European cities are becoming more international and multicultural. Despite the rise of negative sentiments around immigration and the fear of loss of identity, for many cities, finding international talent is an economic necessity. They need engineers, scientists, knowledge workers, but also plumbers, nurses and truck drivers. There are simply too many job openings that cannot be filled by locals or nationals. Moreover, Europe’s universities are vying to attract international students: to make up for an ageing home region, or just as a means to pick the best brains…

In the URBACT Transfer Network, titled “Welcoming International Talent”, we focus on the question of how cities can effectively deal with the challenge of attracting, welcoming, retaining and integrating international students and professionals.

This poses a lot of questions that cannot be answered by the city alone: it involves many players, including the universities, employers, citizens, cultural institutions, etc. And it touches on many policy fields: social, economic, urban planning, housing….

Especially for smaller and medium sized cities, this form of skills-oriented internationalisation poses new questions and challenges. Unlike larger cities and capitals, they never had such large groups of residents (temporary or permanent) from abroad, but now they are facing a new reality.

The city of Groningen, in the North of the Netherlands, is a prime example. Being a student city, it saw the number of foreign students grow dramatically in the last decade. And, the scientific staff of its universities has become more international too. At the same time, the local economy is growing, requiring skilled people, but the population is ageing and the workforce shrinking. Thus, for Groningen, a key challenge is to try to connect the dots: if more internationals students would stay and find a job in Groningen after graduation –rather than leave for their home country or a big city- it would benefit the urban and regional economy and counter go against the ageing trend. And, as Jan Kees Kleuver, project leader, stresses, “Groningen is essentially a student city. We need to attract more international students, because our regional population is ageing, and student numbers may go down….”

Welcoming international expats is hard work

Easier said than done! There are many barriers. Without mastering the Dutch language, it is not easy to fully participate in society. Until recently, Groningen’s theatres and events did not cater for English speaking people; moreover, even when most Dutch people speak English, it can be hard to find your way into local sports or music clubs, understand the Dutch healthcare system, find an international school for your kids, or obtain an internship. And it turns out that despite a low language barrier, Dutch and international students hardly mix. Then, there are (student) housing shortages, a lot of red tape regarding immigration rules, etc etc. How welcoming is all that?

There is a lot to be done in Groningen, on many levels, to become a welcoming city to international expats. Last year, a set of key stakeholders – city, universities, the academic hospital, and big employers - decided to join forces and develop an integrated strategy to attract and embed international people to Groningen, and make them feel at home. A number of concrete actions are being taken:
- developing a cultural community platform;
- setting up an international house in the city centre;
- measures to ease the bureaucratic burden for internationals;
- support for regional companies to hire foreigners or provide places for internships;
- a buddy system, linking locals to internationals.

Groningen is very active, a frontrunner in this field. Most importantly, it involves the international crowd in the design and implementation of every action or policy, to make sure it’s a good fit. After successfully applying for “URBACT Good Practice”, it now leads a growing network of medium sized European cities that share the same ambition. 

Welcoming International Talent URBACT Network

As it stands now, the cities of Bielsko Biala (PO), Debrecen (HU), Leuven (BE), Magdeburg (DE), Parma (IT), and Zlin (CZ) have joined the network. They share the fact that they are medium sized university cities, with a growing influx of internationals. They all have the strategic ambition to become more attractive and welcoming to international professionals and students, and they want to learn from Groningen’s example. The partners realise that a common vision and partnership is required to get things done; first of all between city and the university, but also with employers, cultural institutions, events etc.  This is far from easy to achieve, and there is much to be learned. The partners have their own very specific local issues, and have developed remarkable initiatives themselves already. All cities see the project as a catalyst for their own ambitions and strategies; by peer reviewing each other, they hope to be inspired and go home with fresh ideas. As the vice mayor of Zlin, one of the partner cities, put it: “we will not wait until the end of the project to change our policies: we hope to be inspired by our partner cities, and start bringing partners together from day one, developing actions together, and implementing them”.

Main issues identified

The partners identified a number of specific issues on which the collaboration should focus:

• Attracting international talent (marketing of the region together)
• Labour market integration of foreign professionals and students
• Social & cultural integration
• Internationalisation of urban services, facilities and amenities
• Housing and accommodation for internationals
• Internationalisation of higher education & research
• The cross-cutting topic of governance: collaboration between stakeholders, involvement/engagement of internationals

How does a tree grow - and can you transplant it?

Transferring Good Practices is far from straightforward. In this project, we compare the best practice to a tree: a living creature, that took long to grow and flourish, and that has roots in a fertile soil. The trunk of the Groningen tree is the comprehensive strategy of the city’s key stakeholders towards internationalisation.  The projects and policy programmes are its branches and the leaves of the tree are the visible actions and results of the strategy.

The roots of the tree are beneath the surface. You cannot see them but they are decisive for the tree’s development. They represent the underlying institutional structures that helped the partners in Groningen to collaborate: trust between the key players/stakeholders; a shared ambition to lift up the city as place for international talent; and the shared realisation that collaboration is needed in the wider region – as well as shared leadership, to take responsibility for something that stretches beyond the interest of the individual organisations/stakeholders.

The soil stands for cultural aspects that make it possible for the tree (trunk, branches, leaves and roots) to grow. It is a main source of nutrients. In the case of Groningen, this represents the participative tradition of involving citizens (in this case: internationals) in the design of policies; and its ability to collaborate and allocate resources to the common goal, resolving any emerging conflicts of interest.  

The tree can only flourish in the right climate and weather conditions. This includes the political climate (the city management and elected representatives supporting the policy direction) and social climate: a receptive and supportive local population that embraces internationalisation to a large extent. Weather and climate can change, with significant implications for the tree.

What does this imply for transfer potential?

First of all, transferring an entire tree to another place is possible but very difficult, because the life of the tree depends on so many factors. That does not mean that it is impossible. Transfer to other cities can be considered on the level of the fully integrated programme approach, or on the level of individual projects. The latter will be the easiest. Stakeholders in Groningen have highly detailed project plans which they are happy to share with other cities. Also, the digital platforms (the cultural events website Here&Now and the new general Groningen platform for internationals) are being designed under the Creative Commons licence to facilitate replication and transfer.

The transfer of the fully integrated approach is certainly also feasible, but it will require more effort, strong political, top-level support, and may take longer to materialize, especially for cities that are in an early stage of co-ordinating their internationalisation strategies. Also, contextual factors will play an important role: the local culture of collaboration, power relations between key stakeholders, competences, etc.

Last but not least: although Groningen is recognized as good practice, there is much to be learned from the others as well. For example, Magdeburg set up a very interesting welcoming ceremony for all new internationals; Zlin University set up a buddy system linking Czech students to international ones, to foster integration. There is much to learn from other trees in the European garden. 

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Visit the network's page: Welcoming International Talent

While you were designing your city logo, in Asia they were building entire cities from scratch.

Europe needs to start invest strategically in city brands. Not logos. Brands.

In the private sector, companies have been spending billions building their brand. Because they understand that people don’t just buy products, they buy stories. Perception. And the science of managing perception is called Brand Strategy. For all the leading global companies in the world, brand strategy is the foundation of their success. Because brand perception is everything. Research shows that 50% up to 100% of everything we buy is intangible, it’s pure perception. It’s brand.

Less than 1% of all the European cities have a professionally managed brand

So then how come less than 1% of all the European cities have a professionally managed brand? If the brand is the single most important ingredient in the success of every single important organization in the history of the humankind - even before we were calling it branding - how come we completely forgot to build brands for our cities?

A few possible explanations:

1. People often mistake brands for logos

Many cities have contracted a logo design and now they’re happy that their city has a ‘brand’. It’s not a brand. It’s a logo. Creating brands is hundreds of times more complex than designing a logo. Without strategy, your logo means nothing. Your brochures are less effective. Your ad campaigns are less effective. Your online presence is less effective. Without a solid city brand strategy, your city is not protected on the global arena, where thousands of cities are competing for the same precious resources: investors, tourists, students, startupers, engineers, inventors, creative minds. Why would they choose your city? Because it has a pretty logo?

2. The city branding science is new

Many mayors have never met a city brand strategist to discuss how to differentiate their city from other cities. They don’t know how to find that thing that makes their city unique and capture that unique thing in professionally made campaigns, managed by actual professionals in communication. Most cities in Europe don’t even have a marketing department. Out of the few cities that do, the vast majority of them are led by people with no experience leading major brands in the real world. In the private sector, you are considered an expert brand strategist if you have at least 10 years in high level positions with relevant companies and you have managed at least 20 brands. In the public sector, it’s ok to lead the marketing team if you managed 0 major brands in your career but you have participated to fancy workshops and symposiums and graduated from a decent university. Why is that? Is your city less important than a bag of potato chips? Because the potato chips brand gets better marketing talent than your city marketing team does. And that can’t possibly be right.

3. Mayors don’t see their city as a product

They think cities are such complex creatures that city brands can’t be designed using methods that have been tested for decades in the private sector. And they’re right, a city is indeed a complex thing. And you do need experts specialized in city branding. But don’t blame it on complexity. Everything is complex: a global company - often bigger than whole countries - is a complex entity. Even designing personal branding for a celebrity is a complex matter, because humans are complex and it’s difficult to design a brand strategy for a human being. But you can’t postpone building a brand strategy for your city just because a city is a complex thing. Everything is complex. Since when did we stop doing things because it’s difficult, Europe?

Let’s go back to basics: if there’s an audience that needs to know things about your city and you’re trying to reach that audience with the right message, what you’re dealing with is a product. Whether you like how ‘product’ sounds like, your city is a product. Its success or failure depends on how people perceive your product. And brand = perception. So unless you are prepared to treat your product as a brand and manage it strategically and professionally, your city is on its way to lose the battle.

Brand building is necessary for your city to be visible in the international arena

Let’s play a little game: pick 10 random cities in Europe. Normal cities, smaller than 1 million people, not megacities and country capitals - Now Google “visit [name of the city]” and “invest in [name of the city]”. You will realize that most cities use the same cliché phrases and pictures, same online strategies and tools to promote themselves. Moreover, even their slogans are almost identical: “Come to [name of the city], a city for people” (like there are cities out there that were not designed for humans). Or “[Name of the city], more than you expect” or “[Name of the city] is a [wonderful/amazing/fantastic] experience” or “Invest in [name of the city], a great place for business”. Their communication is so mediocre that you will forget what you’ve seen before you even get the chance to share it with another human being.

The human brain is exposed to more than 3000 commercial messages every day. Every. Single. Day. It remembers 1%. Unless your city brand communicates better, smarter, more creatively than 99 other cities, your message will be wiped out from their brain so fast, they won’t even know they’ve ever seen it. Why is that? Why is it so hard to come up with great advertising campaigns, slogans, websites, social media content for your city? Because we don’t treat city branding seriously. Because it is priority #326 on our list. And it’s never important enough to dedicate time, energy, money and hire the right people to do it right.

Brand building is so important that, for many successful global companies out there, it is often the #1 priority. The one thing that can determine their success. Because perception is everything. And brand = perception. And brand strategy = managed perception. And without a professionally managed brand, your city’s reputation is in danger. Don’t forget you’re in competition with thousands other cities from all around the world. And they’re all competing for the same finite resources.

The success story of Alba Iulia (RO)’s branding

Alba Iulia is not even in the top 30 largest cities in Romania but the ancient capital of Transylvania is the first city brand in Romania and one of the first professionally built brand strategies in Europe, the first Smart City in Romania, the only city in South Eastern Europe to be invited in the CityLogo URBACT Network, first city with a long term marketing strategy, first city with a direct partnership with the World Bank and the list goes on. How was that possible? One of the explanations is that 10 years ago Alba Iulia was already working on its brand strategy, a strategic vision that brought consistency across all the initiatives launched by the city.

Discover Transylvania Regions’ brand

The regional brand of Transylvania is most probably the first in the world to be created 100% by private initiative, without any help from public institutions and government. The project attracted private funding and managed to launch a series of initiatives, among them the official travel website, the most complete source of information for tourists interested in Transylvania and the region's most important business conference, that brought together company founders, 7 European embassies and chambers of commerce, start-upers, cultural projects, media. The launching campaign of the regional brand aimed to attract to Transylania the British start-upers unhappy with the Brexit results. The campaign made it to the global media and was covered by The Guardian, Stern, Business Insider, RFI.

The brand of Transylvania is the living proof that you don't need initial public funding, huge teams and a lot of resources to build a local or regional brand. "Build it and they will come": the project is today completely self-sustainable and growing every year."

See your City as a Startup

This is why Europe needs ‘City-as-a-Startup’; a method so simple, so agile, yet so brilliantly effective to help European cities build solid brand strategies. A method designed to help cities find their greatness, tell their story to the world and attract investors, tourists, students, ‘startupers’, engineers, inventors and creative minds. The only downside is that the current ‘City-as-a-Startup’ transfer network led by Alba Iulia can handle up to 7 European cities at the same time and help them build their brands. There are more than 700 other cities in Europe that need help.

Europe, it’s time to get to work and build strong brands for our cities. It’s time to find our greatness.

All of us are surrounded by places and buildings like this. All of us are excited what and who is there behind the doors. Who lives there now and who has lived there before and what stories they could tell. The ‘Come in! – talking houses shared stories’ URBACT Transfer Network is centred on the good practice entitled Weekend of Open Houses. It is an easily adaptable community festival in Budapest called Budapest100 celebrating the city’s built heritage and common values. This good practice might help the inhabitants of eight European cities to explore their own built heritage, those little squares only two-minutes from their homes and get local communities closer to each other along this journey.

The Budapest100 community festival was started in 2011 by the Open Society Archives and the Contemporary Architecture Centre in Budapest, celebrating houses turning 100-years old that year during a thematic weekend. The event became a yearly festival, always celebrating buildings that were 100 years old in the given year. Since 2015 the celebration of 100-year-old buildings is not possible anymore due to WWI, so each year the focus is on different themes (2017: buildings along the Danube, 2018: buildings around squares).

Exploring our community through our built environment

Nevertheless, the main method is the same, expressed well by the festival’s motto: every single building is interesting and important. This is a two-day long festival co-organised by local residents and a massive group of volunteers to highlight values of the built environment as well as common values to decrease urban isolation. The main aim of the good practice is primarily not to protect buildings, but to encourage civilian power alongside the built environment as a catalyst. Its broad mission is to initiate a common discussion about urban revival and to inspire the establishment and strengthening of residential communities and to take action against urban social isolation by using cultural heritage and built environment as a tool.

Each year approximately 20 000 visitors come to look behind the doors of 50-60 open houses of downtown Budapest, explore hidden treasures and listen to urban stories told and shared by local residents and volunteers. This rather attractive urban initiative is definitely not about money: the whole programme costs about 20 000€ each year including the development of a website and the salary of a part time employee.

The Come in! URBACT network is led by Municipality of Újbuda, the multifaceted 11th district of Budapest, a district whose downtown area is usually very active in Budapest100. The municipality also has a strategic relationship with the Contemporary Architecture Centre to boost local dynamics of the creative sector. Using the Budapest100 good practice as a method, Come in! focuses on mobilising residents and raising their awareness towards the values of their built, mainly residential environment, which is not necessarily protected by law, and not necessary old, but where there is an intangible identity, spirit or story behind, on which a community building process can be strongly built. This is to be done by involving volunteers to make research on houses to be involved (collecting facts, stories and histories about houses and their residents), as well as residents putting together the programme (organising for example walks or programs with residents of the houses).

Promoting engagement with cultural heritage

The Weekend of Open Houses is about creating an opportunity for citizens to uphold cultural values and traditions and to promote positive societal change. The aim is to “allow and encourage individuals to become more active in every aspect of cultural heritage. A thorough understanding of local culture and environmental issues will render any participation more effective.” says the Turku Manifesto 2017 (Taking part in cultural heritage matters, European Heritage Congress, 2017 Turku), which is also the main philosophy of the good practice and of the Come in! URBACT network. This highlights the fact that it is really in line with contemporary trends of cultural heritage management and integrated urban development in the EU.

Europe is celebrating its diverse cultural heritage at all levels in 2018 through the European Year of Cultural Heritage, the aim of which is to “encourage more people to discover and engage with Europe's cultural heritage, and to reinforce a sense of belonging to a common European space”. The slogan for the year is: Our heritage: where the past meets the future.

Historic Urban Landscape approach of the UNESCO as a backbone for action

Come in! is taps on an important thematic field: perceptions of cultural heritage in Europe – which is extremely rich in cultural values - is changing. It is not anymore seen as a financial burden, but increasingly recognised as an asset, which can provide a catalyst for enhanced growth and wellbeing. Since the adoption of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach by the UNESCO’s General Conference in 2011, cultural heritage is a very important reference point and crosscutting field in urban policies both on global and European level. The UNESCO’s HUL Recommendation seems to be the alpha and omega regarding cultural heritage, and indeed most urban policies are rooted in that framework which stresses the importance and urgency of involving communities in the valorisation and conservation of the built environment.

Residents and Volunteers: keys to success of Budapest100

The widest possible participation and interaction with residents and communities is a priority both for cultural heritage agendas and social innovation policies. A community festival celebrating a given city's built heritage and common values clearly contributes to relevant EU priorities and is in line with the Historic Urban Landscape approach as well. The good practice provides a rather simple model to mobilise residents as well as volunteers to engage with their own cultural heritage and communities while also helps to decrease social isolation.

Of course Budapest100 does not stand alone, there are many similar concepts in Europe and worldwide. The most well-known initiatives are perhaps Open House and the European Heritage Days. But there are two crucial differences between Budapest100 and other similar initiatives: the involvement of residents and initiators of activities supported by volunteers and having a strong social focus besides the architectural one. For Budapest100 every house is interesting, not only those with outstanding architectural value or the ones protected by law.

The combination of the three pillars (built environment, but not only outstanding values, strong involvement of communities supported by involvement of volunteers) makes Budapest100 unique in the EU context.

Budapest100 for everyone: the Transfer Potential of the good practice throughout Europe

The ‘Come in! – talking houses shared stories’ network provides exchange and learning activities for a number of cities and their stakeholders coming from different corners of Europe and having a residential area with strong spirit, to understand the good practice, prepare local plans for its adaptation and test its reuse on small-scale.

On the one hand, as the good practice is really not complex (it is “just” a two-day event) it could be easily replicated in almost every residential environment of any European city having a strong local ‘identity’ the community festival can be built on. Searching and analysing these identities behind residential areas of candidate cities was the most important factor while building up the partnership. The good practice will be adapted in various built environments, e.g. in the historical centre in Gheorgheni (RO) with its unique and mostly unexploited Armenian heritage; in Forlì (I) focusing on its sensitive rationalist heritage or in Varaždin’s looking at its (HR) untapped modern buildings just next to the beautiful Baroque city centre, and will be even tested in newly built environments as well (e.g. in modern housing estates in Újbuda (H) or Pori (SF)).

On the other hand, the other two pillars (community engagement and volunteering) of the good practice highlight serious challenges related to the overall transfer potential of the good practice, simply because it can be difficult to boost these factors as they are deeply

rooted in the socio-economic environment and cultural attitudes of the given country. Tackling a strong local spirit (‘our heritage’) linked to a partly unexploited heritage, positioning and marketing the theme in a contemporary way fitting urban trends, incentivising volunteers and residents, especially young ones and putting the theme into a broader context seem essential in the transfer process to overcome those challenges around community engagement and volunteering.

Last, but not least, for adapting this community-led initiative we need municipalities that are able to facilitate bottom-up developments without controlling what is uncontrollable, act as matchmakers, and harvest and accelerate the results of such a community festival by crossing silos (the cultural department is most likely the one responsible for the festival, but its potential spill-overs refer to social and other departments too).

Proper motivation tools, team and capacity building for URBACT Local Group members to overcome resistance and create quick wins is also essential for Come in! partner cities.

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Visit the network's page: Come in!

The theme of the session: How can a contemporary use of heritage buildings and sites add value to its conservation? "Conservation through development" from the point of view of:

Ralf Coussée (Architect, Coussée & Goris), He showed greater concern to respond to the new function of the spaces in his projects of recovery of heritage sites, more attentive to new concepts than to nostalgia. Function can help to conserve and to reduce energy consumption

Frederik Mahieu (Flemish Heritage Department), presented a rich inventory of monuments, landscapes and protected sites, with a diversity of examples.

Lode Waes (CEO Vanhaerents Development) talked about the atmosphere of heritage spaces, and how heritage can be an inspiration for master planning, the connection of neighbourhoods and the incentive of place making.

Leo Van Broeck (Bogdan & Van Broeck), “Heritage building cannot become ‘frozen’”

Pascal Vandenhende & Annemie Bernaerts (Theoria Bookshop). A bookshop conceived as a house, open 7 days per week. A place with open walls and windows to meet, to create, to talk...

Adriaan Linters (Heritage specialist). More sustainable building is this which always exists..., Don't fear promoting and accepting the opinion of the citizens..., time is quality and returns are more important than costs…

Interactive Q&A

To what extent should heritage be protected by the Government? (All types: 55,2% ; The most important: 44,8%)

Important heritage should stay in public hands? This is the only way it will remain accessible to the public. (Agree: 17,1%; Disagree: 82,9%)

Heritage is always on the losing and when opposed to projects which are deemed to have an economic importance. (Agree: 51,5%; Disagree: 48,5%)

According to you which types of heritage are popular in heritage redevelopment? (Industrial heritage: 30%; Religious heritage: 27%; Castles, mansions…: 26%; Specific heritage: 17%)

Please do not miss the video:

They say all good things come to an end. It may well be true, but there are memories to share that cannot be cancelled... especially if they look towards the future, instead of simply dwelling on the past. Would you like to browse through the pages of our "UrbanGuide" handbook (available also on LuluPress)? Or would you rather sit comfortably on your chair and watch the video-documentary by Paolo Guglielmetti, telling you our complete and unabridged story?

MAPS URBACT / A journey on the re-use of the former military assets

If you don't have 17 minutes to spend all in one go, you can take it in smaller "doses" both on our YouTube Channel and Wordpress website: five episodes taking you - after a brief introduction to our project and an overview on the URBACT world - from the involvement of local stakeholders to the work of the ULG, from the local problems that needed be addressed to the themes developed, right to the lessons learnt during this adventure.

MAPS project introduction (00:48)

What about URBACT (01:41)

Involve the local stakeholders (02:05)

The work done by the ULG (01:54)

How address the local issues (01:50)

Themes developed (03:12)

Lessons from the network (03:09)

Wherever your choice leads you, what you'll find is more than a simple overview on two and a half years of work as partners of an URBACT network. There are feelings, expectations, plans and an essential philosophy: bringing dismissed military assets back to life means waking our cities up too. Maybe not with a prince's kiss, as in fairytales, but with a new approach to urban planning policies, which you may discover in each of our IAPs. You can find them all here, among the documents in our URBACT MAPS Library, which you can access directly from this page, or in the dedicated section of our Wordpress website: indulge and enjoy!

Piacenza IAP / Former Pontieri workshop a place for the new social deal for the city: increase the urban population of the centre; building a reference model in the field of urban planning approach; reuse the area to increase sport, cultural, educational facilities in a sustainable city strictly connected to the river Po. For a synthetic reading of the IAP, look at the Piacenza posters!

Serres IAP / The former military heritage as a cultural and social HUB for the entire city. A new narrative for the tourism development of the city: from “sun and sea” to “history, heritage and culture”. For a synthetic reading of the IAP, look at the Serres posters!

Varazdin IAP / Former Optujska military complex as a new urban model (city sub centre) to balance the urban quality and life in all the sectors of Varaždin. For a synthetic reading of the IAP, look at the Varazdin posters!

Szombathely IAP / Former Hussar Barracks: a new green city centre for the innovation (social, cultural, and for business) and for a sustainable lifestyle. For a synthetic reading of the IAP, look at the Szombathely posters!

Telsiai IAP / Former Soviet Army camp: a place to drive business development (local or from other Countries) in close relation with the vibrant cultural and social core of the city. For a synthetic reading of the IAP, look at the Telsiai posters!

Koblenz IAP / Fort Asterstein a new cultural HUB for the city. For a synthetic reading of the IAP, look at the Koblenz posters!

Longford IAP / The Connolly Barracks: a new urban HUB to drive the city and the territory. The former military heritage as a driver to provide the link to the heritage and history of the town, improves the physical connections in the area, and provide a social dividend for the people of Longford. For a synthetic reading of the IAP, look at the Longford posters!

Espinho IAP / The Atlantic Park. Sport, wellness, environment, culture and social integration: these are the ingredients used by the city of Espinho to support the reuse of the former military heritage. For a synthetic reading of the IAP, look at the Espinho posters!

Cartagena IAP / Los Moros fortress: a reversing perspective for the city. The project of reuse of Los Moros fortress will be a reference model (integrated urban approach) for the surrounding neighbourhoods, and for the entire city: social cohesion, inclusion, local cultural offer and cultural reference in the Mediterranean Arc. These are the keywords from the city of Cartagena. For a synthetic reading of the IAP, look at the Cartagena posters!

The role of the EU in the digital market started gaining more importance during the Estonian European Presidency in the second semester of 2017 to some extent. Google, Facebook and Apple were forced to start paying taxes for transactions carried out in EU countries. This strengthened the position of the Digital Single Market, an EU strategy to ensure access to online activities for individuals and businesses under conditions of fair competition, consumer and data protection, removing geo-blocking and copyright issues. Furthermore, the EU Urban Agenda is looking into ways to improve funding, policy and knowledge within the process of Digital Transition, for which the responsible partnership of Member States, cities and relevant NGOs should soon publish an Action Plan.

These international debates are locally translated in cities, which are confronted with many of the daily externalities of digital platforms and applications. The City of Genoa challenged Airbnb to pay local tourist taxes as hotels do, bringing the case to national court. The action forced Airbnb to enforce the taxation payment to individual room renters. The City of Ghent together with Ghent University are working on developing their own internet platform ensuring data ownership in the public domain. The City of Alba Iulia, as part of the national Smart City Strategy, is creating a local platform to establish a regular collaboration with key ICT players. Clearly the relationship with these companies is very relevant for cities but the way in which each one approaches them is kaleidoscopic.

The City of Amsterdam has taken on a front runner role, establishing a relationship with the large ICT companies that moves from conflict to cooperation, following the “Polder Model”. In fact, Amsterdam signed an agreement with Airbnb in order to monitor the number of nights rented out on the platform by each apartment, enforcing severe fines on owners transpassing the established limit. The city has also created a Smart City Amsterdam multi-stakeholder platform bringing together all relevant stakeholders from public, corporate, civic and research sectors, a cooperation that contributed to the nourishing of an impressive innovation ecosystem. In November 2017, as part of an Interactive Cities partners’ site visit, we organised a series of meeting with City Departments and local stakeholders in order to better understand the Amsterdam digital strategy.

Platforms for urban cooperation

In 2016, Amsterdam received the European Commission’s Innovation Capital Award: a recognition resulting from years of work in building an innovation ecosystem the city. This work also corresponds to the transformation of city policies, moving from top-down masterplanning towards a focus on creating an economically strong and sustainable, as well as a creative and just city. Digital  innovation is at the core of these policies, generating new partnerships and tools to help the city’s transition to a knowledge-based economy. One key element of the city’s digital transition is its digital infrastructure: the Amsterdam Internet Exchange is one of the main hubs in Europe, and an important reason for many companies choosing Amsterdam as their European headquarters. But even more important in this transition is a densely interconnected network of civic initiatives, enterprises and institutions.

A central actor of this ecosystem is Amsterdam Smart City (ASC), a public-private partnership organised within the Amsterdam Economic Board that includes 11 partners, including public authorities, knowledge institutions, civic spaces and private companies: the Amsterdam Municipality, the Amstelveen Municipality, the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Pakhuis de Zwijger, the Waag Society, Amsterdam Arena, post.nl, KPN, Liander, Engie and Arcadis. Amsterdam Smart City was born from the recognition that despite of the presence of many start-ups and smart citizens with ideas in Amsterdam, demand and supply do not easily find each other. ASC aims at filling this gap: initiated by the public sector and funded by the private sector, it is representative of a specifically Dutch governance structure, working with a variety of stakeholders on key urban transition elements, helping Amsterdam position itself as a competitive and future-proof European region with an improved liveability.

ASC acts as an innovation platform both in a digital and a physical sense, offering space to share initiatives in the domains of infrastructure and technology, the circular city, energy, water and waste, governance and education, citizens and living, and mobility, with digital connectivity and data as transversal themes. In recent years, it has shifted from a curated website towards an open platform where anyone can upload projects or products and can initiate actions and different forms of cooperation, helping initiatives gain visibility within Amsterdam and beyond.

Amsterdam’s innovation ecosystem stands on many pillars and ASC’s members themselves act as platforms of knowledge and exchange. Waag Society, for instance, is a laboratory for technological innovation and open government initiatives, aiming at bringing ICT knowledge and skills to public administrations, opening public data to communities and developing platforms that enable citizens to provide feedback to administrations or to connect with each other in fair economic exchange. Representative of this latter ambition is Fairbnb, a spin-off of a Waag Society project that aims at creating a platform for responsible tourism that benefits local communities instead of extractive mechanisms. Another member of the partnership, Pakhuis de Zwijger is a physical venue with over 600 events a year that has in the past years become one of the main centres to discuss the future of cities in Europe and beyond.

To frame the discussion within the Amsterdam Smart City ecosystem, academic partners like the University of Applied Sciences and AMS Institute lay out the theoretical frameworks, bring in existing knowledge and evaluate projects.  But the ASC partnership is only the core of a broad network of initiatives, organisations and platforms for public-private-civic cooperation in Amsterdam, including engagement projects like De Stem van West, collecting proposals for Amsterdam West, digital participation tools like Open Stadseel, or matchmaking and management platforms like Transform City. 

When bidding for the Innovation Capital Award, Amsterdam’s was the only proposal that included many stakeholders as opposed to a solely municipality-driven application. The iCapital award proved the success of the “Amsterdam approach,” that is, getting on board a variety of actors to discuss solutions for the city’s challenges. The award allowed the partnership putting forward the bid to strengthen and expand their ecosystem: two thirds of the prize was reinvested in local initiatives by city makers, active citizens and social entrepreneurs addressing themes of health and talent, through “Amsterdammers, Maak je Stad,” an accelerator programme for urban initiatives.

Platforms for marketing

Platforms are not only used in Amsterdam to foster cooperation between actors of the region, but also to attract tourists and investors to the city. The promotion of the city as an attractive destination is at the centre of a city marketing strategy which saw a continuous evolution in the strategic use of different social media platforms.

The creation of a coherent digital storytelling portal, presenting interesting stories and viral contents to be shared through a social media ecosystem managed by the Amsterdam Marketing in collaboration with the City Hall, is the final result of a process involving communication professionals, developers, social media strategists committed to enhance the city experience for locals and visitors. Small experiments on new functions and contents and fast learning from failures are decisive elements for the success of this social media strategy which is continuously refined and adapted to the changes of algorithms decided by the big companies. The selection of the content to be shared on social media and the choice of the platforms where this content is promoted, play a relevant role in a cross-channel strategy with different targets, such as residents, visitors, business and talents. To tell the same story with different emphasis on different channels is the choice made by Amsterdam, which is constantly improving the personalization of research and the connection with locals, in order to make their tools not only a showcase of the city attractions but useful resources to find events and discover new venues.

In order to focus on users’ needs and provide them with more personalised information, new functions such as a chat bot on Facebook Messenger called Goochem were recently created to better guide users through all the different events organized in Amsterdam. Launched in Dutch in beta version last August, the chat bot is a perfect example of the interactions among different databases made possible by software applications combined with social media functions. The dialogue with development companies and Facebook to get the chat bot approved involved also the Privacy Commission of Amsterdam in order to guarantee high data protection standards.

The strong connection with the ICT and social media strategy of the city will lead to the realization of new functions similar to Goochem (whose desktop version is going to be launched in 2018), with the aim of better guiding users through the enormous amount of information available on the IAmsterdam platform. Social media are contributing in a decisive way to foster the engagement of the users around the content published on the website, which is the most visible outcome of a branding strategy started in 2004 to present the city as innovative and creative. Social media are used as data entry points (only 5% of the visitors land on the webpage) and the analysis of the interactions provides useful information on the needs and the opinions of visitors and residents. The objective is to drive quality traffic on the website focusing on different categories of users reached mainly organically and just with a limited investment on social media advertisement. Quality content and great use of photos and videos (often live streamed) are contributing to make the Amsterdam pages more visible and engaging. These elements are contributing to include in the digital storytelling also original content such as the campaign on neighborhoods or the one on cultural diversity called 180 Amsterdammers, which are completing urban storytelling with fresh stories going beyond the traditional tourism promotion.    

From experiments to strategies

These partnerships carried out by Amsterdam are not fixed models but a trial and error process trying to establish a way forward, also for other cities, when dealing with the challenges of digital transition. Building a local ecosystem with public administrations, knowledge institutions, private companies and civic organisations does not only make Amsterdam more participated and competitive, but it also strengthens the position of the Municipality when negotiating with multinational ICT companies. In the meantime, for digital strategies to be effective, they must be connected to other relevant policies and actions carried out within the administration. Nevertheless, the way is still not fully defined, not for Amsterdam, nor for other cities.

In fact, whilst the Dutch capital city has a strong leverage with big players, due to its strong public administration structure and tradition in relating to private sector, how should other cities with a weaker position, for example small and medium sized cities, build a relationship with such stakeholders? As the Interactive Cities project comes to its conclusions, partners are exploring different aspects of this question. Throughout Europe, new strategies are being built through prototypes carried out in different cities, for this reason creating an overview of what is happening in Europe, and beyond, is essential. For this, the Action Plan of the EU Urban Agenda partnership on Digital Transition will be very valuable. At the same time, a permanent observatory would be useful, with a more capillary and stable network of cities debating on such issues and regularly feeding into EU policies. This could be help integrate the existing European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities and the EU Open Data Portal.