JOINING FORCES

Edited on 10/07/2025

21/04/2008 26/05/2010

Closed
  • Participative governance
  • Mobility
  • Urban renewal

JOINING FORCES aims at exploring how strategy making and governance arrangements at city-region scale can help to effectively address the main challenges faced by urban Europe: competitiveness, cohesion, and sustainability.

Summary

Introduction

JOINING FORCES is an Urbact Working Group that brings together 8 partners: Brno, Brussels-Capital Region, Burgas, Eindhoven, Florence, Krakow, Lille Metropole, and Seville.

 

All over Europe, metropolitan areas / city-regions are increasingly recognised, even by local authorities, as the "real city" level, the right one for developing more effective governance and strategy developments. Achieving successful cooperation between cities and their surrounding areas is obviously crucial to improve local cohesion, but even more to increase territorial competitiveness and sustainability.

 

The project aims at describing and analysing partners' situations in order to propose conclusions and suitable recommendations to the local / regional / national / European authorities on governance at city-region level. This theme will be considered through different aspects: 

  • Strategy and spatial planning
  • Mobility management and transport
  • Main environmental issues: water supply, waste disposal, etc.
  • Knowledge economy (creativity, research and education)
  • Governance (public / public & public / private arrangements
  • Social inclusion, participation, empowerment
    Attractiveness & Competitiveness (including promotion / marketing)

 

Partners

Lead Partner : Lille - France
  • Seville - Spain
  • Florence - Italy
  • Burgas - Bulgaria
  • Krakow - Poland
  • Brno - Czech Republic
  • Eindhoven - Netherlands
  • Brussels - Belgium

Timeline

Project launch

Project completed

Articles

  • Opening the Door to Talent: What Ten Cities Decided to Do Differently

    Final Network Article by Lead Expert Béla Kézy


  • News

    A Water Museum for Elche: a journey through the Memory of Water

    The City of Elche unveils a new cultural space dedicated to its valuable hydraulic heritage promoting citizen engagement with it.

  • Agents of CoExistence: final network report

    Across Europe, cities are searching for new ways to strengthen the relationship between public
    institutions and the citizens they serve. Local governments face growing expectations for
    transparency