Regional integration makes cities stronger

Enhancing the mutually beneficial development of cities and their regions for the broader purposes of sustainability and justice can be activated by three groups of approaches and goals. The first is to enable dialogue and mutual learning between civil society, the scientific community and policy makers, paying close attention to the inclusion of diverse voices and of knowledge coming from experience. This can take place via Co-learning and knowledge brokerage, Multi-stakeholder partnership - policy, Data Collection, Pathways and scenarios. The second is to support and strengthen innovative governance processes that allow for effective and empowered participation by all stakeholders, for instance via Democratic innovation through recognition, Governance and participation processes or Participatory budgeting. Finally, the third is to ensure that the initiatives and policies that are shaping the territory and people’s mindsets and behaviours can engender learning in a systemic and integral way from interventions, namely in terms of their design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and adaptation. Some concrete approaches are Community gardens and food, Social food movements, Sustainable food supply chains, Nature-based solutions, Governance for urban climate mitigation and adaptation, and Regeneration of disused urban land. 

Developing a comprehensive vision of change that can include and integrate aspirations from the regional level down to the local and community level is crucial for achieving greater sustainability and justice. Such a vision needs to go beyond words and actually shape policies, urban planning and small-scale interventions. As such, its implementation needs to come along with capacity- and relationship-building processes to empower it. Building bridges between separate stakeholder groups and Committing to a meaningful participation process are two such governance arrangements. They enable communication and broker information between different stakeholders and within institutions (effectively breaking silos), building up trust, as well as furthering inclusive and decentralised democratic participation.

Seeing cities as interdependent and integrated members of a region addresses the lack of coordinated policy and effective decision-making by urban governance institutions at different scales (Unfit institutional structures (#6)). It also addresses the insufficient, ineffective and limited participation in urban development: Lack of effective knowledge brokerage and stewardship opportunities (#8) and Limited citizen participation in urban planning (#7)). Regional thinking can bring a deeper capacity to listening, planning, intervening and learning in a way that breaks the status quo in terms of both sustainability and justice, especially in regard to decision making for investments and the distribution of resource flows (Uneven and exclusionary urban intensification and regeneration (#4)).

• https://wiki.sustainablejustcities.eu/Limited_citizen_participation_in_urban_planning"Cities have a role to put inhabitants in direct contact with natural processes to foster care for nature and for each other (e.g. river, agroforestry, food production)"
• "Cities translate broad strategies (global, European, regional) into reality, yet these strategies are frequently decoupled from local realities and capacities."
• "Local voices are frequently excluded when it comes to making decisions on regional structures (such as managing natural resources or infrastructure) that influence life in their neighbourhoods."
• "Most people living in cities have a daily life that is somewhat separated from a direct and conscious experience of big issues like climate change, loss of biodiversity or hunger."