City Science for Urban Challenges

Between January 2019 and July 2020, over 35 European cities formed the City Science Initiative (CSI) to explore how the science-policy interface operates in light of the emergent urban challenges and crises. It seems that the impact of current national and EU funded research funded programs needs to be enhanced for tackling cities urban challenges. This report aims to inspire people in municipalities, universities, networks, different layers of government and the European Commission to develop a variety of science-policy interfaces for handling of urban challenges in the near future. The CSI pilot collaboration has brought together European small, medium and large sized cities, different services of the European Commission, different networks of cities and funding programmes. The gathered City Science Officers reflected on what they need and exchanged current practice and insight. To bridge the existing gap between science and policy, new methodologies need to be developed in all phases of the research process. The report argues that design as a discipline can help to build bridges, solutions and communication strategies for such science-policy interfaces. The CSI concludes that the science-policy interface needs to improve significantly and soon. Cities are not rich and need to be efficient in how they develop policy for making people’s living environment healthy and safe. Collaboration between cities, facilitated by European institutions and networks, is crucial for handling urban challenges and unanticipated crises as also the COVID 19 pandemic indicates.