The European City as Driver of Change

ReUrba interview Danuta Hübner

19-08-2007 Stipo: Hans Karssenberg

As a grand finale to the European Thinkers on the future of the city, we spoke with Europe’s highest responsible for cities, EU commissioner Danuta Hübner. What is her vision on the future of cities? Does she support ReUrbA’s Statement for Strong Cities? And what will the EU invest into cities?

When we interview her, she is just back from a trip to Spain and Poland. Her first time in Brussels that week, and due to leave right after our interview. Nevertheless, she takes her time to talk about what she finds important when it comes to investing into cities.

Open our conversations

If Europe wants to be successful at all in the Lisbon Strategy (becoming a competitive knowledge based economy), then we should look at how and what we invest into cities, is how we open our conversation. Danuta Hübner sees cities as vital for shaping the future of Europe. She pleads for them to share their knowledge better.

“The most important challenge for all of us who care for cities, is to understand that there is a huge capital accumulated in Europe in the sense of success stories. I think that sharing with others, networking, opening yourselves to others, wanting to work with them – this is I think the most important challenge for all of us.”

She speaks out her support for what ReUrbA has done: not only share and develop knowledge between the five partners (Newcastle, London, Saarbruecken, Rotterdam and South-Holland), but also make that knowledge available for others with publications and digital learning environments about the methods gathered.

Intermezzo: ReUrbA’s Urban Conditions

1. Urban development = People. Urban development must focus on investing in people and then on investing in areas. It must always understand the undercurrents: the economic, cultural and social forces in and around the urban area.

2. Urban development = Stimulus. Urban development must facilitate dynamic social and economic networks, using cohesion and habitability as catalysts. It needs to tap into and activate urban potential, talents and energy.

3. Urban development = Smart Coalitions. Urban development needs to focus on smart coalitions of users and investors. It should create the conditions for quality and bring new inspiration. In that way, it brokers between stakeholders and links different scales of activity.

4. Urban development = Future. Urban development needs to focus on quality for now and for 30 years from now. New value-oriented investment strategies are needed. These strategies assume active steering and returns in the long term.

Cities as drivers for change and growth

She stresses the relation between cities and economy.

“Cities in Europe will be the major drivers for change and growth. If we are serious about innovation, we know this in fact that the place where it is born are the cities and their surrounding regions. Regions have to understand that without well-functioning cities, the regions will be weakened.”

Speaking of what the European Union could do to help make the right investments into cities, she brings about her new programmes such as JESSICA and JEREMY. She believes the EU was focussed too much for too long on agriculture. She believes a shift in European investments is necessary, and helped get more of the total budget focussed on urban development.

Danuta Hübner: “Privately speaking, I think we went too far with rural areas in terms of focussing on them as places we really have to help, otherwise we are going to be in trouble. We thought that cities should just function well by themselves. But if you want Europe to prosper, you cannot invest into agricultural areas only. I am happy that we managed to get 35% of the total budget to cities. Ten years ago, this was still 5%.”

Strong regions need strong cities, strong cities need strong regions

She stresses that it is not only about investments into cities, but also their surrounding regions. “The space outside cities should not just be treated by the city as a place where you go on Friday and you leave on Sunday night, because those people who live outside, they also have to live between Monday and Friday.” Strong regions need strong cities; strong cities need strong regions.

Next to the goals of the Lisbon and the Gotenborg Strategies, she sees more autonomous reasons for investing more into cities: “People are coming back to the centre, and they want to live in the centre. That brings also a new challenge, because you have to organise the city differently.”

People before physical investments

Danuta Hübner pleads for a shift in not only the amount that is invested into cities, but also the way investments are made. They should not be physical only, but social, cultural and economic too. “A huge challenge was illustrated by the 2005 events in France, and in new member states we can also see a lot of problems, which require a strong urban development, that should go beyond sheer regeneration.” She strongly supports the four ReUrbA strategies (#governance, demand oriented planning, creative densification and value oriented planning), and the #Statement for Strong Cities).

Coming from Poland herself, she finds it important to review the relation between the so-called ‘old’ and ‘new’ member states of the EU. “We should avoid this assumption – we should forget about this assumption that the new member states can only learn from the old. In my view, the learning should go both ways. Networks that work both ways is an important key for success of cities in the future.”

“Investing in cities and their regions is really an important priority for the future. We have to convince cities and regions of this.”

This publication was enabled by ReUrbA2, Provincie Zuid-Holland and the Interreg IIIB programme of the European Union:

This interview is part of a series of twelve, made by Mark Reede, Ellen Weerman, Simon Maas of ReUrbA and Hans Karssenberg of Stipo. They interviewed ten leading European thinkers avout cities to be able to write the Statement for Strong Cities, that was presented to the closing conference of ReUrbA and to Danuta Huebner, the EU commissioner for Regional Policy.

Downloads / links

ErasmusPC article on ReUrbA’s Statement for Strong Cities
Danuta Hübner EU Commission Website
View the compilation of quotes from the interviews on film
View EU commissioner Danuta Huebner’s welcoming response to the Statement for Strong Cities on film

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