WP1 Joint Policy Strategies
URBAN-EU-CHINA will create Joint Policy Strategies for EU-China cooperation on sustainable urbanisation. During the next three years we will develop a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda together with key urban stakeholders from cities, industry, science and civil society; better funding and innovation instruments for EU-China cooperation; and assess the added value of EU-China cooperation to create more sustainable cities across the globe.
Task 1.1 Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda
URBAN-EU-CHINA will create a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (RIA) with targets, pathways, scenarios, strategies and action plans for EU-CHINA cooperation activities on sustainable urbanisation in the short term (2020) as well as longer term (2030-2050). The Agenda will be developed based on interviews, workshops, surveys and other activities together with key urban stakeholders from EU and China. As an urban stakeholder, you are invited to contribute to the Agenda either through face-to-face interaction in one of our Events or online. Please read the R&I Agenda-01 here. RIA1 is a state of the art, RIA2 will be a pathway and available closer to the end of 2019.
Task 1.2 Alignment of Bilateral Funding and Cooperation Frameworks
URBAN-EU-CHINA will help make bilateral funding and cooperation instruments more accessible and predictable to urban stakeholders at national, transnational, regional and local levels. We will achieve this by developing a shared set of evaluation criteria for EU-China cooperation on sustainable urbanisation together with European and Chinese funding agencies, and by aligning the criteria with the targets, priorities and opportunities set by the Strategic R&I Agenda. This will include, amongst others, a mix of regulatory and financial instruments, living labs, pilots and technology developments. This work will support upcoming joint calls between EU and China on sustainable urbanisation, by the European Commission and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, by the JPI Urban Europe and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and others.
Task 1.3 Policy Areas for Cooperative Innovation
URBAN-EU-CHINA will organise two Industry Workshops (one in Europe, one in China) on key policy areas for cooperative innovation: Intellectual Property Rights (IPR); Technical Standards and Regulations; Public Market Access and Procurement; Reducing Transaction Costs for International STI Cooperation. We will invite experts in the four key policy areas to provide specific input on the four industry policy areas, and distribute the outcomes in reports and policy briefs to the relevant decision makers.
Task 1.4 Impact Assessment of the EU-China Innovation Platform
We will assess the short and mid-term impacts of our platform activities, in order to optimise the services and added value of URBAN-EU-CHINA. The impact assessment will address challenges such as city planning and network infrastructures, regulatory and funding strategies, public services and citizen well-being. The assessment will allow for fine-tuned planning of future events, match-making between cities and joint policy strategies, and will contribute to shape the Strategic R&I Agenda on EU-China sustainable organisation
WP2 Nursery of Joint Projects
URBAN-EU-CHINA will serve as a breeding ground for joint projects on sustainable urbanisation, between Europe and China. The innovation platform will create a more effective, productive, accessible and predictable stream of collaboration and innovation projects and initiatives, compared with the current manifold but fragmented landscape. It will create a critical mass of EU and Chinese cities cooperating with each other on urban innovation, sustainability and quality, and will monitor and document the cooperation processes and results to facilitate fast learning and a large experience base for replication towards other cities. The innovation platform will also test and validate new models for integrated value creation in governance, design, planning, management and investment.
Task 2.1 Benchmarking and Performance Monitoring
URBAN-EU-CHINA will create benchmarks and provide monitoring support for the matching of cities and demonstration projects, allowing for identification of and cooperation between cities with similar characteristics in Europe and in China. The platform will support the process of selecting and prioritizing indicators to benchmark and monitor the performance of matched cities. We will monitor the performance of the matched cities and feed the data back to the performance monitoring of and Strategic R&I Agenda for EU-China cooperation on sustainable urbanisation.
Task 2.2 Matching Cities
URBAN-EU-CHINA will identify good matches between sustainable urbanisation projects in European and Chinese cities, and promote joint activities based on the Strategic R&I Agenda. We will select, facilitate and document matching of 10 European and 10 Chinese cities in 2017, and scale up with an additional 10 cities per continent per year (i.e., 10+10 cities in 2017, 20+20 in 2018, and 30+30 in 2019). We will develop selection criteria to identify cities in Europe and China that are potentially suitable for the implementation and demonstration of good practice collaboration activities. We will support the matched cities in signing a Cooperation Plan and to include their industries and research partners in the cooperation with successful models for triple helix cooperation. URBAN-EU-CHINA will also support peer-to-peer learning, throug activities such as study visits, workshops, webinars and practice examples. These experiences will contribute to create an Evidence Base of good practices, challenges and potential solutions for EU-China cooperation on sustainable urbanisation.
Task 2.3 Competition on demonstration projects and network infrastructures
URBAN-EU-CHINA will run a competition to identify the 2-4 most comprehensive and ambitious joint EU-China demonstration projects on sustainable urbanisation among the cities participating in Task 2.2. The selected demonstration projects will need to encompass network infrastructures and sustainable urbanisation concepts as well as public-private partnerships enabling cross-sectoral cooperation and co-investment, and will be selected in close consultation with the European Commission, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, and Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe. The selected demonstration projects will be monitored in detail, and will receive support to identify potential funding streams for their implementation. We will organise awards ceremonies for the best perfoming projects, and gather them in attractive brochures to raise awareness of these initiatives among policy makers, funding agencies, companies and researchers. We will produce a guidance document, including advice and support on EU and Chinese policies, financial structures, network infrastructures and other conditions to advance and scale up further EU-China demonstration projects, as input to the Strategic R&I Agenda.
WP3 Knowledge Exchange and Brokerage of City-Science-Industry Partnerships
URBAN-EU-CHINA will promote virtual and face-to-face brokerage activities of city-industry-science partnerships. The aim of the activities is:
- to lower the threshold for new as well as experienced stakeholders to get engaged,
- to promote more extensive involvement of stakeholders from cities and regions, research, industry and civil society in EU-China cooperation on sustainable urbanisation,
- to support «triple helix» models for cooperation.
Task 3.1 Evidence Base, Website and Social Media
The URBAN-EU-CHINA project website will be central for disseminating information on events, showcases and matchmaking activities. It will be available in English and Chinese language. Furthermore, it the website will include a section dedicated to spread information on activities, projects and the interests of urban stakeholders in the EU and in China.
Additionally, several social media channels (as Twitter, Weibo and WeChat) will be used for sharing relevant information on URBAN-EU-CHINA and other news on EU-China collaboration on sustainable urbanisation and to engage interactively with stakeholders in English and Chinese.
Newsletters will be sent out on regular basis for informing the URBAN-EU-CHINA community about the current developments within the projects and for distributing other relevant thematic news. You can subscribe for receiving the newsletters here: URBAN-EU-CHINA Newsletter
Task 3.2 URBAN-EU-CHINA Events
URBAN-EU-CHINA will host, co-organise and/or be represented at all high-level events and workshops related to EU-China cooperation on sustainable urbanisation. We will organise 2 event clusters per year (1/year in Europe, 1/year in China) during which we hold our consortium, Management Board and Advisory Board meetings as well as workshops for urban authorities, industries, and research and innovation stakeholders.
Task 3.3 Strategic Cooperation Group within the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities
URBAN-EU-CHINA aims to create a strategic cooperation group with the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP SCC), to facilitate international science and industry partnerships between China and the EU. The strategic cooperation group will engage with EIP SCC members that are interested or experienced in sustainable urbanisation cooperation with China. We will organise workshops with the strategic cooperation group during EIP events to discuss URBAN-EU-CHINA results, to identify potential participants to matching cities and demonstration projects, and to help identify good practice guidelines and criteria for scaling-up of successful demonstration projects, for different scales and types of projects. We will align at least one URBAN-EU-CHINA Event Cluster with an EIP SCC General Assembly meeting in Europe. As part of the Event Cluster, we will organise a parallel event with the EIP SCC with participation of the Chinese Consortium Partners and Advisory Board members, and other interested cities, investors, industry and research stakeholders.
WP4 Platform Management and Coordination
URBAN-EU-CHINA will work with its partners, Advisory Board and Stakeholders to guarantee that the platform achieves high quality results, within the planned time and the allocated budget, and to ensure smooth communication between the consortium partners and the European Commission, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, the Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe, and with other relevant clusters and initiatives.
Task 4.1 Legal, Financial, Administrative and Risk Management
URBAN-EU-CHINA will set up and guarantee the contractual, financial and administrative consortium management, including a Management and Coordination Plan, a Data Management Plan, and a Risk Management and Contingency Plan.
Task 4.2 Platform Coordination and Quality Management
URBAN-EU-CHINA will hold consortium meetings, Advisory Board and Management Board meetings, coordinate their activities with the European Project Officer, EU Delegation to China and Mongolia, and cooperate with relevant initiatives to exchange good practice.
