Conversation #80

The editors have invited me to write this, the 80th contribution to our series of international EURA Conversations. This is an honour for me. The downside is that they have asked me to provide some overall reflections on the series and on possible ways forward. Given the sheer diversity of contributions this is a bit of a challenge!

I have decided to focus on the core values that have guided our many conversations – not least because they are also the values that shaped the creation of EURA almost thirty years ago.

The back story

On a sunny day in late September 1997 sixty urban scholars from sixteen different countries joined with a group of senior policy makers from the European Commission in Brussels to share ideas on how to improve the governance of cities in Europe and beyond. In the run-up Professor Murray Stewart and I, the organisers of this International Seminar, were hopeful but also in suspenseful mood.

Would the invited participants arrive? If they did, would they be supportive? Could this event lead on to something more lasting?

As it turned out, the atmosphere at this two-day gathering at the Eurovillage in Boulevard Charlemagne – a short distance north of the European Parliament – turned out to be upbeat, constructive and optimistic.

Those attending decided that the time was, indeed, right to co-create a new international network to advance international understanding of the challenges facing European cities and to develop innovative ideas on how to respond to them. On 19 September 1997, the decision was made to launch a new international association – the European Urban Research Association (EURA).

Promoting international dialogue

The three main aims of EURA, established at that meeting in Brussels, were:

• To encourage international exchange and co-operation in relation to urban research
• To stimulate and encourage interdisciplinary and cross-national research
• To contribute to urban policy debates

These remain the three main aims of EURA today.

The launch of EURA Conversations

In early 2020 the EURA Governing Board welcomed a proposal to create a new series of EURA Conversations as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic that was then sweeping across Europe. The hope was that the series might help EURA scholars to continue to engage in international dialogue despite the lock downs that were then being imposed by many national governments.

In the period since May 2020 some 80 opinion pieces have been published by 57 authors spanning 26 countries and 42 institutions.

I offer three overall reflections on this track record:

• The scope and variety of topics addressed in the series is impressive. As well as contributions exploring many well-established themes in urban studies – for example, how to finance cities, how to address the climate crisis and growing social inequality, innovations in city planning, challenges facing urban governance and local democracy – authors have also drawn attention to relatively neglected topics in urban studies – for example, temporary or ‘pop up’ uses in towns and cities (ECs #19 and #20) and loneliness in the city (EC #58).
• The series has supported contributions from young scholars, who are relatively new to publishing, alongside welcoming contributions from experienced academics. Working with such a diversity of urban researchers has been a joy for all of us serving in the editorial team.
• The series has set and maintained a good standard of intellectual rigour. Yes, the series is a space for the expression of opinions – the editors have, from the very beginning, welcomed thought-provoking contributions. Some pieces have been quite speculative. But – and this is important – all contributions and comments to the EURA Conversation series are moderated. This series is explicitly not a ‘free-for-all’ space where misinformed opinions can get an airing.

In the early days, during the pandemic, the series helped EURA members maintain a sense of connection, even camaraderie. Hopefully the series continues to be experienced as a supportive international forum for lively academic exchanges relating to the three main aims of the association mentioned earlier.

We are more than grateful to the many scholars, with very different backgrounds, disciplines and experiences who have either offered contributions and/or commented on pieces they have read.

Looking ahead

We are faced today with a range of political forces that are, frankly speaking, not interested in constructive international dialogue. In the modern world, and it is very different from only a few years ago, demagogues who resent democracy and evidence-based approaches are actively promoting disinformation.

In response to these threats to democracy and internationalism, I offer three suggestions for the future direction of the EURA Conversation series:

• Combat cynicism. A great risk today is that digital disinformation can promote cynicism. Writing last month Rafael Behr explains how it will be disastrous if people come to believe that: ‘... politicians are as bad as each other and that none is trading in truth. That is the path of despair down which democracy itself starts to be dismissed as a sham (Behr, 2025). It follows that the EURA Conversation series should persist in promoting and supporting the exchange of high-quality, evidence-based contributions relating to cities and urban change. It must be one of the places on the internet that continues to ‘trade in truth.’
• Expand the range of voices. In the coming period the series editors could, perhaps, be more active in identifying and drawing ‘missing voices’ into the series. In some ways – for example, the gender balance of contributors – the series has performed well. But pushing ahead with efforts to include relatively unheard, and particularly younger, voices would repay dividends.
• Interrogate place-less vs place-based power. Allow me in this, my last contribution to the series, to suggest that a major conflict that deserves to be explored further in EURA Conversations, and elsewhere, is the growing clash in the modern world between place-less and place-based power. Globalisation has resulted in a massive expansion of place-less power in the last thirty years. In the language I developed in my book Leading the Inclusive City, place-less leaders are powerful figures, often exercising senior roles in multi-national companies, who do not care about the consequences of their decisions for particular places and communities (Hambleton, 2015). Self-interested profit accumulation determines their strategies. Their actions are helping to create increasingly unequal, unsustainable and unhappy societies. By contrast, large numbers of civic or place-based leaders – and they are to be found right across the world – do care about the impact of their decisions on local communities.

In closing, future contributions to the series could, perhaps, give more attention to the important work of progressive civic leaders who oppose unaccountable place-less power and strive for just results while caring for the natural environment on which we all depend. As often happens at EURA Conferences, celebrations of successful urban leadership in particular settings and contexts can provoke fresh thinking and, on occasions, inspire societal innovation in other localities.

References:

Behr, R. (2025). Putin wants to export chaos – but democracy can fight back. The Guardian, 17 December. Hambleton, R. (2015). Leading the Inclusive City: Place-based innovation for a bounded planet. Bristol: Policy Press.