Progetto CEE "THE MEDIUM SIZED CITIES AND SOCIO-ECONOMICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE REGION OF THE EC" promosso da European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions

During the 1990s, the three objectives of economic competitiveness, environmental sustainability and social cohesion have provided a major focus for policy debate across Europe. Cities are a key locus for the challenge of combining these three objectives. Much of the focus of discussion about these objectives has been on the experience of large cities and metropolitan agglomerations. This raises the question of whether medium and smaller-sized cities have had a different experience. To explore these questions, and focus in particular on issues of urban sustainability, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions undertook a research project to investigate this experience. The project entitled “Medium-sized cities and socio-economic and environmental developments in the regions of the EU” was organised through fifteen case-studies on selected cities across Europe, with a concentration in Southern Europe. The main aims of the project were: • to highlight problems and perspectives, opportunities and threats for medium-sized cities, mostly at the periphery of Europe: • to identify innovative visions, actions instruments and policies, • to evaluate the role of the city authorities, the social partners and the citizens in formulating common visions for the future and translating them into actions. The fifteen case studies covered a broad range of problems and perspectives, and were undertaken using a common framework. They include Kavala, Rhodes, Parma, Siena, Perugia, Bastia, Nimes, Alicante, Toledo, Oviedo, Coimbra, Evora, Dessau, Freiburg and Galway. A set of urban sustainability indicators was proposed by the Foundation and developed for the cities of the research network. Meetings and workshops were held in Kavala, Alicante, Volos, Oviedo, Lavrion, and Piedmont to enrich the results of the research. All case-studies were published by the Foundation as working papers and the reports from the workshops were the object of three other publications. The research network has been constituted gradually and carefully. Kavala, Perugia, Parma Oviedo and Alicante were the first cities to be chosen in Greece, Italy and Spain. The cities finally selected cover a very diverse and rich European horizon. Many of them are heavily dominated by tertiary activities (like Bastia), while others see their future dependent on the success of industrial reconversion (Dessau). The cities examined, excluding Freiburg, Parma and Nîmes, come from peripheral regions of the EU, and all are faced with opportunities for and serious threats to socio-economic and environmental development. Four of the selected cities, Rhodes, Toledo, Siena and Evora, are among UNESCO’s World Heritage Cities, together with 38 other urban centres in the EU, mostly medium-sized cities. This summary synthesizes the main findings from the project bringing them into the European horizon. It examines problems and solutions, visions and perspectives, innovations and obstacles to innovating. In addition, the report draws together the findings of an innovative attempt to develop urban sustainability indicators across all the cities.