Research Project: Global urban transformation: involving New Urban Agenda, SDGs and the Paris Agreement into Germany‘s local and national urban development

Results

Planning workshops with German and European municipalities

Between April 2018 and May 2019, altogether three planning workshops were carried out with German and European municipalities. The discussions showed that most of the participating municipalities had already initiated processes to develop and implement local transformation approaches and sustainability strategies. The way of referring to the Agendas in doing so is, however, very different. For some of them they form basis and framework for the development of strategic concepts, others just take short notice of them.

For many municipalities, the benefit of the Agendas is not immediately clear, their application bears a lot of difficulties. Municipalities thus feel the translation of abstract objectives into the local context to be a large challenge. They can often hardly impart the benefit of the Agendas for local transformation approaches within city councils and to the civil society and convince decision-makers. A lack of political support and continuous political fragility are other barriers for local implementation. Another area of conflict are the responsibility of administrations for global agendas and the related sovereignty of interpretation. The diverse agenda scenery with its various objectives and requirements is furthermore very complex and confusing. In many places there is a lack of support of the translation of agendas into the local context and of identifying links and synergies between them.

There are, however, numerous initiatives, instruments and mechanisms at national and European level assisting cities in applying and putting global and European agendas into practice but with too little impact on the implementation level. The reasons are often the missing knowledge about existing offers, the confusing assistance scenery and the fact that not all types of municipalities (especially smaller ones) are able to beneft from these offers.

Altogether it became clear that the general conditions for municipalities have to be improved and that their institutional, financial and personal capacities have to be increased to strengthen them as partners in the implementation process of the Agendas. Local sustainability efforts and innovations require a clear political framework and funding programmes that support local transformation projects referring to agendas on the basis of financial incentive systems and a medium- to long-term perspective. Important is also a better exchange of knowledge and experiences between municipalities as well as further training measures and advisory packages for local actors in order to raise awareness, to communicate and apply the Agendas.

The organisation and impact of local transformation processes also raises many questions. In order to better understand and support these processes, new cooperation formats between the scientific and the private sector, multi-stakeholder partnerships and a stronger establishment of global agendas and sustainability goals in the teaching and administrative activities of educational and research institutions are required.

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Recommendations for further developing the National Urban Development Policy

Three main fields of action result from the project findings for the National Urban Development Policy, which help to take up the practical experiences of municipalities in dealing with the global and European Agendas and to strengthen them as partners in the implementation process.

Optimising the general conditions for the ability of municipalities to act

Principally, it is necessary to optimise the general conditions for municipalities when putting global and European agendas into practice. In doing so it is important to promote capacity building projects. Examples might be to create a central contact point for municipalities providing relevant information and adivsory packages how to organise local transformation processes, to promote a structured and ongoing exchange of knowledge and experiences between municipalities, to expand the multi-stakeholder cooperation on sustainable urban development issues and to add agenda-related financial incentive systems and allocation criteria to existing funding programmes.

Science and practice: expanding cooperations and partnerships

In order to better understand and support local transformation processes, the scientific and the local private sector have to be better linked. To this end, innovative cooperation formats and partnerships should be tested and the knowledge transfer be improved.

Strengthening profile and adaptability of the National Urban Development Policy

In order to establish the National Urban Development Policy as an overall urbanity brand, its impact and ability to be integrated have to be strengthened by means of new formats and interfaces, e.g. by strengthening its role as an information agency as well as as a participatory and implementation instrument. Especially the National Urban Development Policy website could be expanded into a central leading medium, municipalities might serve as a navigation aid for national funding programmes or good practice examples. In addition, the National Urban Development Policy’s adaptability towards new trends and challenges must be improved through periodical evaluations.

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Recommendations for updating the Leipzig Charter and the Urban Agenda for the EU

Concrete possibilities to act can also be derived for the European level. Due to the present dynamic phase of reformulating the Leipzig Charter and the Urban Agenda for the EU, the political ability to implement the recommendations must be verified especially against the background of the mechanisms supporting the implementation.

In view of the variety of agendas, the Leipzig Charter update should offer a clear benefit and close existing gaps within the complex agenda scenery. This would be given if the new Leipzig Charter would manage to function as a connecting link between various global and European agendas by combining and integrating the different target agreements in its key principles. In doing so, a focus on the following principles would be important: integrated urban development, improved general conditions for municipalities, multi-stakeholder partnerships as practice applied, a higher global responsibility through international cooperation and supraregional exchange.

On the EU level it would also be important to locally coordinate and combine the existing supportive tools and mechanisms for locally implementing agendas and to add further capacity-building measures for municipalities and multipliers. When concretely building up regional training centres in the context of URBACT, it has to be examined which municipalities support local transformation processes based on global and European agendas and may provide an overview of existing supportive tools. Establishing an Urban Erasmus programme for European municipalities and strengthening urban networks as knowledge holders of local implementation processes would be important measures.