Seven months after his election, Emmanuel Macron has established himself as a force on the world stage. While some see in him the new "leader of Europe", the Franco-German tandem remains remains crucial to implement his ideas. EURACTIV Germany's media partner "Der Tagesspiegel" reports.
Inspired by the successes of New York City's Civic Service Design initiative, Philadelphia sought and was awarded a $338,000 Knight Foundation City Challenge grant this summer to create the PHL Participatory Design Lab. It was one of the biggest grants awarded this year in the Knight Cities Challenge. Just now ramping up, the Philadelphia lab aims to blend behavioral economics with participatory service design to shake up sleepy bureaucratic processes that often pay little attention to the experiences of citizens using those services.
The big majority of the EU building stock needs to be upgraded. It is well recognised that in order to achieve a decarbonised building stock by 2050, renovation will need to move at a faster pace and attract considerable investment. Public funding alone is not enough to meet this target. Innovative financing schemes that will progressively maximise the leverage ratio of public funds to private finance are necessary.
Forte de 450 ports et terminaux (30% du du volume mondial des échanges maritimes), la Méditerranée dispose de 46 000 km de littoraux et des ressources marines et halieutiques uniques. "Les secteurs de la pêche et de l'aquaculture sont parmi les plus prometteurs en terme de croissance et d'employabilité", précise l'UpM dans un communiqué évoquant la création de 350 000 emplois directs et un potentiel de 2 millions d'emplois supplémentaires d'ici à 2020.
"A train ride offers time for reflecting on how the EU budget can be put to use for the common good. This blog post is the result of a small experiment whether I can write something meaningful during the 25 km commute from the small wine town Pezinok to Slovakia’s capital Bratislava. The wifi equipped train I’m using has electricity plugs and bike racks. It was financed with the help of European Structural and Investment Funds and is the kind of low-carbon, citizen-friendly transport solution that civil society groups across Europe want to see prioritised in the next EU budget."
The ride-hailing app Uber has joined global public transport association UITP to help improve mobility in the cities, reduce the use of private cars and avoid congestions. The move should also help Uber shed its image of a scandal-hit digital novelty app and become a trusted partner in urban mobility.
Comment formaliser la coopération entre les collectivités des grandes zones urbaines, telles que les métropoles, et les territoires ruraux, pour que ces derniers profitent de la dynamique économique urbaine ? Les retours d'expérience montrent différentes voies possibles, au-delà des balbutiants "contrats d
Goteo is a platform for civic crowdfunding founded by Platoniq, a Catalan association of culture producers and software developers. Goteo helps citizen initiatives as well as social, cultural and technological projects that produce open source results and community benefits, with crowdfunding and crowdsourcing resources. Since its launch in 2011, Goteo’s crowdfunding campaigns have mobilised more than 90,000 people, collecting over 4,5 million euros and successfully funding initiatives in more than 70% of the cases. Beyond collecting funds, Goteo also helps initiatives gather non-monetary contributions and establish partnerships that can advance their work. Through the projects it enables, Goteo promotes transparency, open source information, knowledge exchange and cooperation among citizen initiatives and public authorities.
In the past years, civic crowdfunding has become an increasingly used tool by communities to help finance their urban infrastructure projects. However, while some legal contexts encourage experiments around community finance, other national regulations categorically exclude the possibility of peer-to-peer lending or crowdinvesting, thus limiting the impact crowdfunding can have in the built environment. Jan Mazur looks at the legal frameworks that regulate crowdfunding and crowdinvesting, asking how platforms can operate beyond national borders and create opportunities for various parts of Europe.
Cities face particular challenges when it comes to accessing finance. Individual municipal projects, for example in the fields of social inclusion, urban regeneration or energy efficiency, can be too risky or too small for the market. At the same time, funding for integrated urban programmes can also be difficult to access, because they group several small projects across different sectors. Finally, cities can also face borrowing limits. URBIS intends to help cities tackle these specific issues. It will help them design, plan and implement their investment strategies and projects, with tailor-made technical and financial advice, also on innovative financing options. The objective is to see solid projects get off the ground in the short to medium-term, for examplein the field of urban climate actions.
"Since its creation in 2008 in Europe, the Covenant of Mayors initiative has undergone great developments, progressively extending its scope and geographical coverage. Discover through our 2017 key figures the milestones in the Covenant’s history, the Covenant Community, the latest achievements of signatory cities."
Funding the Cooperative City: Community Finance and the Economy of Civic Spaces Edited by Daniela Patti & Levente Polyák (Eutropian Research & Action) Publisher: Cooperative City Books, Vienna, September 2017 Format: Paper size B5, 244 pages ISBN 978-3-9504409-0-4 The book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) More information: info@cooperativecity.org Please…
This report was produced by the Horizon 2020 Expert Group on 'Nature-Based Solutions and Re-Naturing Cities' and gives useful information on natural-based solutions.
The SDG Knowledge Hub of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) provides the November update on global developments in climate adaptation finance. Climate Adaptation Finance Update: COP 23 Spurs Action on Resilience In November, multilateral development banks (MDBs) approved a number of large development projects with climate resilience benefits. Support was also confirmed…
Energy poverty is an increasing socio-economic problem with severe health impacts and significant environmental implications. It is related to poor building quality and the occupants’ socio-economic status, and affects millions of households across Europe. Despite the fact that various definitions are given in the literature to describe energy poverty, there is no single agreed EU-wide definition.
This film describes the main types of financial instruments (e.g. loans, guarantees, equity and quasi-equity) that Member States and regions can choose to use in conjunction with the European Structural and Investment Funds. The film illustrates the key features and differences between such financial instrument products.
The study ‘Macro-regional strategies and their links with cohesion policy’, contracted by Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and conducted by a consortium led by COWI company, aims first at describing the main features of each macro-region (Baltic, Danube, Adriatic and Ionian, and Alpine) through a range of macroeconomic, competitiveness, integration and governance indicators. It assesses to what extent the strategies contribute to coordination and synergies between European Structural and Investment Funds and other EU policies and instruments.
Cities are increasingly becoming the real game changers when it comes to addressing climate change and energy issues, and are now leading the transition to a low-carbon future. By acting at the local level to solve unsustainable energy crises and climate change causes, cities can bypass national political discord to create partnerships full of opportunities that accelerate climate action as well as facilitate access to climate finance for mitigation and resilience. Cities are teaming up, creating coalitions and sharing knowledge on the most advanced and innovative solutions to tackle climate-related risks. These strategic partnerships are rooted in strong projects and initiatives that reflect cities’ ambitions, priorities and interests.
Spacehive is a civic crowdfunding platform based in London. The platform, established in 2012, supports projects aimed at improving local civic and community spaces. Besides collecting donations from individuals, Spacehive also connects initiatives with funding sources including city councils, companies and grant-makers. Furthermore, the organisation and its partners help people with project ideas to build support from a community, make viable plans and create stronger impact. By late 2017, Spacehive funded about 375 projects with an approximate £8 million.
Governments around the world have already adopted long-term climate frameworks, many in legal form. Many others are in the process of developing similar laws or strategies. These overarching long-term frameworks are critical to effectively implementing the Paris Agreement, as tools for managing the necessary transformation of all sectors of the economy. Such climate frameworks help set appropriate long-term targets, chart pathways towards them and identify the necessary policies. They can also help build political support, engage stakeholders and expert advice and create accountability. And they can facilitate raising ambition further — as foreseen under the new Paris system.
The activity is part of a project led by AETS, called “Participative Democracy and Citizens Participation at the local level in Algeria” and support by the European Commission and the Ministry of Interior and Local Authorities of Algeria.
The project aims at developing participative democracy in the country following the adoption of a new Constitution in 2016, which puts the accent on local and participatory democracy. In this framework, other two expert trainers led trainings for other 60 participants, all civil servants; after the upcoming elections in November, elected representatives might also be involved in similar trainings.
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