EURA Conversations
20/12/2024
In 1929, with his painting La Trahison des images, René Magritte famously declared, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe," challenging the relationship between representation and reality. He highlighted the distinction between an image and what it represents. In a similar short-circuit, Gregory Bateson, in Mind and Nature (1984), revisited a principle popularized by Alfred Korzybski, stating, «the map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named» ...
21/11/2024
It is critical to recognize a (mostly) invisible driver for unhealthy and unsustainable cities: the way we feed cities. The Report of the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health in 2019 (Willett et al., 2019) made an impactful alert to acknowledge that the food system is the single largest reason for humans' transgression of key planetary boundaries, being the main driver of nature degradation and global environmental disruption, especially at city level ...
29/10/2024
Duisburg Urban Zero is the title of an urban regeneration project currently implemented in the neighbourhood of Duisburg-Ruhrort. The goal of this initiative is to create a pollution free neighbourhood by 2029. This includes the installation of renewable energy facilities, implementing the circular economy of land and green infrastructure and happens in the context of a post-industrial city being the biggest inner harbour in Europe ...
18/09/2024
Previous Conversations (#13, Cristina Stănuș and #63 Dubravka Jurlina Alibegović) addressed the problems of formal intergovernmental relations and the need to reconsider vertical power dynamics within the governmental system as well as the importance of the fiscal autonomy of local authorities ...
14/06/2024
Democracy is under attack. In more than a few countries far right politicians have, in recent years, sought to undermine long-established constitutional, democratic norms and weaken citizen voices. For example, as explained in these pages by Ivan Tosics (EC #57), Viktor Orban, the Hungarian Prime Minister, has since 2010 eroded press freedom, damaged judicial independence, and enfeebled elected local governments ...
24/05/2024
Surtax on income tax was introduced in Croatia in 1994. The main reason was to provide local authorities with more fiscal space in the acquisition of revenue. Cities with more than 40,000 inhabitants were given the authority to determine the surtax ...
22/04/2024
The underrepresentation of women among elected officials in national governments is a well-known fact. It is observed also among local authorities. The situation changes along with the social modernization in some societies – but rather slowly ...
26/03/2024
Energy is a key driver of life in the city. Everything from leisure to livelihoods in the city is made possible by energy sources that light up city streets, connect people through transportation systems, and keep food fresh in refrigeration systems depend on reliable and robust energy supply ...
28/02/2024
The 2024 International Conference on Urban Affairs will take place in New York, April 24-27, and is sponsored by the Urban Affairs Association, the European Urban Research Association, and the European Network for Housing Research.
We are thrilled to extend our warmest welcome to all participants! ...
18/12/2023
For many weeks, last summer, my region (Sicily) was burning in flames. Blown by African winds, fires rapidly destroyed ancient woods and crops in the countryside, attacking houses and larger estates at the margins of urban areas. In the days following the fires, cities were enveloped in a dense, grey smoke, making it difficult to breath and to go about life as usual outside our homes. ...
24/11/2023
For me, living in a city centre apartment means a short walk to my office, access to a dense transport network and proximity to a dazzling array of food and leisure options. However, living in the city centre also comes with a great deal of anonymity. I so rarely see my neighbours that I don’t even know what most of them look like. ...
25/10/2023
There are very different forms of relationships between national governments and their capital cities observable in Europe, as can be seen from the following two examples:
The Métropole du Grand Paris, covering the City of Paris and the surrounding suburbs, was established on 1 January 2016. ...
26/09/2023
Providing affordable housing has emerged as a major challenge for cities across the world. In the USA, a physical lack of affordable housing units in front of the stage. In Europe, the rising costs of housing, combined with a shortage of affordable housing units, means that cities across the continent now face a major housing crisis. ...
30/06/2023
Generative AI is a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that produces content based on patterns it observes in large datasets. Although AI has been in use extensively in many settings (e.g. in scientific work and in the classroom), excitement and concern around AI seemed to reach a crescendo at the beginning of 2023. For instance, teachers began sharing reflections on the implications these language models ...
31/05/2023
This EURA conversation reflects on the upcoming annual EURA conference to be held in Reykjavík, Iceland. The title of the conference is “the European city: A practice of resilience in the face of an uncertain future”. The conference will take place during ...
24/04/2023
In many countries, policymakers are focussing on administrative-territorial reforms in order to improve the effectiveness of local governance. Some have reduced the number of municipalities through mergers. A voluntary merger is when central government provides the legal framework for the merger but leaves local authorities to negotiate and propose new boundaries. This is a "bottom-up" process and ...
30/03/2023
Swedish democracy is heading towards grimmer days. The political direction of the new conservative government of 2022, supported by the radical nationalist “Sweden democrats” sprung out of a neo-Nazi-party in the 1990’s, has a knife tip aimed towards migrants and multicultural society. Many fear that the main attack is against our egalitarian welfare model ...
28/02/2023
