Joint programming for urban transformations: the making of the JPI Urban Europe Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda

The Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe, a transnational initiative by European countries in partnership with the European Union (EU) to tackle the challenge of sustainable urbanisation by programming urban research and innovation, launched its updated Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) in February 2019. Developed in the field of sustainable urbanisation, it is based on a wide set of sectors, disciplines, research frontiers, and their asymmetrical interconnections, as well as consultations among stakeholders in these areas, ranging from global policy and EU levels over national to regional and local actors including civil servants and politicians, researchers, commercial actors, civil society. Since the international landscape of urban policy and particularly urban transformations has recently been shifting with UN Agenda 2030, UN Habitat New Urban Agenda, and, in Europe, with an Urban Agenda for the EU, urban research and innovation, at least the parts tackling sustainable urbanisation, strives to elaborate how to support these objectives. Together with an account of how this was done from the insider perspective of a programme manager, this note presents questions and issues that will direct the JPI Urban Europe programming beyond 2020. The updated JPI Urban Europe agenda’s main novelty is a dilemma-driven approach to the thematic priorities in the programming activities and a transition arena concept for its implementation.