EURA Conversations – Page 4 – EURA

EURA Conversations

31/05/2023
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#54 The City of Reykjavík as an urban development toolbox: a glance at EURA2023

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 ...
30/06/2023
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#55 Cities and artificial intelligence

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 ...
26/09/2023

#56 The affordable housing crisis: insights from a post-socialist city

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. ...
25/10/2023

#57 Capital cities in captivity of their national governments

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. ...
24/11/2023

#58 Thoughts on loneliness in the European city

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. ...
18/12/2023

#59 Cities and the climate question

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. ...
28/02/2024

#60 Cities on the edge

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! ...
26/03/2024

#61 Integrating social equity into electric utility planning

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 ...
22/04/2024

#62 Gender and local political leadership

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 ...
24/05/2024

#63 Abolition of the income tax surtax for financing Croatian municipalities and cities

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 ...
14/06/2024

#64 Cities and the defence of democracy

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 ...
18/09/2024

#65 New capital investment program for Bulgarian municipalities

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 ...
29/10/2024

#66 Renewing Urban Renewal

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 ...
21/11/2024

#67 The invisible challenges of feeding sustainable and healthy cities

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 ...