The Future of Cities

This report is an initiative of the Joint Research Centre (JRC), supported by the Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO). It highlights drivers shaping the urban future, identifying both the key challenges cities will have to address and the strengths they can capitalise on to proactively build their desired futures. The main aim of this report is to raise open questions and steer discussions on what the future of cities can, and should be, both within the scientific and policymaker communities. While addressing mainly European cities, examples from other world regions are also given since many challenges and solutions have a global relevance.

The report is particularly novel in two ways. First, it was developed in an inclusive manner – close collaboration with the EC’s Community of Practice on Cities (CoP-CITIES) provided insights from the broader research community and city networks, including individual municipalities, as well as Commission services and international organisations. It was also extensively reviewed by an Editorial Board. Secondly, the report is supported by an interactive online platform which will host future updates, including additional analyses, discussions, case studies, comments and interactive maps that go beyond the scope of the current version of the report.

All of the report refers to the impacts that cities have on climate change, the trend and how to deal with. In particular, one of the presented challenges is devoted to climate action, underling four key massages:

• While being responsible for a high level of energy consumption and, therefore, generating about 70% of global GHG emissions, cities are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
• Cities are most effective at taking measures to tackle climate change when aligned with each other and with national- and regional-level actors with whom they can share greater climate ambition and capacity.
• In the last two decades, city ambition has risen remarkably to go beyond the national governments’ climate-change targets as the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C warns that current nationally determined contributions for the Paris Agreement are not sufficient.
• Cities need support from their partners in national and regional governments, the private sector, academia, and civil society to fully meet and exceed these ambitious targets.