Greening Cities

The Ex-Ante Assessment concluded that there is a good opportunity for launching a Greening Cities Thematic Partnership with a focus on green and blue infrastructure in an urban context and with extensive links to a number of priority sectors, namely the built environment, sustainable transport, water management and urban agriculture. The Partnership was deemed to have high relevance to meet urban challenges and the needs of cities of all sizes, including small and medium sized cities with regards to biodiversity preservation and adaptation to climate change. Furthermore, it is aligned with the objectives of cities to increase well-being of citizens through cleaner air, better inclusiveness and more aesthetic environments.

The new Partnership is in line with numerous global (a number of SDGs) and EU policy agendas such as the Biodiversity Strategy, the Green Infrastructure Strategy, the Climate Adaptation Strategy, the New European Bauhaus Initiative, etc. It is also coherent with a number of other EU initiatives, which represents potential for cross-fertilisation and exchange at policy level. The new Thematic Partnership is building on and complementing the results of the previous Thematic Partnerships on Sustainable use of land and nature-based solutions, Air quality and Climate adaptation, as well as on the knowledge generated on green and blue infrastructure.

The Partnership leans on the key pillars of the Urban Agenda for the EU, namely better knowledge, better regulation and better funding. In terms of better knowledge, while a solid base already exists, the access to knowledge is unequal and significant improvements are possible for the deployment of concrete green and blue infrastructure solutions at city level, following tested methodologies. Concerning better regulation, the Partnership could provide feedback to the European Commission with the objective of strengthening the urban dimension of upcoming EU policies and better integrating green and blue infrastructure (GI) in other sectoral policies. The Partnership could also support cities to better implement relevant EU policies and also better integrate GI into national, local and regional voluntary and mandatory planning documents. In terms of better funding, the Partnership could develop new knowledge and strategies for increasing absorption of funding for GI in an integrated manner. Cities could also be supported in greening their budgets. On one hand, this could be beneficial for the members and other cities across Europe, while it could also feed into the European Commission’s process of tailoring different financial instruments through place-based approaches, sensible to the needs of cities of different sizes.

The proposed subthemes relevant to Greening cities are presented in Table 1, which also gives an overview of the state of play and thematic bottlenecks pertinent to each subtheme and links to EU policy frameworks.

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