REFLOW Handbook
  • REFLOW Handbook
  • About REFLOW
    • REFLOW’s ambition
  • About this Handbook
  • Steps towards a circular city
  • Policy Frameworks
    • Cities and Sustainability within EU policy-making
    • Cities and Circular Economy within EU policy-making
    • Cities and Circular Economy within the EU Urban Agenda
  • City models and urban governance
    • Smart Cities
      • Barcelona
      • Warsaw
    • Sharing Cities
      • Milan
    • Green Cities
      • Oslo
      • Copenhagen
    • City as Commons
      • Bologna
      • Ghent
    • Fab Cities
      • Paris
    • Circular Cities
      • Brussels
      • Amsterdam
      • Prato
  • Tools and methods for your pilot
    • REFLOW Collaborative Governance Approach
      • Strategic Infrastructuring
      • Operational Infrastructuring
      • Relational Infrastructuring
      • Key takeaways
    • Toolkits & Handbooks
      • Systemic Design Toolkit
      • Circular Design Guide
      • Make Works Handbook
      • Making Sense Toolkit
      • PSS Toolkit
      • Circular Economy Playbook
    • Other Resources
      • Circular Governance Studies and Reports
      • Fab Labs and Makerspaces
  • Bibliography
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Policy Frameworks

EU policy-making for urban areas

PreviousSteps towards a circular cityNextCities and Sustainability within EU policy-making

Last updated 5 years ago

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‘City authorities are at the forefront of societal change addressing both new challenges and new opportunities. Cities can boost innovation, embrace people from different backgrounds or with different lifestyles, and reduce our impact on the planet. To maximise this potential, however, policies at all levels of government need to consider the unique role of cities’ ().

Cities are increasingly recognized as the places where both problems and solutions to the grand challenges of the 21st century can be found. Two thirds of the European population live in urban areas, where major problems such as pollution and environmental deprivation, unemployment, poverty, segregation and exclusion are concentrated. And yet, as dense relational networks and complex systems of interaction, connection and transaction, cities are also major sources of innovation and growth, catalysing knowledge, energies and creativity from all walks of society and economy (Batty 2013; European Commission 2016; United Nations 2016).

This section provides an overview of EU policy-making in the field of sustainable urban development, and digs deeper into its relation to circular economy and the transition to circular cities.

European Union and UN-Habitat 2016