Cities of Equality Partnership convenes in Barcelona to advance joint work on data, funding and policies for urban equality
A timely policy moment
The meeting opened against a backdrop of significant EU policy activity. Miguel Hernandez-Littlewood (DG REGIO, European Commission) set the scene with a presentation on four major initiatives recently launched as part of the EU's new social package: the first-ever EU Anti-Poverty Strategy, a strengthened European Child Guarantee, a Council Recommendation on Fighting Housing Exclusion, and an updated Strategy on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Taken together, these initiatives signal a renewed political commitment to social cohesion and territorial equity at EU level, with explicit recognition of the role of cities and local authorities.
For the Cities of Equality Partnership, the timing is significant. Partners were encouraged to treat the current window as a strategic opportunity to advance preliminary findings and influence the design of upcoming initiatives before key decisions are taken.
Taking stock: three Actions in motion
Action leaders and external experts presented detailed updates on the work carried out since the beginning of the implementation phase, offering the first occasion for the full partnership to take stock of progress across all three Actions simultaneously.
Action 1 “Creating a Framework to Assess Spatial Segregation and Access to Services”, led by UniverCities and supported by external expert Carlotta Fioretti, has completed its first major activity: a comprehensive review of existing literature and data collection practices, resulting in a state-of-the-art working paper and a database of good practices drawn from national, international and local frameworks across multiple Member States, which will be published in June 2026. The work has surfaced important early lessons: segregation and accessibility are multi-dimensional concepts that resist uniform measurement; proxy concepts such as urban vulnerability and neighbourhood deprivation are in practice more widely used by cities than segregation itself; and the strongest data frameworks are those that maintain a clear link between measurement and policy use from the outset.
On the afternoon of day 1, partners visited headed to the the Trinitat Nova neighbourhood, where they toured visited Espai 3 Ulls, a community education hub supported by the city's Neighbourhood Plans (Pla de Barris). The visit was followed by a workshop exploring the use of data to analyse spatial segregation and access to services. Using the Pla de Barris as a pilot case, participants worked through the key steps of developing a data framework for measuring segregation and accessibility, generating input that will feed directly into the action's analytical report and final publication, expected in autumn 2026.
Action 2 “Mainstreaming Equality in Results-Based Funding Instruments”, led by the Metropolitan City of Rome and supported by external expert Milota Sidorova, presented findings from a comparative analysis of nine ESPON case studies and opened the first substantive conversation with the full partnership on what a practical handbook for managing authorities and programme designers should look like. Sidorova's presentation offered a frank account of where equality most often fails to enter funding decisions: not from a lack of stated commitments, but from weak indicators, governance processes that lack equality expertise, and a gap between formal compliance and actual impact.
Three case studies, Rotterdam, a Roma integration programme in Hungary, and the Lille metropolitan area in France, illustrated different facets of this challenge, from the advantages of locally managed funds to the risks of criteria that fail to name target groups explicitly, and the limits of mandatory requirements when political will is absent. A dedicated partner workshop gathered structured input on trusted equality indicators, identified gaps across the funding lifecycle, and explored priorities for the forthcoming handbook. The handbook will also draw on the results of a survey currently being conducted among managing authorities, national coordination bodies and cities across the EU to gather comparable evidence on how and where equality fails to enter funding decisions.
Action 3 “Collecting and Discussing Good Practices of Equity-Attuned Participatory Governance”, led by ICLEI Europe and supported by external expert Ian Graham, reported on the two online knowledge exchange sessions already completed with Komotini, ANCT and Heerenveen, and presented the emerging analytical challenges identified through this work. Graham reflected on the difficulty of identifying cases where participation is deliberately designed as a tool for advancing equity outcomes, as opposed to cases where participation processes are made more accessible without a specific equality intent. This distinction will be at the heart of the guidebook the action is developing.
Learning from Barcelona: civic management as a vehicle for equitable participation
The second day concluded with a hybrid knowledge exchange session open to registered participants beyond the partnership. Barcelona City Council presented its model of civic management (gestió cívica), a policy approach through which civil society organisations are enabled to manage public facilities and services on behalf of the municipality, fostering community self-governance and citizen co-production. The session, facilitated by Ian Graham, examined the Community Balance Sheet (balanç comunitari) tool used to assess the social value generated, explored real-life implementation examples and discussed the conditions under which such models can be transferred to other contexts. The session generated further input for the Action 3 guidebook, which will incorporate the Barcelona case alongside those from Komotini, ANCT and Heerenveen.
Looking ahead
The final session addressed the question of the partnership's future beyond its formal end date of November 2026. Partners shared reflections on capacity, priorities and the formats of collaboration that are sustainable for different types of organisations. While the partnership reflects on how to continue advancing work on urban equality beyond November, the immediate focus will be on completing, publishing and disseminating the outputs of the three Actions, ensuring that the evidence, tools and recommendations produced reach the cities, managing authorities and policymakers who can put them to use.
Stakeholders interested in the partnership’s work are encouraged to follow its progress over the coming months, as the three Actions move towards their final outputs. Updates, publications and opportunities to engage with the partnership’s findings will be shared regularly through the partnership’s webpage.