
and economic structures. 

Hence, there is a need to maintain economic competitiveness in this era of global 
competition and a shift in economic and political power from G718 to E719 states, as well 
as to maintain, even to improve upon, citizens’ social welfare. This latter is complicated 
by a number of factors. 

In general, urban Europe suffers an increase in inequalities concerning e.g. housing, 
education, work, health, transport/mobility, and ICT. Marginalisation and polarisation 
tends to affect specifically youth, migrants, and ethnic minorities.

Reflecting the contrasting developments of south-eastern and north-western Member 
States, Europe continues to experience considerable migratory flows. Young, mobile 
and often well-trained people are leaving their home regions in search of employment 
and educational opportunities; changing the demography of their home regions, 
reducing the skill base and exacerbating economic decline, whilst increasing sociocultural 
diversity as well as opportunities for growth and innovation in their destination 
cities. Meanwhile, less mobile youth in declining economies are increasingly faced 
with long term unemployment prospects and insufficient opportunities and supportive 
structures to help themselves – to innovate and exercise their entrepreneurial capacity. 
Reflecting low fertility rates and increased life expectancy, Europe’s population is also 
aging. This places greater pressure on the welfare state and also poses challenges in 
terms of inclusion and connectivity. As wealth is increasingly concentrated, income 
inequality and levels of poverty are increasing; leading to social polarisation and exclusion. 
Finally, although functional redevelopment of land-use increases, urban sprawl 
remains a challenge. This is a challenge not only for a resource efficient public service 
but also for e.g. biodiversity and water sustainability.

For further information on these and related global and European urban challenges, we 
refer the interested reader to the SAB’s Megatrends Report20. 

 

18 The Group of Seven (G7, formerly G8) is a governmental political forum of leading advanced 
economies in the world. It was originally formed by six leading industrial countries and sub-sequently 
extended with two additional members, one of which, Russia, is suspended. Since 2014, the G8 in 
effect comprises seven nations and the European Union as the eighth member. 

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G8_(forum)>

19 The E7 is a group of seven countries with emerging economies. The E7 are predicted to have 
larger economies than the G7 countries by 2020. 

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E7_(countries)>

20 O. Coutard, G. Finnveden, S. Kabisch, R. Kitchin, R. Matos, P. Nijkamp, C. Pronello, D. Robinson: 
Urban Megatrends: Towards a European Research Agenda; A report by the Scientific Advisory 
Board of JPI Urban Europe, March 2014.



The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe


-4-

THE URBAN POLICY DEBATE: 
CALLING FOR REVITALISED 
EFFORTS TO IMPROVE 
URBAN SUSTAINABILITY

These urban challenges are addressed on various policy levels and high emphasis is 
given to gain social and economic benefit from the urban dynamics by calling for integrated 
urban development and intensifying efforts to realise models for a transition 
towards truly sustainable urbanisation. 

On a global scale, the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-HABITAT) 
focusses on housing and sustainable urban development. In its latest progress report 
on the implementation of the outcomes of UN-HABITAT II, UN-HABITAT clearly stress 
the importance of strengthening urbanisation as the engine for global sustainable 
development; of overcoming the current unsustainable model of urbanisation. Since 
current forms of urbanisation are deeply unsustainable new conditions need to be 
defined to achieve inclusive, human-centred and sustainable global development.21 

Habitat III, the UN conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development will 
take place in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016 and is set to focus on securing renewed 
political commitment for sustainable urban development and to assess the accomplishments 
to date, address poverty and identify and address new and emerging challenges 
which will result in a forward looking document highlighting policy requirements on 
a global scale. This New Urban Agenda will guide the efforts in support of cities by 
national governments, urban stakeholders, international development funders and 
others with the objective of integrated sustainable development of cities and urban 
areas worldwide. 

In a European context, cities play a pivotal role in the territorial development of the 
European Union and for reaching the EU 2020 objectives, an European Urban Agenda 
is currently under development, with the aim of strengthening and fastening policy 
responses at European level. By integrating and aligning the diverse strategies and 
policies at European level, EU policies should be highlighting measures with high effectiveness 
for “sustainable development, better participation and contribution of urban 
areas in achieving common EU goals, as well as exchange of knowledge and increase 
in learning”22. 

Besides this, the EC strategy 2014-2019 includes numerous elements of sustainable 
development with a strong impact on the urban dimension. In particular the Juncker 

21 UN, Progress to date in the implementation of the outcomes of the second United Nations 
Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) and identification of new and emerging challenges 
on sustainable urban development. Report of the Secretary-General of the Conference, 

A/CONF.226/PC.1/5, 26 July 2014.

22 Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development of the Republic of Latvia: 
Declaration of Ministers towards the EU Urban Agenda, Riga, 10 June 2015, 

<https://eu2015.lv/images/news/2015_06_10_EUurbanDeclaration.pdf>.



Plan calls for a new start for Europe in terms of jobs, growth, fairness and democratic 
change23. 

The policy areas identified in the Juncker Plan have a high relevance for urban research, 
technological development and innovation. As hubs for the regional development, 
European cities play a pivotal role in tackling challenges at hand. Therefore, within this 
Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, the policy areas in the “Juncker plan” are 
reflected in the thematic research priorities of JPI Urban Europe’s priorities. Urban 
research, technological development and innovation can support boosting jobs, 
growth and investment in certain areas, such as large scale infrastructure projects, a 
resilient energy union with a forward-looking climate change policy, and a deeper and 
fairer economic and monetary union. JPI Urban Europe’s ambition is to contribute to 
the priorities of the EC strategy and the Juncker Plan by providing evidence for policy 
making and strengthening science-policy cooperation on urban transition towards 
sustainable and liveable futures. In line with the Juncker Plan a cooperation of research, 
technological development and policy can help tackling issues such as migration and 
the effects of the increasing movement of people towards the European Union or 
the development of a Union of democratic change. As European cities are becoming 
even more important for implementing the policy measures, JPI Urban Europe aims at 
teaming up with the European Commission in certain research areas and developing 
an aligned set of research, technological development and innovation measures to 
strengthen the European research community and achieve highest impact and relevance 
for our urban areas. 

One particular action is the contribution of JPI Urban Europe to the European 
Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities to support the implementation 
of sustainable technologies as part of a human-centred approach, better coordinated 
policies, actors and governance levels and improve the understanding of policy 
making contexts in urban development.

The urban policy debates underline the importance for new urban agendas with the aim 
of supporting sustainable urban development. Furthermore, the efforts taken by the 
European Commission as well as UN-Habitat stress the need for integration and coordination 
of sectoral organised endeavours and actions. In this regard, urban research, 
technological development and innovation with the objective of supporting the transition 
towards a holistic concept of sustainability are asked to keep the close link to the 
current urban policy debate and support administration and governments with applicable 
results and recommendations. 

 

23 J-C. Juncker, A New Start for Europe: My Agenda for Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic 
Change. Political Guidelines for the next European Commission, European Parliament plenary 
session, Strasbourg, 15 July 2014, 

<http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-14-546_en.htm>.



The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe


-5-

THE LANDSCAPE OF 
TRANSNATIONAL, URBAN-RELATED 
RESEARCH COOPERATION 
IN EUROPE

JPI Urban Europe aims to coordinate research and make better use of Europe’s public 
funds in order to address common European urban challenges more effectively. 
Strengthening and aligning urban research, technological development and innovation 
means at the same time to build upon existing expertise, technologies, networks and 
results. In the frame of the European Research Frameworks FP5, FP6 and FP7 substantial 
funding has already been provided to foster urban-related research on transnational 
level, supporting research, technological development and innovation in various 
urban fields and disciplines and generating networks among scientists, industry and 
public authorities. A solid understanding of the gained achievements allows to position 
JPI Urban Europe against this background.

A recent report24 showed that nearly 600 projects related to urban research were 
funded from FP5 to FP7; most of which were conducted collaboratively. The urban 
research community has grown from a rather small, but strongly connected community, 
to a larger, more loosely connected one. While the number of funded projects 
dropped after FP5 due to changing priorities and funding schemes in the framework 
programmes, the amount of project funding increased from 273m to 430m 
Euros from FP5 to FP7. Half of the projects were conducted in the areas of 
urban transport, energy and urban environment receiving two third of the 
total project funding. Furthermore, the structural characteristics of the 
network of urban research project changes from F5 to FP7. While very 
strong collaboration clusters have emerged for some topics, such as urban 
transport, ICT-systems and services, energy or security; other topics like 
urban governance or urban sustainability are much more 
fragmented. 

In general the transnational collaboration 
pattern can be described by a core-
periphery structure. Countries, like 
Germany, France, the United Kingdom, 
Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy established 
themselves as the key partners 
for European collaboration on urban 
issues. Other countries show weaker 
interactions or are more focused in their 
participations. Such specialisation was identified, e.g. for Swedish 
actors in the energy cluster, Norwegian partners in urban climate or 
Spanish organisations in socio-economic development. 

24 B. Heller-Schuh, M. Barber, T. Scherngell: Urban Research in the European Framework 

Programmes, Final Report, April 2015; see also Appendix 1.



Since JPI Urban Europe highly emphasises transdisciplinary research and a multi-stakeholder 
involvement the collaboration pattern of different actor groups was investigated 
as well. The analysis showed that the participation of different stakeholder 
groups varied widely depending on the respective topic. However, there is a rather low 
involvement of non-commercial (societal) actors and in some cases of cities. 

A pertinent conclusion from this is that the identified collaboration patterns clearly 
call for specific framework conditions to strengthen and support cooperation between 
research and cities, societal actors and/or industry, depending on the particular 
thematic area. 

Summarizing the analysis it can be stated that JPI Urban Europe can build upon a differentiated 
and in many cases well established urban research community but that efforts 
are needed to link the different clusters, competences and experts and strengthen the 
community on urban sustainability and related fields through inter- and trans-disciplinary 
research. To support urban transition from an integrated perspective, JPI Urban 
Europe aims at 

-- building upon the achieved results, technologies and expertise and connecting 
them more closely with national activities, 
-- benefitting from transnational cooperation by connecting the competences of 
a strong core community to those of more specialized European countries, and 
-- developing framework conditions that facilitate a multi-actor engagement and 
a balanced and early involvement of cities and urban stakeholders in research 
projects to ensure high impact and a mutual benefit form transdisciplinary 
research. 


 



The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe


-6-

BUILDING UPON AND 
ALIGNING NATIONAL STRATEGIES 
THE BENEFIT OF 
TRANSNATIONAL COOPERATION

Analyses of European cooperation patterns in the field of research, technologies and 
innovation for urban development demonstrated the importance and role of national 
strategies and programmes – addressing national needs and priorities and preparing 
the national community for European level collaboration. Transnational cooperation 
takes advantage of these national activities by connecting them on a European scale, 
enhancing profiles and competencies, increasing efficiency, fostering innovation and 
implementation and benefitting from sharing experiences. Figure 3 summarizes the 
objectives and expected added value of developing and implementing the Strategic 
Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe.

 

Figure 3: Alignment objectives and added value of transnational cooperation

In the case of JPI Urban Europe this alignment strategy is based on the landscape of 
national urban research programmes that has developed over the last years. Thematic, 
urban related programmes are established in many European countries; or else urban 
research and technological development may be funded under open responsive calls 
for proposals. Analysis of urban research programmes of 9 JPI Urban Europe countries 
including 32 national programmes covering all phases in the research life cycle, from 
basic research to technological development, piloting, demonstration and training, 
suggests a shift from rather sectorial programmes and calls to a more integrated 
approach to urban research, technological development and innovation. Indeed, some 
thematic clusters are identified that provide a sound basis for joint calls as well as 
future bi- and multilateral calls and alignment activities, such as the Smart City Cluster 
or a Future Mobility Cluster. A corresponding alignment strategy is under development 
reflecting the thematic priorities of the SRIA and the national potentials and priorities 
in current or future research, technological development and innovation programmes. 

ENHANCING PROFILES & 

COMPETENCES

- Connecting national strengths

- Cover national gaps

- Establish knowledge cluster

- Rethink national strategies

INCREASING EFFICIENCY & 
INNOVATION

- Sharing research infrastructure

- Exchange of experts

- Harmonising research frameworks 
for better solutions

- Joint calls and evaluation panels

MUTUAL PRACTICE & 

LEARNING 

- Comparative research

- Sharing models and experiences

- Improving practice and reducing 
non-successful projects



-7-

JPI URBAN EUROPE: 
GLOBAL URBAN CHALLENGES – 
JOINT EUROPEAN SOLUTIONS

The ongoing policy debate on urban development clearly indicates that: (1) sustainability 
remains high on the agenda; (2) efforts should be both intensified and enlarged 
to develop and implement better integrated and more comprehensive sustainable 
development pathways; (3) to support this endeavour, fragmentation in policy and in 
research needs to be overcome; requiring multi-stakeholder involvement in a process 
of co-creation. 

The Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe has the ambition to support the 
transition of European urban areas towards sustainable, resilient and liveable ones by 
establishing a transnational mission-oriented research, technological development and 
innovation programme and acting as the European hub on sustainable urban development; 
supporting collaborative research, technological development and innovation 
within and beyond Europe. 

We know that urban areas are complex systems, or indeed systems of systems, whose 
emergent physical, social and economic structures depend on the interactions of the 
cities, administrative bodies, firms and individuals that inhabit them, as well as on their 
interactions with other cities in this era of globalisation. Cities are vibrant loci of education, 
employment and commerce, social encounter and recreation; they are the nerve 
centres of the modern global economy and as such they continue to attract migrants 
in search of a better quality of life for themselves and their families. This economic and 
social activity entails the metabolism of energy, matter, finance and information, highly 
influenced by the increasing digitalisation and new urban technologies. The throughput 
of these resources can have negative implications for raw materials depletion, greenhouse 
gas emissions and climate change. To minimise this dependency, we need to 
radically improve our understanding of how the functioning of our urban areas can 
be made more sustainable and resilient to climate change, and which role technological 
and social innovations can play, the current economic asset of Europe in global 
markets. Urbanisation brings with it other societal challenges. Increased disparity in 
income and in social inequality can adversely affect social capital and cohesion and 
in the worst of cases exclusion of access to home ownership, education, welfare and 
healthcare. We need to better understand how we can balance economic growth with 
social and economic equality, to balance vibrancy with accessibility, within carefully 
defined and measurable environmental limits. 

The demand for new urban governance concepts, new approaches for urban planning 
and development and low cost technological solutions following such an integrated 
approach has been confirmed by city representatives as well as local and European 



The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe


policy makers25. Economic disparities that lead to social ones, pressures on urban 
development and services provision due to financial constraints and in-migration, the 
need for economic growth and improved employment prospects, the call for more 
social innovation and an increased participation of civil society, the need to set and 
achieve greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. These are related challenges that 
have been identified as research, technological development and innovation priorities 
needing multi-stakeholder involvement and a better understanding of urban 
complexities.

Through a better coordination of national research, technological development and 
innovation funds and the application of dedicated instruments and measures, we aim 
to achieve the following objectives:

-- Enhancing capacities and knowledge in sustainable urban transitions by developing 
(radical) new ideas and solutions that meet the needs of cities and citizens. 
-- Reducing the fragmentation in the funding and delivery of research, technologies 
and innovation, in policy formulation and implementation; building critical 
mass. 
-- Increasing the visibility of European urban science, technological development 
and innovation at the global scale: providing international leadership in the planning 
and practice of sustainable urban transitions.


To this end a set of principles has been identified which build the fundament of the JPI 
Urban Europe programme:

-- A mission- and demand-oriented, long-term programme addressing city and 
societal needs. To achieve sustainability requires a long-term strategy, whilst 
also providing a framework for innovation in the achievement of shorter term 
complementary needs. This requires a combination of multi-timescale research, 
technological development and innovation activities.


-- Interdisciplinary approaches to enhance understanding of urban complexity 
and generate radical new knowledge and concepts to tackle urban society’s 
multifaceted challenges. Relevant expertise and knowledge from the range of 
urban-related disciplines needs to be better and more systematically brought to 
bear (natural sciences, the social and economic sciences, engineering and technology, 
planning, architecture, the arts…) in our quest for cities that are more 
vibrant and resilient hubs of economic and social activity, whilst minimising unintended 
social and environmental consequences. 


-- Transdisciplinarity, in order to ensure impact and relevance. Urban research 
should develop understanding, knowledge, tools and evidence to underpin 
the formulation of effective urban transition policies and strategies. It should 
also support subsequent implementation and contribute sociotechnical innovation 
to this end. This requires collaboration between interdisciplinary research 
teams, businesses, cities and other urban stakeholders; to ensure that the entire 
research, technological development and innovation cycle is addressed, that 
a milieu for co-creation is established and that outcomes successfully inform 


25 B. Heller-Schuh, M. Barber, T. Scherngell: Urban Research in the European Framework Programmes, 
Final Report, April 2015; see also Appendix 1.



policy and implementation and subsequent monitoring of effectiveness. These 
aims may be supported through shared resources including integrated urban 
models, datasets, urban observatories and urban living labs.

 

A PROGRAMME ON TRANSITION TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE AND 
LIVEABLE URBAN FUTURES

The conceptual framework of the JPI Urban Europe SRIA has been informed by ongoing 
policy debates, national urban research strategies and priorities, international research 
activities and the outcomes of recent EU-funded projects and initiatives26, together 
with the outcomes of dedicated consultations with urban stakeholders in a process of 
co-creation. This framework is summarised in Figure 4 and described in the text that 
follows. 

26 In particular the EU-funded projects SEiSMiC and Urban-Nexus are considered. The 

conclusions of the Urban-Nexus project (www.urban-nexus.eu) provide an important reference 

for the elaboration of the research priorities. In addition the still ongoing project SEiSMiC 

(www.seismicproject.eu) focuses on social innovation needs for urban development and brings 

the societal view into the strategic debate.


Figure 4

Framework of the SRIA



The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe


TRANSITIONING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY AND LIVEABILITY: 

A LONGITUDINAL PROGRAMME

The dominant theme emerging from debates of the challenges faced by European 
urban society is the need to improve upon its sustainability, in all of its complexity; 
to better understand how we can create economic growth and social and economic 
equality – vibrancy and accessibility, within carefully defined and measurable environmental 
limits. The core issues at hand are:

-- Enhancing our understanding of the complexity of urban sustainability in the 
nexus of economic-social-environmental issues.
-- Providing a framework to assess and monitor urban sustainability. 
-- Identifying and quantifying the levers that influence sustainability and its constituent 
factors as well as the interrelationships between them.
-- Preparing and testing context-specific transition strategies. 
-- Providing tools and methods that support cities in this decision making process, 
as well as to support the implementation of the most promising strategies.
-- Taking advantage of new data sources, the opportunities provided by big data 
and their potential for urban decision making and governance.


There is at present no theoretically rigorous and empirically grounded definition of and 
framework for evaluating urban sustainability. Sustainability is here understood as the 
nexus of economic-social-environmental issues faced by urban regions, societies and 
governments. At the same time, global ecological crises call for a substantial reworking 
of, in particular, how urban regions are planned, built, governed, managed, practiced 
– and therefore researched. The development of an advanced framework is therefore 
required to define and measure sustainability and to determine where a city lies in its 
transition towards the achievement of its sustainability goals; be these short, medium 
or long term. 

These transition targets should be ambitious yet feasible as well as inclusive; representing 
for example the range of city specialisations, spatial scales, economic growth 
trajectories and geographic contexts and the interests of the range of core stakeholder 
groups. 

Of equal importance to identifying, understanding and quantifying the factors influencing 
all key aspects of sustainability is identifying, understanding and quantifying 
the policy interventions that can bring about change, be these positive or negative, 
and the potential interrelationships between them. Whilst these may take many forms, 
it is important to understand where the greatest potentials, or indeed risks, lie to help 
prioritise transition strategies. 

This requires a decision making framework that enables the effectiveness of city-specific 
transition strategies to be studied; to identify the most promising transition 
pathways from cities’ current to target states. To inform urban governance and 
policy making processes, it is important that relevant stakeholders have access to and 
utilise decision support systems with which to test and compare alternative strategies 
to improve services and performance. These services might relate to healthcare, 
mobility, welfare, energy supply; whilst performance might relate to the interconnections 
between social (cohesion, inclusion, housing provision…), economic (employment 
levels, income equality, local authority indebtedness…) and/or environmental (greenhouse 
gas emissions, urban heat island…) measures. 



Such decision support frameworks 
require that data of different 
scales (region (whether national 
or transnational), city, district, 
street, neighbourhood, building, 
household) and rates of change 
(from slow changing infrastructure to 
instantaneous flows of traffic, energy 
and water) be managed and integrated. 
Science is at an embryonic stage in 
investigating the potential of big data 
for urban operations and development. 
Data acquisition, analysis and management 
for decision making as well as for 
urban planning and governance, needs to be 

investigated to support sustainable urban transitions.

THEMATIC PRIORITIES

The following themes have been identified as particular priorities, where JPI Urban 
Europe and the research effected directly or indirectly under its auspices, can make a 
significant and lasting contribution. This contribution can take the form of new methodologies, 
new insights and data evidence allowing an increased understanding of 
urban systems, new technologies, and implementation of innovative solutions:

Vibrancy in changing economies: Cities are engines of economic growth and the places 
where innovations emerge. Yet some cities are economically more successful than 
others. Across Europe we find cities with rapid economic growth and severe decline as 
well as cities with a re-growing economy. These trajectories as expressions of vibrancy 
are closely related to population dynamics in terms of growth or shrinkage. We need 
a better understanding of the factors that drive the economic success or failure of 
cities. We need to know how innovation shifts the size and segmentation of labour 
markets and how migration patterns change in response to these shifts. Furthermore 
new strategies are necessary to combine the creation of economic opportunities with 
social innovation in order to create open, inclusive, cohesive and more liveable cities. 
In short we need to find new ways of achieving and sustaining socio-economic vibrancy 
and equality in cities with changing economies.

Welfare and finance: Stimulated by post-2008 austerity measures, civic services and 
the size of the welfare state are reducing as civil society is being increasingly called 
upon to fill the void through bottom-up voluntary efforts. This leads to changing roles 
of public services and the need to redefine the contribution of and cooperation with 
community-based activities. It also results in the call for new business models. The 
role of social entrepreneurship, local economy and shared economy is under debate 
and frameworks are needed to tap the full potential of these opportunities, as well as 
social innovation. New business models and financing schemes are also required to 
support sustainable urban transitions and smart cities developments, potentially with 
solutions that transcend vertical structures from individuals, through cooperatives, to 
firms, and local and central government; possibly augmented with policy and regulation 
to support and incentivise the effective uptake of the investments arising from 
these models.



The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe


Environmental sustainability and resilience: Urban areas are dependent on inflows 
of materials, energy, food, water, products and services. Through this metabolism 
cities are causing negative environmental externalities at a planetary scale. But cities 
are also themselves victims of these externalities through e.g. climate change and 
extreme weather conditions, poor air quality and declining ecosystem services. Cities 
must both change this metabolism in order to satisfy Europe’s commitments to curb 
climate change (to keep warming to within 2oC of pre-industrial levels through reduced 
greenhouse gas emissions) as well as to adapt to climate change and to be resilient to 
less probable events with potentially severe consequences. Partly because of climate 
change, water scarcity will affect increasing numbers of the world’s population. Water 
quality, air quality and the resilience of ecosystem services are issues that cities must 
handle in order to continue to be attractive and vibrant. Technological and social innovations 
will play a pivotal role in enabling cities to do so.

Accessibility and connectivity: Cities’ economic competitiveness and citizens’ quality 
of life in urban areas are directly influenced by the accessibility of urban amenities 
and services within and beyond cities as well as by connectivity. Accessibility is a function 
of proximity to destinations and the directness of routes to them (the connectivity 
of the network), but it also depends on travellers’ ability to utilise this network, 
which may for example diminish as travellers become older and less physically able or 
emotionally secure or simply through changing economic circumstances. The mobility 
of goods and people is often assumed to be in conflict with environmental sustainability. 
But analysing transport systems through the lens of accessibility and connectivity 
can facilitate the joint pursuit of mobility and sustainability goals. This change of 
paradigm requires new research relating to: a) travellers’ needs, their behaviours and 
locational proximity; b) the design of new technologies supporting improved integration 
of land use and transport systems; c) bridging the gap between travellers’ needs 
and behaviours to improve urban performance. This paradigmatic shift also requires an 
improved understanding of the sectorial changes at stake, their interrelationships and 
their overall effects on urban performance.

Urban Governance and Participation: Strategies to transition cities to a more sustainable 
and resilient future state will, if they are to be successfully designed, adopted and 
implemented, arguably rely on collaborative processes involving all key stakeholders, 
from public and private organisations to concerned civil society. New forms of governance 
are also called for by the changing nature of urban issues, especially the increasing 
importance of ‘real time’ in urban governance and management, e.g. in the face of 
the growing importance of extreme events. This will involve an enabling environment 
of new collaborative governance and policymaking frameworks to ensure productive 
and creative engagement. The utilisation of big data, new enabling technologies and 
methods to support these participatory approaches hold great potential here. 

 



-8-

RESEARCH THEMES

Motivation

Population (P, Capita = Ca) and economic 
activity (A, GDP/Ca) as well as the environmental 
impacts per unit of economic 
activity (T, e.g. tCO2/GDP) – are thought 
to be proportional to environmental 
impact (I, tCO2 in this example): I=P.A.T. 
But this is not a forgone conclusion. 
Following the 1973 oil crisis, Europe’s 
energy expenditure and CO2 emissions 
reduced considerably. This was due to 
improvements in for example: standards 
of energy conservation and efficiency 
in buildings; industrial process 
efficiencies (and reduced industrial 
activity); vehicular mechanical efficiencies; 
deployment of renewable energy 
technologies; use of more efficient 
energy conversion technologies in 
power stations. By reducing the environmental 
impacts of our economic 
activity, it could be possible to accommodate 
both population and economic 
growth without increasing impacts on 
our global and local environments. 

This is an important observation, as both 
population and economic activity are on 
average increasing. Since the majority 
of our future population will reside in 
towns and cities, it stands to reason 
that these settlements will play a pivotal 
role in the quest for more sustainable 
living. New ways of accommodating 
more and wealthier people must be 
invented, having increased standards of 
living in towns and cities, with reduced 
environmental impact. A key global 
and thus European challenge is to radically 
transform how cities function; to 
improve their environmental sustainability 
whilst simultaneously increasing 
their resilience to the vagaries of social, 
economic and environmental shocks. 

SUSTAINABLE 
TRANSITION 
PATHWAYS



The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe


Just as global fortunes are changing, with E727 states set to overtake the G7, so there are 
considerable changes in fortune within Europe, with migratory flows and increasing social 
diversification, as well as aging due to healthcare improvements, accompanying these 
changes. The nature of the state is also changing; public services are being rolled-back 
and the welfare state is being cut as economies liberalise; changing the social characteristics 
of urban locations. After a century of societies becoming more equal and egalitarian, 
cities in many cases are becoming more socially polarised, with growing wealth 
inequalities, increased segregation between groups, and rising social tensions. Sections 
of society are being denied full participation in everyday activities and marginalised with 
respect to resources such as housing, work, social services and the political sphere. This is 
often manifest in social stratification and fragmentation, segregation to certain parts of 
the city, alienation, and undermines social cohesion leading to social unrest, protest and 
riots; as witnessed recently in a number of European cities. Such issues pose significant 
threats to cities’ long-term social stability, unless adequately addressed. 

To summarise then, whilst cities are the engines of economic activity, of resource 
metabolism and its adverse environmental consequences and of social mobility, there 
is a dearth of understanding of the forces influencing the associated dynamical flows 
of finance, information, energy, materials and people; the impacts on firms’ and individuals’ 
wellbeing and of strategies for improving them. There is an urgent need for 
transformative interdisciplinary research to radically improve our understanding of 
the complex, interrelated and competing factors influencing cities’ social, economic 
and environmental sustainability, underpinned by quantitative and qualitative research 
into cities’ functioning and the effectiveness of strategies and policy measures for 
improving upon this functioning.

TOPICS TO BE ADDRESSED 

To achieve the anticipated improvement in our understanding of cities’ functioning 
and sustainability, and the considerable complexity that this entails, we see two core 
challenges: 

1 To better understand what we mean by city28 sustainability: to define, measure 
and rate or categorise city sustainability.

2 To support city actors in defining sustainability targets and in making the transition 
towards their achievement. 

Our efforts in defining, measuring and labelling or categorising sustainability will define 
the present state of a city; but city actors will need support to define a future target 
state which is ambitious yet achievable and more particularly to determine the most 
promising strategies to be employed to achieve these transitions and to translate these 
into realisable projects. 

We describe below a research programme designed to improving our understanding 
of city sustainability, the setting of suitable targets and transitioning towards their 
achievement. 

27 See footnote 19

28 For linguistic simplicity in this section we use ‘city’ in place of ‘urban’, acknowledging that the 
latter, which should be our focus, is broader than the former.



Understanding sustainability

There have been numerous endeavours to rate aspects of city sustainability, with environmental 
sustainability having received particular attention. But the results are neither 
comprehensive – accounting for the environmental, social and economic pillars and 
their myriad factors – nor are they rigorous – having been developed upon solid theoretical 
and empirical foundations. Theoretical advances should be combined with analysis 
of empirical evidence from a representative cross section of case study sites to 
define a new methodology for characterising the overall sustainability of a city; isolating 
the influences of the principle underlying factors to help identify where efforts should 
be focussed for further improvement. It is also important to identify what the forces are 
that influence these factors and how they relate to one another (for example, understanding 
the relationships between economic growth, inwards migration and social 
cohesion) and how negative effects can be mitigated and positive effects reinforced. It 
is similarly important to understand how and to what extent social and economic factors 
influence environmental factors of sustainability (for example firms’ and individuals’ 
perceptions of their environmental footprint and their willingness to reduce it) and vice 
versa (such as health impacts arising from environmental impacts). 

But as noted earlier, cities should not only strive for a more sustainable future, they 
should also be resilient and able to absorb, adapt to and recover from external or 
internal forces for change; be they social economic or environmental in nature; fast 
or slow in character. This will help to ensure that cities’ transition strategies are robust 
to these forces, that they continue to evolve towards a more sustainable future when 
subject to them; that they do not diverge towards less favourable future states.

Transitioning towards sustainability: targets and strategies

By far the most onerous pillar of this proposed research programme is the identification 
of transition targets and the most promising strategies and accompanying action 
plans, translated into realisable projects, to be employed in achieving them. 

Informed by the outcomes from the above a process should be established to identify 
social, economic and environmental transition targets, ensuring that these are ambitious 
yet feasible and that they are inclusive; representing for example the range of 
city specialisations (culture and tourism, industry, innovation…), spatial scales (small 
to medium sized cities, mega-cities and city regions), economic growth trajectories 
(declining and depopulating, through stability to growing and populating) and 
geographic contexts (coastal, inland, mountainous…) and the interests of the range of 
core stakeholder groups. 

Of equal importance to identifying, understanding and quantifying the factors influencing 
social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability is identifying, 
understanding and quantifying the levers that can bring about change (by quantifying 
here we refer to the response to a given lever change), be these positive or negative, 
and the potential interrelationships between them. These levers may for example 
be social (peer influences), educational (public engagement; primary, secondary and 
tertiary teaching), socio-technological (more efficient utilities and transport infrastructure; 
e-governance tools), regulatory (planning instruments; construction regulations…) 
or financial (taxation, subsidies, loans). Whilst these may take many informs, 
it is important to understand where the greatest potentials, or indeed risks, lie to help 
prioritise transition strategies. 

The next logical step is to integrate the knowledge gained from the previous steps 
into a decision making framework that enables the effectiveness of city-specific tran



The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe


sition strategies to be studied; to identify 
– through a transdisciplinary approach – 
the most promising transition pathways 
from cities’ current to target states. This 
implies that we first characterise the 
current (social, economic and environmental) 
state of our city and then adapt 
the typology-dependent targets to the 
particular context of this city. 

A decision-making framework to support 
the evaluation of transition strategies 
might take many forms. It may simply 
involve a deliberative exercise amongst key 
stakeholders in which city-specific candidate 
transition strategies are identified, 
followed by the application of multiple 
decision making criteria to iteratively 
exclude the less promising until the most 
favourable candidate solutions remain. An 
alternative would be to complement this 
process through computer simulation, 
with which the impact of specific transition 
strategies on the performance of 
the city would be simulated. This would 
require that the knowledge gained elsewhere 
in the programme of funded work 
be embedded within a (physical and social) 
simulation framework: the phenomena 
influencing resource flows and the levers 
to bring about change in the behaviours 
of the firms and individuals responsible 
for these flows; perceptions of sustainability 
and its numerous component 
parts. Encoded at an appropriate level of 
abstraction, this would provide powerful 
decision-making support – providing 
quantitative feedback on the effectiveness 
of alternative strategies as part of 
a multi-criteria decision making analysis 
process involving key city stakeholders. 

The final step in involves supporting stakeholders 
in translating specific strategies 
into actionable implementation plans and 
associated financing strategies, to transition 
cities along the pathway from current 
to target states. This co-creative transdisciplinary 
process should also incorporate 
plans to monitor the effectiveness of 
implemented transition strategies; socially, 
economically and environmentally. 

ROADMAP 

SUSTAINABLE 

TRANSITION PATHWAYS

UNDERSTANDING 

urban sustainability, 

consideration of 

different city typologies

FRAMEWORKS, 

METHODS AND TOOLS 

for target setting, scenario 

development and 

decision support

TRANSITION STRATEGIES 
AND VALIDATION of tools, 
methods and frameworks

INTEGRATED URBAN 
MODELLING FRAMEWORK, 
considering differtent spatial 
scales or time horizons



Motivation 

Cities are engines of economic growth 
and the places where innovations 
emerge. Yet some cities are economically 
more successful than others. 
Across Europe we find cities with rapid 
economic growth and severe decline 
as well as cities with a re-growing 
economy. These trajectories as expressions 
of vibrancy are closely related to 
population dynamics in terms of growth 
or shrinkage. Economically prosperous 
cities experience in general in-migration 
of people from declining regions 
but also immigration from abroad. In 
contrast, economically declining cities 
experience population loss, mostly of 
the young generation which increases 
the average age of the remaining population. 
Both cases have links between 
economic performance and labour 
market outcomes which are complex 
and context specific. Not every citizen 
profits from the economic opportunities 
which exist in a city in the same way. 

VIBRANT 
URBAN 
ECONOMIES: 
GROWTH AND 
DECLINE OF 
EUROPEAN 
CITIES



The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of JPI Urban Europe


Major innovations such as new production and service systems can lead to more 
employment opportunities in cities. To pursue this target, circular economies including 
“green economies” and the close collaboration with practitioners and stakeholders are 
decisive. For example, new infrastructure types need to be identified that include citizens 
as producers and consumers and in addition integrate different services in a new 
cycle. 

These developments not only impact the economic performance of cities but also the 
living conditions of the population. More localised economies can enhance the equal 
access of citizens to new services and infrastructures, and increase their responsibility 
in terms of sustainable consumption. Thus there is a need for sustainable production 
and consumption patterns to drive social cohesion within vibrant urban dynamics and 
to avoid negative outcomes such as increased exclusion and polarisation. 

We need a better understanding of the factors that drive the economic success or 
failure of cities. Cities themselves evolve into economic actors by taking over an active 
role in offering innovative and creative environments and defining their future perspectives. 
We need to better understand how innovation shifts the size and segmentation 
of labour markets and how migration patterns change in response to these shifts. 
Furthermore new strategies are necessary to combine advanced economic opportunities 
with social innovation in order to create open, inclusive, cohesive and more liveable 
cities.


