1-2 dicembre 2014 | Politecnico di Milano | Aula Magna

The European Conference on “Renaturing Cities: Systemic Urban Governance for Social Cohesion” is jointly organized by the European Commission – Directorate General for Research and Innovation -, the Municipality of Milan and the Scientific Committee for Milan EXPO 2015, under the auspices of the Italian Presidency of the Council of the EU.

The theme of this conference complements the one identified for the European Conference “Renaturing Cities: Addressing Environmental Challenges and the Effects of Economic Crisis Through Nature-Based Solutions”, held in Brussels on 13-14 May 2014 under the auspices of the Greek Presidency of the Council of the EU.

The main aim of the Conference is to inspire Research and Innovation policies on sustainable urban development by bringing together scientists, policy makers, the business sector and representatives of the civil society.

The conference will focus on multilevel governance for urban and peri-urban areas and highlight the relation between supranational, national and sub-national scales, as well as the interplay of actors within these scales.

In this respect, there is a need to pay more strategic attention to the complex interaction between the territory, economy, sovereignty and citizenship. Therefore, new instruments of urban governance based on a strong public-private partnership will be explored in order to facilitate the interplay between policy-making, market-driven actions and grassroots initiatives.

The Agenda of the Conference is structured in order to allow a fruitful exchange of experiences among different stakeholders on the link between renaturing cities, social cohesion, resilience, health and wellbeing both in urban and peri-urban areas.

In the context of Milan EXPO 2015, the conference will serve as showcase to demonstrate how Europe is leading the process of renaturing cities and how this European expertise could be up-taken at the international level.

The language of the Conference is English and Ania Rok, ICLEI, and two urban bloggers from the FP7 project ARTS (Accelerating and Rescaling Transition to Sustainability) will be responsible for twittering and blogging  during the conference

The participation is free, but registration is required.