Author: pal.aune

In a recent article by Mark Wessel published on Impakter.com, the collaboration between the 11 cities that form the pilot group Urban Transitions Alliance is presented and discussed.

The four U.S. cities Baltimore, Buffalo, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, three German cities Dortmund, Essen and Gelsenkirchen, the Polish city Katowice and the three Chinese urban districts of E-Town and Huairou in the City of Beijing and Yuhua in the City of Shijiazhuan, have worked together for the past two years to tackle common challenges such as environmental degradation, unemployment and social inequality.

The eight European and U.S. participants in the Alliance are medium-sized, post-industrial cities, struggling with a wide range of challenges such as infrastructure reuse and rehabilitation, eco-energy transformation, the adoption of environmental mobility solutions and social inclusion. The Chinese districts in the Alliance are still heavily involved in the industrial sector, but are hoping to learn from how their European and U.S. counterparts have been and are coping with the challenge of transitioning from an industrial legacy in a responsible way.

The Urban Transitions Alliance is under the auspices of the 1,750 member ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability.

For the original article, please click here

The event addresses companies as well as representatives from the realms of research, politics and administration working in partnership with China. It aims to provide information, impulses and assessments from both a scientific and practical perspective and to establish a platform for discussion based on economic expertise.

Please see the invitation flyer for the event programme and further information on the speakers.

Participation is by invitation only. If you are interested in attending the event, please contact us at event@zew.de.

The Joint Declaration on the EU-China Partnership on Urbanisation signed by the EU and Chinese leaders in 2012 opened a new chapter for the EU-China urbanisation cooperation. Since then the two sides have witnessed wider, deeper and more practical cooperation. To expand and deepen such urbanisation cooperation, under the guidance of the National Development and Reform Commission of the P.R. China (NDRC), China Center of Urban Development (CCUD) is scheduled to organize the fifth EU-China Forum on Sustainable Urban Development & EU-China Intelligent Technology Innovation Summit in Tianjin on May 17^th, 2019. The Forum theme is Intelligent Economy Leads Urban Development.

This Forum will invite European and Chinese city representatives, experts, high-tech and corporate leaders to discuss and exchange ideas around urban development of scientific research and innovative industry. It aims to serve as an EU-China cooperation platform in order to match practical cooperation projects, further develop Tianjin Advanced Manufacturing Industrial Park, and promote the implementation of the Horizon 2020 projects for the sake of urban sustainability and common prosperity in both the EU and China.

Theme: Urban Development Powered by the Intelligent Economy

Organizers: China Center for Urban Development
Government of Binhai New Area, Tianjin
Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe
EUROCITIES
In Cooperation with: Directorate-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission
Organized by: Tianjin Port Free Trade Zone Administrative Committee
Special support: Delegation of the European Union to China
Horizon 2020 Urban-EU-China Innovation Platform on Sustainable Urbanisation
European Union Chamber of Commerce in China
Sino-Swedish Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre

May 16, Thursday 

09:00-20:00 Check-in

May 17, Friday 

08:00-08:45 Check-in

Main Forum

09:00 – 09:20 Opening Ceremony

Welcoming Remarks

09:20-09:50 Themed Speech: Digital Economy and High Quality Development

09:50-09:57 An Introduction to Tianjin EU-China Advanced Manufacturing
Industrial Park

09:57-10:05 An Introduction to EU-China Urban Research and Innovation Lab

10:05-10:15 Signing and Release Ceremony

10:15-11:15 Keynote Speech: Urban Development Powered by the Intelligent Economy

Topic Description

The main tasks for the development of China in the current stage are the
cultivation of Artificial Intelligence enterprises and industries with the
potential to lead and drive results, and the establishment of a data-driven and
cross-field intelligent economy that is built upon the coordination between
human and machine, and that promotes the joint creation and sharing of
results. Achieving an intelligent economy will create a huge impetus for the
sustainable development of cities, which will mainly manifest in the
improvements in ecological environment, public safety, public services,
social governance and etc. as a result of the application of Artificial
Intelligence.

11:15-12:15 High-level Dialogue: Industrial Innovation and
Urban Development

Topic Description

High-quality urban development is dependent upon industrial innovation.
Industrial innovation could help resolve the current issue of China’s
unsustainable traditional mode of urban development, promote the
transformation of the country’s urban development model, and facilitate the
implementation of its New-type Urbanisation Plan. The key to achieving
industrial innovation is the development of emerging industries. The guests
will seek to explore the relationship between scientific innovation and urban
development from the perspectives of Internet technology industry, new energy automobiles, artificial intelligence, etc.

12:15-13:30 Lunch

Parallel Event 1: EU-China Seminar on Sustainable Development

13:30-15:00 Topic 1: Construction of Resilient Cities in the EU and China

Topic Description

Resilient Cities are a new concept of urban development proposed by the
international community aimed at coping with various natural disasters and social
crises, and are very much aligned with the requirements of green development as
spelled out in China’s New-type Urbanisation Plan. The expansion of the Resilient
Cities initiative will improve the quality of Urbanisation, accelerate internally oriented development in the process of Urbanisation, and strengthen cities’
resilience to a host of externalities in order for them to achieve self-restoration and
stress management. In the field of research concerning Resilient Cities, foreign
experts have made tremendous achievements from theoretical research to concrete
practices. The concept of Resilient Cities has begun to take root in all levels of
urban planning and implementation. Guests are invited to share the achievements
and experiences regarding the construction of Resilient Cities in their fields of
research.
The following are the questions to be discussed in the dialogue:
Focusing on Scientific Research and Industry
1. Earthquake Prevention and Urban Construction Guest: Tsinghua University Lu
Yuanzheng
2. Technology and Urban Management
3. Internet Technology and Urban Governance with Public Participation
4. Incubation Model of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Urban Industrial
Development

15:00-17:00 Topic 2: The Future of EU-China Smart Cities

Topic Description

Smart cities constitute a special path for the transformation of the model of
Urbanisation. Given the complex nature of urban development, recognizing the
importance of smart cities to urban transformation is critical to the future
development of our sustainable cities. The theme of this discussion will highlight
the efforts of China and Europe in developing smart cities, and seeks to raise
broader discussions about the transition of cities to a more sustainable and livable
future. In addition, the experts will also discuss specific implementation initiatives,
research and innovation requirements, and new operational methods in the panel
discussions.

Parallel Event 2: EU-China City-Industry Partnership Seminar
Venue: (TBD)

Format and Objective
The seminar is divided into three segments: speech by officials, release of business environment manual, and city-industry dialogue.
Chinese cities (such as representatives of municipal governments, local Development and Reform Commissions and Investment Promotion Bureaus) and European enterprises operating in China are invited to participate in the event in a bid to jump-start discussions between the two on the topic of business environment in China through the release of the Manual on the Business Environment of EU-China Advanced Manufacturing Park in Tianjin and Policies Research Report.

14:00-14:05 Moderator: Liu Yue, Director of the International Cooperation Department of the China Center for Urban Development

14:05-14:20 Welcoming Remarks (CCUD, EUCCC, Tianjin)

14:20-15:00 Release of the Manual on Business Environment in Tianjin (CCUD, EUCCC)

15:00-16:30 City-Enterprise Dialogue (10 guests, 10 minutes of statement for each）

Range of Enterprises Invited (draft):

1. France: space and aeronautics industry, pharmaceutical industry, automobile industry, telecommunications and information and communications technology industry;
2. Germany: automobile and its supporting industries, electronic and electrical equipment industry, chemical engineering and pharmaceutical industry, space and aeronautics industry, information and communications technology industry;
3. Finland: information and communication technology industry, metal, machinery and chemical industry, energy and environment industry;
4. Netherlands: food and beverage industry, chemical engineering industry, electrical and electronics industry, mechanical manufacturing industry;
5. Norway: information and communications technology industry, environmental protection industry;
6. Denmark: shipping industry, pharmaceutical industry, energy saving and environmental protection industry;
7. Switzerland: mechanical, electronic and metal industry, pharmaceutical and chemical engineering industry.

 

Seminar on the Construction of China-EU Urban
Research and Innovation Lab in Tianjin

Time: May 18^th 08:00-12:00

Guests invited: Sustainable Urbanisation Project teams of Horizon 2020 (URBAN-EU-CHINA and TRANS-URBAN-EU-CHINA), CCUD, Delegation of the European Union to China, Science and Technology Committee of Tianjin Binhai New Area, Science and Technology Commission of Tianjin, Tianjin Free Trade Zone Administrative Committee (Urban Environment Administration Bureau, High Technology Development Bureau, Science, Technology and Industrial Innovation Bureau, and Center of Entrepreneurship and Innovation)

Objective: Experts of Project teams will carry out comprehensive communication with Tianjin Free Trade Zone Administrative Committee, representatives of communities and representatives of enterprises in FTZ in order to design the future laboratory with a thorough understanding of the current situation of communities in the Tianjin FTZ and the needs of its stakeholders.

08:00-08:40 Visit Laboratory

09:00-12:00 Workshop //

The R&I Agenda was developed with input from Chinese and European urban stakeholders from public and private sector, academia and civil society. Here is a sneak peek, in which we recommend that Europe and China cooperate towards:

Cities of People & Culture: Joint measures for people-centred cities and communities, with cooperation mechanisms to support mutual learning of the important experiences made in practice.

Green Cities: Comprehensive and integrated approaches to create green cities and communities, with an integrated approach including environmental, technological, regulatory, social, cultural, economic, spatial and other perspectives.

Smart & Innovative Cities: Successful approaches for smart, innovative cities and communities, better and faster. Digital innovation in public sector, participatory approaches and public-private partnerships are needed for cities and communities to develop better urban services and infrastructures, de-risk, become more adaptive to external change and alleviate policy implementation bottlenecks. In short, to deal with any future challenges.

Cooperative Innovation: City-to-city partnerships, in particular larger scale clustering mechanisms at city and regional level that include increased cooperative innovation between companies, public sector, research and capacity building. In addition to individual city and regional cooperation, we recommend that China consider providing a funding mechanism similar to the European H2020 SCC01 lighthouse projects, and enabling the CFM to support joint calls for Chinese and European city-industry-research clusters, for knowledge exchange and cooperation with the Chinese New Areas and similar strategic urban projects.

The second high-level 2018 China-EU Conference on Sustainable Urbanisation was successfully concluded in Beijing on 12 December 2018. It was the second conference of its kind since the inaugural event was held last year.

The Conference was organized by CAUPD, supported by Urban Planning Society of China (UPSC), URBAN-EU-CHINA and TRANS-URBAN-EU-CHINA projects, with special support from Delegation of the European Union to China.

At the opening remarks, Huang Yan said that China’s urbanisation rate has jumped over the last 50 years from less than 30 percent to almost 60 percent, with millions of farmers migrating to cities. She also noted that European countries boast long histories of urbanization, and have in place many practices that China is eager to learn, especially policies on green, effective and sustainable urbanization.

“During this period, China has accumulated much experience and learned many lessons. Both China and EU countries face the challenges of tackling global warming, natural disasters and developing clean energies. The task cannot be accomplished by a single country or region. Instead we need to unite as one to reinforce sustainable development ” she said.

At the keynote speech session, Mr. Jean-Eric Paquet, Director-General of Directorate-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission, Mrs. Annemie Wyckmans, Project coordinator and Professor of Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Mrs. Liu Chang, Project coordinator of Chines side and Chief scientist of CAUPD, Mr. Xu Hui, Deputy Director of the Academic Information Center (Innovation Center) of CAUPD, delivered speeches on the topic of “Urban development in the EU and cooperation with China”.

China is in the processes of establishing the Xiong’an New Area and the focus of this conference was on this initiative. The construction of the Xiongan New Area is of national significance and will support similar initiatives planned for the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, and the Shanghai Pudong New Area. CAUPD is responsible for developing the Master Plan for Xiong’an New Area and is working on designing the digital planning platform for Xiong’an New Area. With a theme of Digital Xiong’an, Empowering the Future, the conference aims to build on and continue the previous achievements of the EU-China Urbanisation Partnership, which has been agreed in May 2012 by President Barroso and Premier Li Keqiang.

The Joint Declaration on the EU-China Partnership on Urbanisation signed by the EU and Chinese leaders in 2012 opened a new chapter for the EU-China urbanisation cooperation. In the past six years, the two sides have witnessed wider, deeper and more practical cooperation. To expand and deepen such cooperation on urbanisation, and under the guidance of the National Development and Reform Commission of the P.R. China, China Center of Urban Development (CCUD) of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is scheduled to organize the fifth EU-China Sustainable Urban Development & Tech Innovation Industry Forum in Tianjin on May 17th, 2019. The event will be held concurrently with the 3rd World Intelligence Conference (Tianjin). Tianjin was awarded “EU-China Urban Research and Innovation Lab” by “Horizon 2020” project team (Grant agreement No.770141) in 2018.

This Forum will invite European and Chinese city representatives, experts, high-tech corporate leaders and media elites to discuss and exchange ideas around urban sustainable development, technological innovation, smart cities and other topics. It aims to match practical cooperation projects, promote the construction of China-Europe Industrial Parks, establish a platform for China-EU cooperation, and implement the “Horizon 2020” projects for the sake of urban sustainability and common prosperity in both EU and China.

On December 12, 2018, the “Horizon 2020” Urban-EU-China Innovation Platform on Sustainable Urbanization Award Ceremony was held in Beijing, co-hosted by the Urban-EU-China Innovation Platform Project Group, China Center for Urban Development and the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Director-General of Research and high-level representatives of the EU delegation attended the event and witnessed the awards ceremony. Among the 20 pairs of city project collected by the Urban-EU-China Innovation Platform, Wuhan-Manchester Partnership City Project stands out as the first and only pair of cities which win the China-EU Urban Innovation Award for its long-term and solid cooperation on sustainable urbanization.

In September 2016, the China Center for Urban Development, as the secretariat of the China-Eu urbanization partnership, jointly won the bid of “Horizon 2020” Urban-EU-China Innovation Platform on Sustainable Urbanization with 11 other Chinese and European research institutions. The platform will include policy strategies, city projects and stakeholder engagement to address common challenges and possible solutions that may be applied in both EU and China. With the Urban-EU-China Platform, the China Center for Urban Development is mainly in charge of the work including promoting practical cooperation between cities and summarizing classic urban cases.

In the past two years, the project group of the Urban-EU-China Innovation Platform has been committed to improving the EU-China urban cooperation mechanism, assisting in the establishment of the EU-China urban pilot project, strengthening the partnership between cities, enterprises and academia, and elaborately collecting outstanding cases of urban cooperation. Based on the comprehensive evaluation of a large number of China-EU partnership cities, Wuhan and Manchester, two pilot cities for the cooperation between China and Europe, were selected as the final winners.

Meanwhile, the project group of the EU-China Innovation Platform announced at the ceremony that, in order to continuously deepen the cooperation between Chinese and EU cities, the project team plans to annually hold the awarding ceremony of relevant awards. From 2019, China and Europe will recruit pairing cities into the project platform, and select pilot cities among them.

Wuhan, China – Manchester, United Kingdom Partnership Cities gathered in Beijing

Representatives from Wuhan and Manchester also attended the ceremony and gave acceptance speeches, sharing their experience and achievements in China-EU cooperation.

Wuhan and Manchester have formed City partnership since 1986. Over the past 30 years and more, the two sides have exchanged representative offices and conducted close exchanges and cooperation in economy, trade, science, technology and culture, with fruitful results achieved. The exchanges between Wuhan and Manchester have become a model of close ties between our two pair city partnership.

Manchester is a metropolitan borough of greater Manchester County in northwest England. It covers an area of 116 square kilometers and has a population of about 440,000. The region was once the cradle of the industrial revolution, dominated by tertiary industries such as financial services, business services and cultural and creative industries.

Meanwhile, as one of the “new first-tier” cities in China, Wuhan is playing an increasingly important role in China’s development, and its economic aggregate is constantly rising. It has been the only city that won the national “urban innovation award” and ranked top at the list of ten happiest cities in China in 2017.

The location and industrial types of the two cities are highly compatible. In 1986, the partnership agreement signed by the two cities first proposed to promote the economic development of the two cities based on trade and higher education cooperation, which was unique in the context of political and cultural exchanges dominated by other city partnership agreements at that time, and was regarded as the best practice with demonstration effect. In the 1990s, Manchester was invited to the European congress in Lyon to introduce other European cities with the experience of building partner relationship

For 30 years, Wuhan and Manchester have experienced tremendous social changes. In the future, the two sides will further strengthen exchanges and cooperation on how to cope with external impacts, such as climate change, reducing pollution, enhancing connectivity, developing the economy, improving people’s livelihood and providing quality medical care.

 

Background Reading:

In 2012, Chinese and EU leaders signed the Joint Declaration on the China-EU Partnership on Urbanization. Together, China and Europe agreed to strengthen interaction and cooperation, jointly seize the opportunities and cope with the challenges of future and strive to achieve win-win results. As the Chinese secretariat of Chin-EU Partnership on Urbanization, China Center for Urban Development earnestly implement Joint Declaration on the China-EU Partnership on Urbanization under the guidance of the National Development and Reform Commission. It actively promoted the pragmatic cooperation between central cities, established platforms for China-EU culture exchange, summarized city development experience and classic cases. It has successfully held EU-China Exhibition on Urban Development, 2016 Signing Ceremony of Cooperation Projects under the EU-China Urbanization Partnership, and APEC High-level Forum on Urbanization. Under the guidance of the National Development and Reform Commission, it has hosted “China High-level International Forum on Urbanization”, “International High-level Forum on Sustainable Urban Development”, “Urban-China-EU Sustainable development Forum” and other brands of international Forum and Expo.

As always, there are many upcoming conferences, forums, workshops and other events related to sustainable urbanisation and smart cities this spring, please check out our EVENTS calendar on the right side of the page, or our Events page for a full overview.