Year: 2021

Free online course on sustainable urban mobility

Mobility is a key area for the development of sustainable and socially inclusive cities. Yet many cities fail to provide the urban environment and transport system to tackle the challenges of our time, namely climate change, public health and social equity. To face this issue the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI) together with the University College of London (UCL) developed...

Warm Atmosphere at EU-Japan IURC Kick-off Meeting

On 16 September, the Japan Helpdesk, led by Mr. Hidefumi Imura, Urban Development Expert Japan, organised a kick-off meeting to welcome partner cities to a new phase of EU-Japan urban cooperation. Among the nine project countries of IURC Asia & Australasia, Japan indeed hosts the highest number of participating cities, with 13 EU cities to be paired with 10 Japanese...

Enthusiastic participation from EU and Malaysian cities during kick-off meeting

Some 20 city coordinators from Penang and Malacca in Malaysia, Maia and Vila Nova de Famalicão in Portugal, and NCI / Bologna in Italy participated in the EU-Malaysia Cities Kick-off Meeting on 15 September, marking the launch of the IURC programme in Malaysia. The meeting was opened by Mr. Francesco Floris, Head of the Economic and Trade Section, EU Delegation...

EU-New Zealand IURC Kick-off Meeting

First Kick-off Meeting for IURC in Asia and Australasia The International Urban and Regional Cooperation (IURC) programme kicked off its first partnerships between European and New Zealand cities in an on-line meeting on 13 September 2021. Participants included the city coordinators from the participating cities: Lemvig, Denmark; Malaga and Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; Vilnius, Lithuania; and Nelson, Christchurch and New Plymouth in...

Mumbai Climate Action Plan – Stakeholder Consultation on Sustainable Mobility

The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) as a part of the C40 Cities Network in collaboration with the Government of Maharashtra, WRI, Climate Voices and Waatavaran is developing the City’s first climate action plan - the Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP). To achieve this, a series of stakeholder consultations are being conducted to seek feedback and recommendations from organisations...

A festival of ideas

What if sharing research and ideas to solve the world's problems could look more like a music festival than a stuffy old scientific conference? Officials from Umeå who travelled to Kamakura as part of the last phase of International Urban and Regional Cooperation were inspired by that city's approach to local participation - organising a kind of 'hackathon' with a...

The Journey of “New Green Possibilities” Is Only Beginning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfJ9bGuAyvs The goal of the “New Green Possibilities” International Forum was to look at the promotion of green public space from different angles. This is why it was divided into four talks to engage four different groups of urban stakeholders. We hope you recognise the role that each stakeholder plays in developing our living environment and the interrelations among them....

Knowledge Sharing: the EU-China Regional Innovation Joint Study

The EU-China Regional Innovation Joint Study, supported by previous IUC-Asia programme, is to compare the European and Chinese approaches to regional innovation carrying out a comparative analysis at a general level and also analyzing six best practices of regions/ provinces in China and the EU. It seeks to explore ideas for future cooperation between the European Union and China on...

IURC cooperation in Bangkok for a greener city

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T2oJXhZnwc As cities are responsible for a high level of energy consumption and around 70% of greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable urban development is a key component in the European Union’s efforts to realise the #EuropeanGreenDeal and become carbon neutral by 2050. In Bangkok, the EU Delegation to Thailand recently established a partnership with we!park through the International Urban and Regional...

Videos on climate change by Finnish and Japanese youth to be presented at COP26

When the cities of Nagano and Obuse in Japan and Turku in Finland were paired up for cooperation within the IUC programme in 2019, they were interested in tackling the issue of climate change. The Japanese cities had recently been hit by a typhoon and Turku had had experiences with unexpected flooding. The question they asked themselves was: How to...