the size and segmentation of labour markets and how migration patterns change in response to these shifts. Furthermore new strategies are necessary to combine advanced economic opportunities with social innovation in order to create open, inclusive, cohesive and more liveable cities.