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EU launches ‘one-stop shop’ portal for cities

17 October 2016

by Jonathan Andrews

To help cities better address challenges such as affordable housing, energy efficiency, and to make the most out of EU funding opportunities, the European Commission has launched a new web portal.

In addition, the new Urban Data Platform, hosted on the Knowledge Centre for Territorial Policies operated by the Joint Research Centre, provides a single access point to common indicators on the status and trends in over 800 European urban areas–on demography, economic development or access to services.

“We are launching instruments which will enable cities to experiment with new ideas and see if they are feasible and useful,” said Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President for Energy Union, European Commission.

Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Creţu added: “These platforms represent what the Urban Agenda is all about: connecting and learning from each other.”

State of European Cities Report

In partnership with UN-Habitat, the Commission also released the State of European Cities Report. Utilising a new method of defining a city that is less opaque and more people-based–yet still in an experimental stage–the report supports the Urban Agenda by assessing the performance of European cities in jobs and skills, poverty, and the shift towards a low-carbon economy.

In a briefing given to Cities Today, key data from the report reveals that cities created 9 million jobs between 2000 and 2013, with GDP growth 50 percent faster in cities than other areas. The report said that those cities that operate at the metropolitan scale and have sufficient autonomy and resources can better exploit urban advantages, such as ease of walking, cycling and public transport use.

To boost investments, the EU’s cohesion policy will provide more than €100 billion to projects on innovation in SMEs, social integration, low-carbon mobility and energy efficiency in cities.

The report was launched during the European Week of Regions and Cities in Brussels and will be presented this week during the UN-Habitat III conference in Quito where the EU-OECD people-based definition of cities will be tested on a global level.

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