EUI takes its roots in a strong commitment to strengthen the urban dimension of EU policies and the conviction of the EU that cities must be involved in the design and implementation of policy responses to their local challenges.
During 2014-2020, some €115 billion from the Cohesion policy funds were invested in cities. Of these,€17 billion was implemented locally through more than 980 sustainable urban development strategies managed directly by urban authorities. In parallel with these significant urban investments, the Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) initiative provided direct support for cities to experiment with innovative solutions.
The Urban Development Network (UDN) was set up with the mission to support the dialogue and information exchange between the ‘Article 7 cities’, Urban Innovative Actions cities and the European Commission. The URBACT III programme built the capacities of cities to work together and develop integrated solutions to common urban challenges by transnational networking, learning from experiences and identifying good practices to improve sustainable urban development policies and strategies.
The EUI is a novel initiative that will build on these past experiences by going a step further to offer coherent support to cities; foster city led innovation, sharing of urban knowledge, practices and to build capacities.
Components of EUI
Innovative Actions
The support of innovative actions builds on the UIA Initiative in identifying and testing transferable and scalable innovative solutions to address issues relating to sustainable urban development. A new feature however will be embedded to support the transfer of solutions to other urban areas across the EU including UIA tested solutions through Urbact Transfer Networks.
Capacity building
The capacity building component of the EUI is another critical building block of the initiative that seeks to improve the capacities of cities in the design of sustainable urban development policies, strategies and practices in an integrated and participative way. In complementarity, it will also contribute to the design and implementation of these policies and action plans in cities on a local, regional and national level. This element encompasses the cooperation with the networks of cities supported by Urbact IV, as well as Peer learning activities and Urban Development Network-type capacity building.
This strand is a key element to achieving the main objectives of the EUI in successfully sharing and capitalising on knowledge on sustainable urban development and importantly, in providing accessible know-how and information on urban matters. Accordingly, this strand aims to develop a knowledge base in support of improving sustainable urban development policy, strategy design, implementation and mainstreaming. It will support the Urban Agenda for the EU and intergovernmental cooperation on urban matters in order to effectively share and help develop evidence-based policy on sustainable urban development.
