EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Cities and the Lisbon Agenda: assessing the performance of cities

Cities and the Lisbon Agenda: assessing the performance of cities

Introduction

The document is divided into two sections. The first focuses on how cities contribute to jobs and growth in the regions. The second section focuses on social cohesion within cities and their neighbourhoods. Throughout the text, examples of successful projects related to the issues at stake, have been included.

Description

Cities are radically different from their countries. But also the disparities between cities are far greater than the differences between regions or countries. Analysing cities reveals the biggest challenges to cohesion in Europe.
To obtain a picture of how attractive large and mid-sized European cities are, five key factors were analysed: transport connections, metropolitan transport, ICT infrastructure, environment and culture.
Many cities have neighbourhoods with concentrations of deprivation. These neighbourhoods suffer from a combination of concentrated poverty, unemployment, crime, poor housing and/or poor quality public transport connections. The combination of deprived neighbourhoods and very affluent neighbourhoods, creates big disparities within cities, bigger than can found between cities or regions.

Conclusions

Transport is a key component of the attractiveness of cities and plays an important role in decisions about where to work and invest. For businesses, the first concern is access to markets. Because Europe is a highly urbanised continent, access to markets usually means access to cities;
cities are centres of employment, leisure, culture and retail, which attract many people and a substantial amount of traffic. Commuting to work generates a large share of this traffic. The Urban Audit shows that, on average, one out of every three jobs in cities goes to someone living outside of the city. In twenty cities, over half the jobs go to commuters;
the digital divide existing in Europe today is complex and avoids the traditional ‘core-periphery’ distinction. The Nordic countries are clearly leaders on all aspects of ICT uptake. Mediterranean countries, however, have outperformed the ‘core’ countries on some aspects of ICT uptake. But the most distinct division exists between Western and Eastern Europe, even if some Eastern countries such as Slovakia and Estonia perform rather well;
air quality is improving and pollutants such as lead and sulphur dioxide are no longer significant concerns in urban areas. However, particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides and ozone, remain a serious issue. City dwellers are also concerned about noise. To encourage compact development and reduce sprawl, cities should re-use sites in their centres that are not or no longer used;
culture has become an important tool to promote a city and to attract “creative industries”. Culture is now seen by many mayors as an important “soft” locational factor in attracting knowledge workers;
the combination of deprived neighbourhoods and very affluent neighbourhoods, creates big disparities within cities, bigger than can found between cities or regions.

Contact info

European Commission

Publication date

06/12/2005

Cities

Medium sized and large cities in the European Union.

Links

European Commission

Cities and the Lisbon Agenda: assessing the performance of cities (PDF, Eng, 705 KB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment > Urban economy

Keywords

Competitiveness