"Next Generation EU" Cities

Local Communities in a Post-Pandemic Future

Anna Lisa Boni, Andrea Tobia Zevi

• Publisher: Ledizioni
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9788855266130
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As the world enters a new year, the Covid-19 pandemic is still upsetting our daily lives. And as 75% of EU citizens live in urban areas, cities are the most prominent stage both for responding to the health crisis, and for seizing opportunities to recover and move forward. Meanwhile, in 2020, EU countries agreed to Next Generation EU, a €750 billion recovery package that represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity.This report argues that cities should be given more say over how post-pandemic national recovery plans pan out between here and 2026, when all projects are supposed to be wrapping up. Indeed, the success of the EU recovery plans will hinge upon what cities do, or they don't do over the next five years. How are cities rethinking their role within the "twin" green and digital transitions? How can they achieve gender parity, reduce inequalities, and preserve a vibrant cultural life?

1. The Place of Cities in a Recovering Europe

Anna Lisa Boni, Andrea Tobia Zevi

This chapter introduces a report dedicated to the role of cities in the EU recovery and resilience strategy from the Covid-19 crisis. The authors of this text believe that no European or national recovery is possible without the active contribution of cities, meant as local authorities, the citizens they represent and the local ecosystems they revolve around. It therefore adopts a “pro-city” approach aiming to demonstrate, through best practices and policy recommendations, why the upcoming European efforts to shape a more sustainable Europe after the pandemic need strong engagement on the part of mayors and their urban systems, both in the design and in the implementation of the “Next Generation EU” fund.

It is widely acknowledged that cities were disproportionately affected by the Covid-191 health crisis and have been at its forefront from the outset.

They very courageously faced the emergency phase, even when no one, at any level, knew how to deal with its impact and ramifications. While most of the population was locked at home, cities had to ensure business continuity, including essential public services like transportation, hospitals, and social care. Moreover, they had to tackle new challenges due to the pandemic: the loneliness of many elderly people or the difficulty to supply them with food or medicines; the problem of testing and tracing the homeless, as well as the risk of having outbreaks in the streets; the rise of poverty aggravated by the lockdown, and the scarcity of public resources especially in the first phase of the crisis. In this very challenging context, cities reacted promptly and creatively, developing new solutions and responding as effectively and efficiently as possible to the pressing demands of their citizens. They shared experiences and practices with their colleagues, both at the national level and across Europe and the world. Eventually, European cities were able to maintain strong links with each other thanks to several well-established city networks, such as Eurocities.

Together, they called on the EU institutions and national governments to be involved in the design process of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRPs). While these institutions were concentrating on drafting the plans as fast as possible and were not always responsive to such calls, most mayors across the EU expressed their concern that their ideas and project proposals were not sufficiently taken into consideration.

This is why European cities did not wait for their national governments to involve them. They acted. Many of them were guided by the UN Agenda 2030 and its sustainable development goals, the European Green Deal, the New European Bauhaus, the Next Generation EU, and used the crisis as an opportunity to rethink their future as more resilient and sustainable places for all their citizens.

Nevertheless, they have not given up calling on the EU and national governments to be involved in the current implementation phase of the EU recovery and resilience strategy. While meaningful involvement was difficult in the design phase due to the time constraints, it is now not only feasible, but essential to work with urban and metropolitan authorities to help ensure the effective use of the recovery funds.

Europe is about to shape its future with an unprecedented quantity of resources and debts and needs to invest them fast and well. This may not happen if urban systems are at the core of this effort.

This chapter is divided in four sections: the first one outlines the role cities played during the health crisis through a selected set of examples and experiences. It is followed by a description of the rationale behind cities’ dissatisfaction with their low involvement in the design process of the NRRPs. The third section details a few cases of European cities making the most of the recovery framework to stand for a more sustainable strategy. In the last section, we advocate for a stronger engagement of cities in the implementation phase of the NRRPs by proposing policy recommendations to make this happen.

Bare-handed Against the Pandemic: The Reaction of European Cities

The state of emergency that European cities found themselves in between March and April 2020 can be described as overwhelming: national authorities enforced heavy restrictions on people’s mobility and imposed lockdowns for offices, shops, schools, sports plants, factories, and every other kind of public structure. Events and gatherings could not take place, and even private meetings were not allowed. Normal life was not possible anymore, and this unbelievable situation forced local communities and their leaders to react on many different levels.

Essential services, such as public transportation and waste collection, were ensured throughout the lockdown but they had to be redesigned in light of the risks associated with the pandemic. Other longstanding problems, such as poverty or homelessness, were heavily exacerbated by the quarantine and the economic crisis; in response, welfare programs had to be extended and their target groups broadened. Many companies and economic activities shut down permanently, while sectors like culture and creativity – which have a deep influence on people’s wellbeing – were also forced to stop their activities and had to be supported.

City authorities had to develop innovative solutions and implement measures that had not been mainstreamed before. Several examples of these initiatives can be found on the website “covidnews.eurocities.eu”, a platform imagined by Eurocities right after the spread of the coronavirus to share experiences among cities and their political leaders across different contexts. As mentioned before, city leaders and their administrations made the most of their networks to connect to each other: conference calls, mobile chats, informal contacts happened daily and were useful, not only to share concrete actions but also to get first information while the virus was moving quickly from country to country.

Protecting public workers

The first task for city authorities was to guarantee the continuity of essential services without putting public workers at risk. We all remember how many drivers and employees in NYC’s subway were infected and lost their lives in the first week of the pandemic. European cities were overall more cautious in many ways and immediately decided to change some of the normal rules to reduce the danger: parking became free in most public areas, while fees and congestion charges were suspended. The goal was of course to reduce crowds on public transportation and protect both passengers and workers. For the same reason, many cities were forced to decrease the level of waste collection and to concentrate their efforts in the disinfection of public areas, buses, and trains, and again to frequently clean plants and spaces where front-line workers were on duty.

Social inclusion and healthcare

As national funds took months to get to municipalities, the gap in resources for social services quickly became evident. This is why cities such as Lisbon decided to create a public “Social Emergency Fund” that in the case of the Portuguese capital started with an amount of 25 million Euros.2 Other cities, like London and Milan, chose a public-private model, where social funds earmarked by the municipality were augmented with private donations. Such experiments had great success thanks to the generosity of many private sponsors and a collective feeling of “battle” that united people in our cities during the first months of the pandemic. The Milan “Mutual Aid Fund” was able to involve many private companies, while the “Community Response Fund” in London collected the impressive amount of 16 million pounds.3

But funding was not the only way. Volunteers played a crucial role in all European cities, especially among young people who wished to help fragile citizens. To make the most of this powerful human contribution, many cities designed digital platforms to receive, select, and organize the volunteers. For example, the city of Paris created “jemengage.paris.fr” (“I commit”) and Milan “Milano Aiuta” (“Milan helps”), identifying a few areas of intervention: food supply, care for the elderly and vulnerable groups, home delivery and people just willing to help.

One of the worst ramifications of the crisis turned out to be loneliness, especially for older people. Many cities organised remote assistance under various forms. In Tallinn – one of the most digitally innovative cities in Europe – a phone number and a specific platform (“Community Helps”) were established to provide psychological support to the elderly and other vulnerable people. Something similar happened in Lyon (according to local data, receiving 650 calls a day), while the city of Amsterdam gave thousands of laptops, free internet connections, and Wi-Fi hotspots to older people who could not meet their relatives and friends. In Paris, the municipality asked VIPs to call lonely people in the framework of “Paris en Compagnie” (“Paris together”). In Nicosia, the municipality thought about using hand-written letters to create connections through the program “Write it. Pen pals in the Age of Quarantine”.

Even food supply became an issue on three levels: cities had to ensure it would be healthy, affordable, and deliverable. To foster ...

Table of contents

• "Next Generation EU" Cities
• Colophon
• Eurocities
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The Place of Cities in a Recovering Europe
• PART I. RETHINKING EU CITIES/THE FUTURE OF CITIES
• PART II. CITIES AT WORK
• About the Authors