The value of City-City Partnerships for Implementing the New Urban Agenda

The value of City-City Partnerships for Implementing the New Urban Agenda

For implementing the New Urban Agenda, partnerships with strong commitments and cooperation on all scales, from local to global are required. Bi-lateral and multilateral partnerships between cities can enhance international support for effective and targeted capacity-building to support national plans to implement the NUA and SDGs. Exchange and co-creation of knowledge, technologies and experiences regarding sustainable city services and infrastructures offers promising prospects for addressing issues of urban planning, environment, health, water, transport, ICT, hazards, resilience and disaster risk reduction, and improving the well-being of citizens.

As city-city partnership we understand the 'triple helix' of university, industry and local government relations. This model has become very popular for cooperative innovation in the last two decades. The helix is used as an image to illustrate a complex network of relationships, facilitating dynamic co-creation and respecting links, flows and backflows between partners. More recently, the term 'quadruple helix' has been used, in which the fourth helix is represented as civil society becoming involved in the innovation process.

The main aim of this session is to assess the framework conditions for dedicated, committed and successful triple/quadruple helix city-city partnerships for implementing the NUA. The discussions will be framed by presentations of examples for city-city partnerships aiming at exchanging knowledge, mutual learning and capacity building of projects funded by JPI Urban Europe and the experience of URBAN-EU-CHINA's partners. Besides presentations the following questions will be addressed with active participation of the audience:

How can global partnerships contribute to the mobilisation towards a common vision on sustainable urban development?

How can global triple/quadruple helix city partnerships foster capacity building/knowledge creation for implementing the NUA?

What framework conditions are required to allow global partnerships among cities to be successful?