City Diplomacy [1st ed.] 9783030607166, 9783030607173

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-viii
City Diplomacy: A Strategic Choice (Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi)....Pages 1-35
The Historical, Legal, and Geographic Evolution of City Diplomacy (Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi)....Pages 37-51
Decentralized Cooperation (Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi)....Pages 53-67
City Diplomacy for Peace (Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi)....Pages 69-82
Economic City Diplomacy (Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi)....Pages 83-95
Smart City Diplomacy (Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi)....Pages 97-109
Environmental City Diplomacy (Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi)....Pages 111-122
Cultural City Diplomacy (Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi)....Pages 123-136
City Diplomacy and Migration (Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi)....Pages 137-150
Back Matter ....Pages 151-177

Citation preview

CITIES AND THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF THE ENVIRONMENT SERIES EDITORS: MICHELE ACUTO ELIZABETH RAPOPORT · JOANA SETZER

City Diplomacy Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi

Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment

Series Editors Michele Acuto School of Design University of Melbourne London, UK Elizabeth Rapoport Urban Land Institute London, UK Joana Setzer Grantham Research Institute London School of Economics and Political London, UK

More than half of humanity lives in cities, and by 2050 this might extend to three quarters of the world’s population. Cities now have an undeniable impact on world affairs: they constitute the hinges of the global economy, global information flows, and worldwide mobility of goods and people. Yet they also represent a formidable challenge for the 21st Century. Cities are core drivers not only of this momentous urbanisation, but also have a key impact on the environment, human security and the economy. Building on the Palgrave Pivot initiative, this series aims at capturing these pivotal implications with a particular attention to the impact of cities on global environmental politics, and with a distinctive cross-disciplinary appeal that seeks to bridge urban studies, international relations, and global governance. In particular, the series explores three themes: 1) What is the impact of cities on the global politics of the environment? 2) To what extent can there be talk of an emerging ‘global urban’ as a set of shared characteristics that link up cities worldwide? 3) How do new modes of thinking through the global environmental influence of cities help us to open up traditional frames for urban and international research?

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14897

Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi

City Diplomacy

Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) Paris, France

Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment ISBN 978-3-030-60716-6 ISBN 978-3-030-60717-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This book originates from the city diplomacy courses I have been teaching at Sciences Po since 2016 and at the École Polytechnique since 2019. I wish to thank the two universities for the opportunity to introduce such a new discipline in their world-renowned curricula on international relations and urban studies, respectively. Moreover, this book owns a debt of gratitude to my students in both universities, whose active participation, questions and remarks have contributed to the success of my teaching and, hitherto, this book. I am very thankful to many practitioners of city diplomacy with whom I have had the pleasure to discuss the framework of the research for this book. I would like to thank in particular: Gudrun Niedorf and Marc Kiwitt from the European Committee of the Regions; Emmanuelle Pinault of C40; Mauricio Rodas of U20; Monica Dragone, Silvia La Ferla, Gianfranco Commodaro and Andrea Magarini of the Municipality of Milan; Ivana D’Alessandro of the Council of Europe’s Intercultural Cities; Simina Lazar of ASToN; Marco Minicucci and Alessandro Carlini of Milano & Partners; Patrizianna Sparacino-Thiellay of the City of Paris; Sufian Mushasha of UNDP; Camille Benoist of Délice Network; Pierre Baillet of Association Internationale des Maires Francophones (AIMF); Sanne van Amerongen of VNG International; Simone d’Antonio of Associazione Nazionale Comuni Italiani (ANCI); Karin Tingstedt of the City of Malmö; Kim Spiegelberg Stelzer of the City of Copenhagen, Miriam Zamparella of the City of Florence, Natalia Boitot of the City of Warsaw. v

vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Finally, I would like to thank Giuliano Pisapia, former mayor of Milan (2011–2016) and my former boss, for his inspiring leadership in combining universal values and local interests in a bold city diplomacy strategy.

Contents

1

1

City Diplomacy: A Strategic Choice

2

The Historical, Legal, and Geographic Evolution of City Diplomacy

37

3

Decentralized Cooperation

53

4

City Diplomacy for Peace

69

5

Economic City Diplomacy

83

6

Smart City Diplomacy

97

7

Environmental City Diplomacy

111

8

Cultural City Diplomacy

123

9

City Diplomacy and Migration

137

vii

viii

CONTENTS

Afterword

151

Bibliography

153

Index

171

CHAPTER 1

City Diplomacy: A Strategic Choice

Abstract This chapter aims to introduce city diplomacy as both a practice and a field of research. After having described the purpose and structure of the book, it will provide a definition of the city, and an overview of the main goals motivating its international action. It will then present the tools through which city diplomacy is practiced, namely bilateral agreements, networks, projects, events, and advocacy campaigns. Finally, it will present the core components of a city’s international strategy, taking into due consideration its preconditions and the main challenges in its implementation. Keywords City · Global city · City diplomacy · Twinning agreement · Cooperation agreement · City network · International advocacy · City diplomat · Mayor

Introduction After having spent centuries at the margins of international relations, cities appear today among the protagonists of world politics. What happened? Across the world, cities have created new spaces for their international action, partially subverting the traditional hierarchies and sometimes

© The Author(s) 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3_1

1

2

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

going as far as building international city coalitions to vocally oppose the foreign policy of nations. Such fast-paced evolution appears primarily due to the participatory and impact-driven connection between local and global that many cities across the world have built. As it will be duly analyzed in the book, cities have perfectioned the practice of addressing transnational issues such as climate change, urbanization, mobility, migration, violent extremism and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, by building horizontal partnerships with their peers across the world and fueling them by means of vertical partnerships with their residents and local stakeholders. Thanks to such an approach, city diplomacy has grown to represent a multilateral, participatory practice (mainly) aiming at building a brighter future for all. Nevertheless, this perception, often bordering to a “romancing” of the international action of cities—most visible in relation to ecological challenges (Teles 2016, 69)—hides an ampler, manifold practice. In fact, city diplomacy includes an extensive set of municipality-led bilateral and multilateral interactions with foreign actors—mainly other cities, city networks, and international organizations—in order to advance an international agenda inspired by local values and interests. As such, city diplomacy represents a practice and a research topic at the crossroads of local and international affairs. Hence, it is not surprising that most of the available publications on city diplomacy focus either on municipal planning and management (mainly prescriptive reports by cities, city networks, and international organizations) or on its impact on international relations and world politics (scholarly analyses, often featuring a descriptive, comparative perspective). As a result, a hiatus between practice and research has emerged. The aim of this book consists of offering practitioners, scholars, and students alike a clear, cross-cutting analysis of city diplomacy’s value, scope, impact, and challenges across the world. By combining extant research with practical reasoning, this publication aims at representing a handbook to support city diplomats’ daily duties, while providing scholars and students with a comprehensive overview of the multi-faceted international action of cities. As its guiding principle, the book will follow cities’ agency in international relations, a topic that will be addressed from three different but coexistent perspectives:

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

3

I. An international perspective, by focusing on a variety of global governance issues (climate change, migration, creativity, diversity, security, global economy, digital transformation, transportation, etc.); II. A national perspective, taking into consideration interactions between national and city diplomacies; III. A local perspective, focusing on the urban impact of international activities (exchange of best practices, introduction of pilot projects) as well as on the role of local actors in the design and implementation of city diplomacy, namely through co-creation, participatory approaches.

Structure of the Book The book consists of 9 chapters and an afterword. This first chapter will lie the ground of the discipline of city diplomacy by presenting its core protagonist—the city—as well as the components of successful city diplomacy strategies. The second chapter will present the origins and evolution of city diplomacy through the lenses of its relationship with the other actors of international relations, namely the state, international organizations, and NGOs. The book will then delve into the specificities of the seven main dimensions of city diplomacy (development cooperation, peace and reconciliation, economy, innovation, environment, culture, and migration). For each dimension, the book will offer an overview of the scope and challenges, mapping the actors involved and their interactions, and evaluating available tools. Each chapter will include the analysis of a selection of best practices, as well as a focus on the impact of COVID-19, offering a perspective on the possible evolution of the discipline over the next few years.

Defining the City A key methodological challenge for this handbook lies in the diversity enclosed in the term “city,” both in its political meaning of local administration and in its spatial one of an urban area. This duality calls for a comprehensive definition of both dimensions.

4

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

City as a government: across the world, city governments are the public, subnational body responsible for the governance of an urban territory. Their internal organization varies a lot across the world, but it usually features an executive branch—headed by the mayor—a political assembly—the council—and a permanent staff. As a result of the global trend of decentralization (see below), most mayors and city councilors are elected by residents and no more appointed by the central governments. Most city governments worldwide are in charge of providing a similar set of public services to their local communities, such as public housing, lighting, waste management, public transportation, and the management of public spaces and parks. These shared tasks explain the widespread practice of city-to-city knowledge exchange and peer-learning in each of the seven main dimensions of city diplomacy. City as a territory: this book will define cities according to their administrative boundaries—an area often defined as “city proper.” This choice does not intend to disregard the socioeconomic relevance of larger functional areas. Nevertheless, such areas are not actors of international relations unless governed by a second-tier administration (e.g., a county/province/metropolis) able to act internationally. In terms of size, the book will adopt the following population thresholds, which consider the diversity of the urban phenomenon across the world: • Small city—urban areas with a population ranging from the (varying) national minimum threshold between village and city, and up to 50,000 inhabitants; • Intermediary city, featuring a population between 50,000 and one million inhabitants. The term is generally preferred to that of the medium or secondary city by city networks such as UCLG (United Cities and Local Governments 2014) and by international organizations such as UNESCO (UNESCO Chair on Intermediary Cities, Urbanization and Development at the University of Lleida in Spain), in order to highlight its role in connecting rural and urban areas; • Large city: more than 1 million inhabitants (sometimes called megacities, for agglomeration of more than 10 million inhabitants).1 1 With regards to the issue of functional areas, increased integration between metropolitan regions led Gottmann to identify, in a study on the Washington-Boston corridor published in 1957, the megalopolis, later named by other authors as megaregion

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

5

The term metropolis, used across the world with different meanings, is intended in this book as the local government whose administrative boundaries comprise a center city and a series of surrounding smaller municipalities (in accordance with the use of the term in countries such as France and Italy). In such a definition of metropolises, constituent city governments maintain a part of their competencies, among which international affairs are often included. The coexistence of international capabilities between metropolitan and municipal governments might in fact create some confusion and discrepancies in terms of international action2 (Kihlgren Grandi 2020, 23–24). Alongside these administrative/size-based definitions of cities, one of qualitative nature is often used in relation to city diplomacy: the global city. This term is generally used to refer to a city playing a fundamental role in the global economy. Coined by Dutch-American sociologist Saskia Sassen, global cities share four characteristics: “first, as highly concentrated command points in the organization of the world economy; second, as key locations for finance and for specialized service firms, which have replaced manufacturing as the leading economic sectors; third, as sites of production, including the production of innovations, in these leading industries; and fourth, as markets for the products and economic innovations produced” (Sassen 1991, 3–4).

or supra-city (Gottmann 1957; Florida et al. 2008). Differently from the metropolis, the megalopolis is polycentric as it includes several large cities. Although this term has an indubitable economic relevance, it is generally not accompanied by any formal of centralized administration, even if economic cooperation and coordination between its core cities are frequent. An example of the latter is the Milan–Turin–Genoa “industrial triangle”, relaunched in the framework of Expo Milan 2015 in order to advance cooperation in economic development and tourism attraction (Comune di Milano 2020). Following a similar perspective, UCLG defines agglomeration above 50 million inhabitants as supracities or urban regions. Differently to cities and metropolises, they do not appear to be linked to a specific identity or feeling of belonging, that remains anchored to each city, although this might happen in the future (Florida et al. 2008, 8). 2 The international actions of center cities and their surrounding cities can feature little alignment. For example, as Dierwechter showed analyzing the US climate action, central cities appear more engaged to international environment action than suburbs, which results in an “uneven, incomplete, and generally uncoordinated ‘mosaic model’ of metropolitan climate action” (Dierwechter 2010, 77). Even when metropolitan areas follow the same direction, its municipalities do not necessarily choose the same strategy, nor the same city network, thus making the evaluation of their actions’ impact, quite complex to assess.

6

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

This identification of cities’ “globality” with their economic weight has been strengthened by the spread of rankings to assess urban competitiveness, as discussed in Chapter 5. These rankings show that most global cities have large populations—with the exception of a few highly innovative cities in Northern Europe and North America enjoying world renown thanks to their capacity to attract foreign talents, investments, and firms. Alongside the economic component, the term global city will be used in this book to refer to cities recognized for their political and cultural relevance, featuring major infrastructures connecting them to the world, and a population higher than a million. It is worth noticing that most academic research on city diplomacy has been focusing on global cities, thus contributing to making this term a highly desired marker of urban success. Unsurprisingly, several large cities are using it as a brand—Mexico City defines itself as a global city in its 2017 constitution (article 20).

Many Cities, One Diplomacy? In consideration of the political, socio-economic and cultural differences among cities across the world, how can they be addressed as a coherent group in their international activities? Three main distinctions arise when analyzing the international action of cities: I. The size. Research in the United States (Dierwechter 2010), Sweden (Lundqvist and Von Borgstede 2008), and France (Kihlgren Grandi 2020), as well with a global perspective (United Cities and Local Governments 2013, 2014; Bilsky et al. 2017; Kihlgren Grandi and Sottilotta 2020) have shown a direct correlation between size and level of international activities. Moreover, even when present, small and intermediary cities’ international action still suffers from a limited recognition at national and international levels (United Cities and Local Governments 2014). In fact, regardless of their socioeconomic situation and the legal or de facto capacity to act internationally independently from their central administrations, most small and middle-sized cities across the world still perceive international engagement as something outside of their scope and remit. Such a trend is in no little part

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

7

motivated by the common misunderstanding across city administrations, residents, and stakeholders that only large, economically dynamic global cities can implement impactful international strategies. This book presents a set of best practices showing the contrary and contains indications to support the spread of city diplomacy across cities of all sizes. II. The legal situation. The legal boundaries of the relationship between the national and city governments varies considerably across the world (see Chapter 2). As a result, cities’ international action ranges from total alignment with the central government’s foreign policy—a feature reaching its maximum extent in centralized autocratic states—to vocal opposition in a few decentralized democracies. Notwithstanding their formal powers, cities of many countries across the world benefit from actual empowerment, generally acting with the consent of their nation and under the auspices of international organizations, as both national and international legal boundaries are bending (see the section on the legal frameworks below). The book is designed to support city diplomats in various legal situations, as long as they can, de iure or de facto act internationally, and can do so with a fair level of independence from their national governments. III. The geographic location. Traditionally, most of city diplomacy activities remain concentrated in Europe, where 43.5% of city networks operate (Acuto et al. 2017). Nevertheless, a growing number of cities and networks from other continents are rising as protagonists in the field, with a multiplication of South-South and North-South-South triangular city diplomacy. The next chapter will offer an insight into the geographical distribution of city diplomacy and its evolution, while Chapters 3–9 will present several best practices from all over the world. While taking into consideration all cities across the world, this book does not consider sub-municipal governance as independent actors of city diplomacy. Across the world, largest cities proper are often divided in a series of sub-municipal bodies—e.g., New York’s boroughs, Rome’s Municipi, Paris’ Arrondissements, or Buenos Aires’ Comunas. Just like cities, their governance is usually composed of permanent staff and elected officials. While they enjoy a series of prerogatives as municipal subdivisions of the municipality, they generally do not have self-governance powers

8

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

and are not active in city diplomacy. Therefore, they are generally not able to design and implement autonomous international strategies. Nevertheless, they might contribute to the strategy of the city government, and in such a framework is not uncommon for them to host and/or support international events, sometimes in cooperation with foreign consulates and embassies. Cities are not the only type of subnational government active internationally across the world: regions, provinces, departments, counties, etc. have been implementing a broad set of international activities with significant consequences both locally and internationally. In fact, international frameworks have emerged to foster dialogue among the different actors of subnational diplomacy, the most famous of which indubitably is United Cities and Local Government (UCLG), the world’s largest association of local governments, whose direct and indirect members account for 70% of the world’s population. Nevertheless, cities are by far the most suitable type of local government to act internationally, and that for five main reasons: I. City administration is the only omnipresent subnational government. A recent study by OECD and UCLG on 122 countries across the world, shows that in 30% of them, there is no other form of local authorities than cities (48% also feature regions and 22% have an intermediary level between cities and regions) (OECD/UCLG 2019); II. For the first time in human history, the majority (55%) of the human population live in cities. In 2018, the urban population reached 4.2 billion, compared to 3.4 billion in rural areas, as the result of rapid urbanization since 1950, when 70% of the world population was rural (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and Population Division 2019). Nations and international organizations are increasingly reaching for the cooperation of cities in a set of commonalities, as shown in Chapter 2; III. Cities are the oldest political institution. Often dating back to centuries, or even millennia, most cities are much older than their nation-states. This has resulted in a stratified city identity—a key component of city branding strategies (see Chapters 5 and 8); IV. A global trend of decentralization has led cities to expand the remit of their government, including international relations as a

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

9

competence formally or de facto attributed them (see Chapter 2 for the evolution of the relationship between national and city diplomacies); V. Over the last few years, the number of city networks has significantly increased to reach over 200 (Acuto et al. 2017), allowing for cities to count on permanent structures of national, regional, and global coordination (see below).

The Goals of City Diplomacy Another feature that allows city diplomacy to be treated as a coherent discipline lies in the limited, yet flexible set of its international goals and the tools cities have to implement them. Not unlike countries, cities act internationally mainly to achieve two apparently opposed sets of goals: universal moral good and local selfinterests. Value-based city diplomacy leads to the creation of international partnerships to implement or advocate for goals whose international spread and adoption are deemed relevant to the local community. These includes: I. Prevention of conflicts and reconciliation; II. Development aid and solidarity; III. Cooperation in addressing global challenges such as climate change, migrations, gender equity, violent extremism, and urbanization; IV. Regional integration and solidarity. Structured partnerships implemented to this purpose feature political and managerial components allowing their representatives to advocate internationally for their adoption and, to that purpose, lobby nation-states and intergovernmental organizations, sometimes in cooperation with NGOs. As mentioned, the spread and global recognition of city diplomacy are, to a large extent, linked to a value-based approach. Interest-based city diplomacy revolves around the concrete benefits for the local community at large. Expected outcomes can be divided into two groups:

10

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

I. Improving and strengthening service delivery. Since its creation more than a century ago, city diplomacy involves technical cooperation in the form of both knowledge transfers and joint innovation processes. Thus, the potential impact includes the improvement of municipal services’ quality and cost-effectiveness via the introduction of new technologies or methodologies, including those to cope with unexpected and unprecedented challenges (e.g., climate change hazards, COVID-19). II. Enhancing attractiveness, a joint priority in both economic and cultural dimensions of city diplomacy. The potential impact includes a bolder global positioning of the city and a boost in its local development due to the city’s enhanced inflow of foreign tourists, investments, talents, and students. These sets of goals of city diplomacy are often intertwined. This is particularly evident in sustainable development, where an international action might answer both local interests (e.g., making local economy more resilient to climate change, fighting local inequalities) and values (equality, diversity, green transition, preservation of biodiversity, etc.). As it will be presented in Chapter 7, the capacity of cities to effectively implement international activities linking local interests to moral values has sometimes fueled cities and city networks to an “adversarial positioning against states,” perceived as “ineffective bureaucratic machines” (Acuto 2013, 308). Nevertheless, numerous forms of cooperation between states and cities exist regarding both goals of city diplomacy, as proven by the grants states and intergovernmental organizations have issued to support cities’ international actions. Regardless of the specific goals for acting internationally, cities should define their own strategy in a clear and comprehensive way. This book aims to support municipalities in such a choice by highlighting the diverse components of city diplomacy, their potential impact, and their challenges.

The Tools of City Diplomacy City diplomacy tools vary a lot in shape and scope. Most domestic legal framework allows cities to negotiate and implement a series of bilateral and multilateral agreements, formalizing partnerships with their foreign peers. As Chapter 2 will highlight, these partnerships differ from those

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

11

implemented by states as they are not legally binding. As a result, signatories cities cannot be held internationally accountable for the lack of respect for the content of such partnerships. Notwithstanding, these partnerships can indeed represent a strong political commitment by the local government, and might generate a variety of concrete consequences involving local stakeholders and populations. As the following paragraphs will discuss, the panorama of city diplomacy tools includes hosting international events and issuing advocacy campaigns—the latter featuring very different nature between democratic and nondemocratic countries. Bilateral Agreements Twinning (or sister city) agreements (TAs) constitute the most ancient and widespread of the bilateral ties between cities, as well as the first one to emerge in the first part of the twentieth century3 (see next chapter). The agreement consists of the framework for a close and long-term (sometimes temporally unlimited) partnership between two cities. It can either open to cooperation in all sectors of municipal action or mention specific sectors in usually long, non-exhaustive lists generally including culture, urban planning, economic development, and sharing of best practices. They are usually adopted through formal ceremonies involving the signature of the agreement by both mayors. Cooperation (or friendship) agreements (CAs) represent weaker forms of cooperation, usually more specific in the content, with less formal protocols surrounding the adoption and usually a term, at which the agreement or memorandum may or may not renew automatically. An even weaker for city partnership is represented by the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The MoU usually defines the partnership in more open, less precise terms than the TA or CA and is generally the only form of partnership that does not require a formal vote by the city council. As such, it is usually intended as a first step in a city-to-city partnership aiming at the signature of a TA or CA.

3 The first documented modern twinning agreement was signed in 1920 by Keighley, West Yorkshire, England and Poix-du-Nord in France’s North department (Handley 2006).

12

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

When fully implemented, the three forms of bilateral partnerships usually involve reciprocal institutional and training visits, a direct relationship between municipal offices, and the exchange of citizen and students’ delegations. In order to enhance residents’ participation in the process, many cities across the world have created twinning committees. These are formed (and often directly run) by citizens and enjoy some sort of support of the municipality in their activities, which might include cultural events, visits, and exchange programs. Today, bilateral agreements worldwide maintain their symbolic value of friendship. As such they continue to receive the support of nations.4 Moreover, it is rare for cities to revoke these agreements—a move that could be perceived as offensive by the partner. The nonbinding nature of these ties allows cities to keep them formally alive, even when a change in the municipal majority or the emergence of different local priorities lead cities to concentrate on other international goals. It is important to notice that bilateral agreements are undergoing, as other practices of city diplomacy, a significant change involving the addition or strengthening of an economic component. Generally, twinning agreements terms are vague enough to allow cities to adapt their actual meaning according to their priorities. As Acuto highlights in the framework of the UK–China twinning agreements, such practice now features an “important impact in directing entrepreneurial collaborations” (Acuto et al. 2016). These agreements’ flexibility has also allowed many cities to cooperate on issues not formally mentioned, such as climate change or COVID-19. Networks The origin of city diplomacy is generally considered to coincide with the creation of the first global city network, the International Union Of Cities in 1913 (see next chapter). There is a general understanding across practitioners that city networks represent today the most visible and vocal

4 On 22 January 2019, the occasion of the 56th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty,

President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel signed in Aachen a new Franco-German treaty on cooperation and integration, establishing a e2.4 million Joint Citizens’ Fund “to promote and support citizens’ initiatives and town twinning partnerships in order to bring their two peoples still closer together” (Federal Republic of Germany and French Republic 2019).

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

13

expression of city diplomacy - a point corroborated by scholars, who focused on these networks most of the available city diplomacy literature. Saskia Sassen posits that the emergence of transnational networks of global cities has led to the formation of “new types of ‘global’ politics of place” (Sassen 2017, 149). City networks consist of formalized multilateral cooperations between three or more cities coming together to cooperate on one specific sector of the municipal action (thematic city networks, like C40 for the fight to climate change, or LUCI with public lighting) or on all of them (multipurpose networks, like UCLG or Eurocities). Their governance most frequently includes an elected representative, usually a mayor, a general assembly of all member cities, and a permanent administration (sometimes hosted by the international relations department of one of the founding cities, or by an international organization). Vast global networks such as UCLG and ICLEI also feature regional offices. The number of city networks rose significantly in the first decade of the twenty-first century, coinciding with increased recognition of the impactful and innovative nature of these “networks of pioneers for pioneers” (Kern and Bulkeley 2009). Research by the UCL City Leadership Laboratory shows there are now more than 200 city networks around the world, with an average of 4 new networks initiated every year5 — national networks6 represent the majority of the total (53%), followed by regional and global networks (Acuto et al. 2017). Membership criteria might allow all cities around the world to join (e.g., UCLG, ICLEI), other limit membership to specific regions (Arab 5 The multiplication of networks, tackling similar issues with diverse scope and mechanisms, not only facilitate duplications and overlap but complicates cities’ search for the most suited ones. In such a context, the role of municipal staff in charge of international relations becomes all the more crucial. Their search for the best network should be based on assessing the impact of networks on the areas identified as political priorities by the cities. When such evidence is not readily available in the network information material or academia, the staff needs to proceed to its own evaluation, based on the interactions with both the network’s staff and member cities. 6 While this volume will mainly deal with the last two categories, it is important to notice than several national networks are also active on the international stage. These include national networks specifically conceived for international action, such as Netherlands’ VNG or France’s Cités Unies France, as well as the several national networks with an international affairs office in charge of providing support and exchange opportunities for member cities’ international action and interacting with other national and international city networks and international organizations.

14

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Towns Organization-ATO, Eurocities, Mercociudades, Union of Baltic Cities, Association of Cities and Collectivities of the Indian OceanAVCOI), city size (Metropolis for cities above 1 million residents, Cittaslow for those of less than 50,000), cultural and language connections (UCCI uniting cities in Iberia and in Latin America, UCCLA, for Portuguese language cities, or AIMF for French-speaking cities across the world—see Box 3.2), or share a geographic situation (AIVP, the global network of port cities). Most city networks’ budget is based on membership fees—whose amount sometimes depends on the city’s average income. Other sources might come from international charities (such as Bloomberg Philanthropies for the C40, the Rockefeller Foundation for the Resilient Cities Network, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for AIMF) and grants by international organizations or the European Union (currently sponsoring projects by Eurocities and AIMF). Albeit their goals vary considerably, city networks generally share a methodology designed over four axes: – facilitating cooperation and knowledge exchange between members; – advocating on shared vision and goals and lobbying with global or regional organizations; – promoting research and innovation, by internal means or by partnering up with academia and consultancies; – designing and implementing activities in cooperation with their members. A minority of city networks also feature funding mechanisms for their members’ initiatives, including in the framework of awards to expand best practices (C40, CityNet, Milan Urban Food Policy Pact). City networking features two main challenges. First, while certainly being representative of their global success, the multiplication of city networks, frequently tackling same or similar issues, has enhanced the risks of duplications and overlap, while making cities’ search for the most suited one harder. This is likely to produce three possible scenarios: a competition among similar networks, potentially increasing the quality of both; two or more similar network merge in one bigger network—as it happened with IULA, UTO and Metropolis creating UCLG in 2004 (see next chapter)—or the “survival of the fittest,” where the success of most dynamic network causes the others to lose agency, resources, and

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

15

membership, forcing them to reevaluate their strategy (Keiner and Kim 2007). Generally aware of the issues related to their multiplication in numbers, and the rising duplications and overlaps, city networks have shown a rising commitment toward concentration and synergies. The most concrete example of such approach is represented by the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments, a consultation and coordination mechanism between 25 of the leading global and regional city networks, aiming at defining common strategies toward the main global agendas, notably the Agenda 2030 and the New Urban Agenda. Moreover, the Global Taskforce convenes the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments, reuniting mayors from across the world. The assembly met in the framework of the Habitat III conference in Quito (2016) and has been formally identified by the New Urban Agenda as a tool for the follow-up and review of its dispositions (United Nations 2016; Global Taskforce of Local And Regional Governments 2019). Second, mainly due to the nonbinding nature of their frameworks of action, most city networks feature variable levels of commitment among their members. They usually include a core of highly motivated pioneer cities and a periphery of relatively passive ones whose participation in the network barely affects their behavior (Kern and Bulkeley 2009). Studies suggest that belonging to a major network is likely to act as an incentive to join others (Acuto et al. 2016). With the time, a city might find itself member of a considerable number of networks, often due to different city diplomacy priorities expressed by the succeeding mayors. While certain cities decide to keep their membership even with little activity—most city networks do not expel inactive cities, as long as they pay their fee—others, such as Angers in France, decided to abandon a part of them to concentrate on those perceived as more useful in terms of advocacy and learning potential (Kotras 2012). Finally, even if city networks are often compared to international organizations, the formers are often characterized by close cooperation between mayors from distant political backgrounds. Moreover, dialogue among mayors tends not to be limited by frictions between their states, as the Summit of Mayors convened by Florence Mayor La Pira during the Cold War clearly showed (see next chapter). This has fuelled cities criticism to the “unsolvable deadlocks” of state-level multilateralism (Acuto 2013, 308).

16

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Chapters 3–9 will highlight the additional features of thematic city networks and their impact on member cities, as well as on the regional and global stage. Bilateral and Multilateral Projects Alongside long-term partnerships, municipalities are in the possibility of realizing short to middle-term joint international projects. Unlike most formal bilateral and multilateral agreements, international projects usually feature a list of concrete objectives to be met in a precise time frame. The main driver of such actions lies in the expansion of participant cities’ international visibility and attractiveness, the creation of new partnerships, and the introduction of innovative solutions. Over the last few years, many cities’ preference for international ties moved from perpetual bilateral projects to shorter-term international projects, often to be implemented in “municipal promiscuity” (Handley 2006), i.e., involving two or more foreign partners. Such an approach is widely due to the wish of city leaders to harness city diplomacy’s potential to impact the city positively. As such, many of these international projects involve exchanging best practices in all sectors of municipal action, such as transports, hygiene, and the introduction of new technologies (see Chapter 6). Moreover, the trend is often linked to the spread of regional integration: regional organization such as the European Union, the Council of Europe, ASEAN, the African Union, and Mercosur consider cities as key actors in strengthening ties between their member countries and have thus created funding frameworks (or supported the existing ones) to enhance this cooperation via call for projects, knowledge exchange and events. This dynamic has also contributed to the spread of the so-called triangular (or North-South-South) cooperation, linking a city from the Global North with two cities in the Global South. Calls for projects issued by international organizations, as well as national governments, have deeply shaped duration, goals, partnership, and methodology of these projects. Notable examples include European Union’s Urbact program, aimed at supporting and spreading peerlearning and innovation in European cities, and the thematic/geographic calls for projects issued by French government’s Delegation on the International Action of Territorial Collectivities (DAECT), or by the French Development Agency (AFD) (Kihlgren Grandi 2020).

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

17

A number of well-established city networks also run a series of programs among members, which are sometimes opened to the participation of external cities. An example is the C40’s Clean Bus Declaration, which aims to encourage the spread of low and no-emission public transport vehicles in cities across the world (C40 2015). Nevertheless, bilateral and multilateral projects present a few criticalities, potentially limiting their impact: 1. Calls for projects might have a distortive impact on one city’s international strategy. Instead of only applying to these calls compatible with it, cities’ widespread desire to win the highest number of calls might result in little coherent international action, with a potentially negative impact on the city international positioning and branding strategy; 2. Not infrequently, pilot technologies and services introduced in the framework of projects are discontinued once the project ends, thus resulting in little to no long-term impact on the city and its population. It is of paramount importance for cities to exploit these actions’ full potential by integrating a long-term perspective; 3. Little to no background information is usually collected on private actors, namely international charities, issuing calls for projects. Before applying to these calls, municipalities should consider any potential hidden political agenda or green/social washing strategy by these actors; 4. Unless a grant or sponsorship is available, international projects can result in expensive activities, starting from travel costs. This fact might represent in itself an obstacle to get involved in international projects, not in little part to avoid easy criticisms of wasting public money in activities abroad. This can be partially avoided with the economic participation of private and public partners and a clear strategy featuring measurable local outcomes. International Events Around the world, cities of all sizes host international events as tools to raise their international profiles while boosting the local economy in both the short and long term. These events can be divided into groups:

18

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

– Events with an exclusive connection to the city. This includes onetime events (such as celebrations), as well as recurring ones. Notable examples of the latter include Cannes and Venice’s film festivals, or fine art fairs such as Art Basel, Frieze Art Fair in London, and the India Art Fair in New Delhi. – Recurring, itinerant events whose organization is overseen by an external entity (usually an international organization or an NGO) and that require cities to enter an international competition to be selected as host of the event. Among the many international events a city can bid to host, three stand out for their capacity to attract the broadest international public and grant the city with the highest possible level of exposure to foreign media: the Olympics (both Summer and Winter editions), the World Fair, and the FIFA World Cup.7 Moreover, numerous other major events take place every year across the world, including sports competitions (athletics championships, Formula 1 and motorcycle grand prix) and annual cultural events such as the European (and, starting from 2020, African) Capitals of Culture (see Chapter 8). Cities bid to these international events for a plurality of reasons. First, they represent a unique opportunity too deeply improve the brand of the city. Alongside the pride of inhabitants for hosting the major event,

7 It is a frequent practice of global cities awarded the organization of one of the three main global events to design an intense calendar of international events. Notable events include Rio de Janeiro’s road to the 2016 Olympic Games:

2010: 2011: 2012: 2013: 2014: 2015:

World Economic Forum; 5th CISM Military World Games; Rio+20, in 2012; World Youth Day; FIFA World Cup; 450th anniversary of Rio.

As well as Paris’ sports events preceding to the 2024 Olympic Games: 2018: 2019: 2020: 2023:

Gay Games, Ryder Cup, European Women’s Handball Championship; FIFA Women’s World Cup; European Athletics Championship (canceled due to COVID-19 pandemic); Rugby World Cup.

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

19

this can profoundly impact the city’s identity and offer it remarkable visibility: for the duration of the event, the world’s media concentrate on the city. As such, they represent the opportunity for the city to strengthen its existing brand or create a new one. An example of the latter practice can be found in Rio de Janeiro’s smart city strategy driven by the Olympics momentum (Mendes and Figueira 2017, 14–15). Similarly, Milan’s international tourism strategy was powered by the 2015 World Expo. Through these events, cities aim at profoundly strengthening their global inflows of capitals, companies, tourists, talents, students, and ideas. Second, the significant investments linked to such events are an opportunity for the host city not only to undergo much-needed infrastructure and beautification projects but to reshape in depth its urban space. Of course, the event’s built legacy’s long-term impact differs from city to city: the goal is to use these global events to realize infrastructure that will fully integrate into the city’s urban tissue and positively impact the population for the years to come. Best practices include the new neighborhoods created in the former Olympic villages in Seoul (1988), Barcelona (1992), Sydney (2000), and London (2012). Infrastructure like Paris’ first metro line inaugurated for the 1900 Universal Exposition (alongside the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, today major exhibition centers), the Seattle 1962 World Fair monorail, and Lisbon’s 1998 World Fair’s Gare do Oriente have considerably enhanced their cities connectivity and local transportation. Nevertheless, the opposite result is not uncommon whenever these events infrastructures are designed with a short-term approach. Bidding for major international events usually implies a complex and intense diplomatic action, often implemented in the framework of a multilevel partnership between the city, other local governments such as the department or the region (when present), and the national government. The more distinctive feature of this “bidding city diplomacy” consists in such close cooperation with the other layers of government, given the high amount of investments needed to present a sound project, and the need to secure broad diplomatic support by national states (for Expos) or national sports association (for the Olympics and FIFA championships). In decentralized countries, this can result in bid-related empowerment of the city international action, carried out “with the consent of, rather than in parallel with, the state” (Acuto 2013, 307). Needless to say, from the side of the municipal administration, the bid should be designed in order to comply with the general international strategy of the city—and take the opportunity to enhance it. To

20

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

that purpose, it is crucial to incorporate the core values at the center of the city’s international networking and advocacy initiatives (e.g., sustainability, interculturality, innovation). Moreover, cities should be well aware of the potential diplomatic drawbacks arising from the process. As a matter of fact, bidding puts cities in direct competition with one another, as the bidding process is intended to show the city’s comparative advantages. This competition might create temporary coalitions of cities, as bidding mayors tend to reach for the support of their colleagues in twin and friend cities. As will be discussed in Chapter 5, major international events’ economic and social impact is increasingly an object of debate. This is particularly true for cities aiming at hosting the Olympics, whose bids sometimes led to protests by residents, culminating in the withdrawal of the bid itself. As the author writes this book, all major events across the world, including the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2020 Expo Dubai, have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Until the introduction of a vaccine, it is unlikely for cities to host any events involving large publics. International Advocacy More and more frequently, cities aim at influencing global governance’s handling of transnational challenges. Through vast and ambitious advocacy campaigns, most of them in the framework of city networks, the voice of cities has obtained an important echo, especially when it opposes the will and action of one or more national governments. As Chapters 2 and 4 will highlight, this practice emerged during the Cold war, when mayors from across the world started uniting their voices in demanding states to renounce the arms race and commit to peaceful resolutions of conflicts. Chapter 7 will focus on the most vocal of these advocacy campaigns, the one devoted to the fight to climate change, which provided some mayors’ criticisms to their central governments with global visibility and the endorsements of foreign cities—and government. Chapter 9 will present a similar trend in place regarding migration policies, with national and international coalitions of cities defending their welcoming policies against the restrictive approach put in place by a number of national governments.

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

21

Alongside these and the other thematic campaigns highlighted throughout the book, most city networks, and several global cities’ advocacy feature a dual focus connected to the role of cities in national and international governance, respectively: – Calling for stronger multilateral cooperation between national and local authorities in addressing a number of transnational issues; – Calling for a “seat at the global table,” i.e., the formal inclusion of cities in global governance mechanisms (Metropolitan District of Quito et al. 2016). Such international advocacy, requiring cities’ freedom to express an independent view from national governments, is fully implemented exclusively in democratic, decentralized countries. Cities in highly centralized or autocratic countries can hardly oppose their nation-state approach of transnational issues, and their advocacy campaigns usually consist of a mere local adaptation of those launched by the central authority.

Building a Strategy Surprisingly enough, many cities active internationally through bilateral agreements, city networks, international programs, or advocacy campaigns do not have a formal, explicit international strategy. As a result, cities might struggle to prioritize their international activities, communicate them to the population, and build a coherent international brand for the city. The book aims to illustrate how cities can leverage the existing bilateral and multilateral relations, both formal and informal, and build a strategy. Ideally, the definition of such a strategy should be renewed at any municipal election, to integrate it into the administration’s political goals. Its design, requiring a complete understanding of city diplomacy scope, actors, tools, and challenges, as well as its implementation, need to involve professionals in the field. These two points call cities to create, if not present, an international relations office/department, whose first charge would, therefore, consist of designing such a strategy. As shown in the image below, all effective strategy should comprise three parts: a diagnostic of the city’s international relations, the definition of a set of goals, and the methodology to implement them.

22

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Diagnoscs •Data •SWOT all the internaonal acvies implemented by the city, local NGOs and associaons, and the private sector •Foreign actors in the city •Legal frameworks

Goals •Values to spread internaonally; •Polical, economic, social, cultural and technical outcomes for the city

Implementaon •Bilateral and mullateral partnerships; •Events; •Advocacy; •Engagement and communicaon; •Impact evaluaon.

(1) Diagnostics The staff in charge of paving the ground to the definition of the strategy should realize a full diagnostics of existing international activities and positioning of the city. This step consists of: (1) Qualitative and quantitative information on city formal and informal international connections, including those involving the city, local NGOs and associations, and the private sector; (2) A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of such connections. The analysis will allow tracing a portrait of the ongoing international impact and positioning of the city and its potential evolution; (3) The mapping and statistics of foreign residents and actors, both private (foreign companies, and charities) and public (embassies/consulates, foreign cultural institutions, international organizations). Extensive dialogue with these actors is needed in order to assess their actions’ goals and impact: (4) A comprehensive evaluation of the legal framework for the city’s international action, taking into consideration both national and international law.

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

23

(5) The goals Based on the diagnostics, the mayor and the council will be able to design specific goals. These should include both the values the city wants to support across the world and the outcomes it aims at harnessing from its international activities. The latter, according to the political priorities set by the elected officials, might include: – Political outcomes: the city and the mayor’s political priorities obtain international visibility and receive the endorsement of international partners such as other cities, city networks, international organizations, NGOs, and nations; – Economic outcomes: the city strengthens its economic growth and the job market by attracting international tourists, companies, investments, and talents; – Social outcomes: international partnerships provide the tools to address local social issues, either by means of new resources and practices implemented locally or through the involvement of target communities in activities abroad; – Cultural outcomes: the city enhance its local cultural and creative sectors through international branding and interactions with foreign partners; – Technical outcomes: the city is the recipient of knowledge transfers, which often match innovation with sustainable development purposes. (3) The implementation As mentioned, municipalities dispose of a set of tools to act internationally. The strategy should include a detailed description of the way the municipality will deploy them. Therefore, this part should include creating/rationalizing/revamping existing bilateral and multilateral partnerships, creating advocacy campaigns or joining existing ones, and hosting international events (and, if needed, bidding for them). Moreover, the implementation should feature assessment mechanisms to evaluate the impact of international actions, thus allowing the city to modify them, if needed.

24

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Based on the diagnostics’ results, the city should also define the modalities to inform and engage residents and local stakeholders in the activities planned. This part of the strategy should also include precise dispositions to facilitate the sometimes-limited cooperation between different municipal departments, by clarifying the international relations office’s coordination and management duties. Finally, such a strategy should allow municipalities to deal with international symmetric and asymmetric shocks. Concretely, this means to define the mechanisms the city could deploy to both bring its support to affected foreign partners and to ask for it should the crisis take place at home. As an example, the book will include a focus on the challenges and opportunities generated by COVID-19 in each of the seven main components of city diplomacy.

Preconditions Across the world, city diplomacy’s success depends widely on the city administration’s capacity to design a strategy that meets a series of five preconditions. Preconditions

Risks when absent

I. CD as a political priority: the role of the mayor

Difficulty in involving other municipal sectors; limited human and economic resources Incapacity to design and implement a coherent and impactful international strategy Limited capacity to act internationally Unnecessary or duplicated initiatives; endorsement on nondemocratic regimes Limited local support and participation in city diplomacy

II. Human resources

III. Economic resources IV. Choice and engagement of the right foreign partner(s) V. Local public engagement and communication strategy

I. City Diplomacy as a Political Priority: The Role of the Mayor First, in order to be effective, city diplomacy should represent an explicit political priority of the municipal government. As such, it needs to be supported by the mayor and the council, who can lend their legitimacy

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

25

to make sure city diplomacy is recognized as a fully fledged, cross-cutting public policy (Campbell 2001; CEVIPOF 2019).8 Therefore, the municipality should commit to providing the office or department in charge of managing international relations with the needed human and economic resources (see below). Without a strong accent on this relatively new sector of municipal action by the mayor and the city council, its action would be limited to the advantage of other, more established ones, especially in the sometimes persistent contexts of budgetary cuts. Moreover, international technical cooperation does not need a direct involvement of the mayor, establishing the international partnership(s) to enable it most frequently does. Moreover, mayors can also play a central role in the spread of best practices: as noted by Campbell in a study on Latin American cities, “mayors learn from each other more than any other single source,” with experience showing that they are particularly effective in retransmitting ideas (Campbell 2001, 229). Additional mayoral tasks in the framework of city diplomacy include: representing the city and its complex and diverse ecosystem abroad, leading city delegations abroad, welcoming high foreign officials, leading the bid to international events, voicing branding campaigns, addressing international public opinion in the framework of advocacy campaigns, serving as a chair/board member of city networks, taking part in international summits. Moreover, mayors are the primary connection between the city and national diplomacies: in decentralized, democratic countries they play a central role in the establishment of either the cooperative, as well as the more or less openly adversarial positioning on specific topics (for the most vocal confrontation, please refer to environmental city diplomacy strategies presented in Chapters 2 and 7). Moreover, city diplomacy has revealed to be a powerful tool in creating or strengthening personal international visibility for mayors, especially those advocating for a multilateral response to global challenges. It is the case, for example, of Los Angeles’ Eric Garcetti, Paris’ Anne Hidalgo or Milan’s Giuseppe Sala for their commitment in the fight to climate change, of Palermo’s Leoluca Orlando for his welcoming approach to

8 Trust in mayors, governors, and local officials tend to be high in democracies. For example, in France, according to a poll published in January 2019 by Sciences Po’s Cevipof, 58% of the French population has trust in mayors, making them the only elected officials supported by the majority of the population (the President and Prime Minister rate 23 and 25% respectively) (CEVIPOF 2019).

26

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

economic migrants, refugeesm and asylum seekers (Favereau and Sardier 2019), or of the “Pact of Free Cities” mayors (Budapest’s Gergely Karácsony, Prague’s Zdenˇek Hˇrib, Warsaw’ Rafał Trzaskowski and Bratislava’s Matúš Vallo) for their pro-EU agenda and opposition to their central governments’ policies on immigration, climate change and the rule of law (Hopkins and Shotter 2019; Parmentier 2020). It is worth mentioning that elected officials might also act to discontinue or prevent their city’s international action. Such decision, more frequent in smaller cities, is often the result of either electoral campaigns fuelled with populist, “city-first” rhetoric, or self-restraint to avoid criticisms depicting international actions as a waste of taxpayers’ money with low or nonexistent locale return on investment. Linked to the absence of adequate city diplomacy public information and engagement campaigns (see below), this point tends to be raised in particular regarding development aid initiatives—the value of international solidarity being deemed an insufficient justification (see Chapter 3). This approach might also conceal a free-rider positioning, aiming at harnessing the spill-overs of the international commitment of neighboring cities, such as those aiming at pollution reduction (Lundqvist and Von Borgstede 2008). Finally, the mayor’s central role in international affairs has led many cities to locate the international relations office within the mayor’s cabinet.9 Another choice, frequently found in big and medium-sized cities, involves the appointment of a deputy mayor in charge of international relations. II. Human Resources Regardless of its location, all municipal administration with a dynamic international strategy possesses an international relations office or department, staffed with highly skilled professionals. City diplomats share a series of personal skills with their colleagues from foreign offices, namely mastery of verbal and oral expression in a set of foreign languages, negotiation skills, ability to deal with different procedures, cultures, and traditions, knowledge of international protocol. 9 The international relations office works in close cooperation with the office of the protocol, if present, inducing many cities to merge the services. In some cases, especially within intermediary and small municipalities, international relations are managed by the same team in charge of tourism or culture.

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

27

Moreover, at the crossroads between local and international policies, the unique nature of their job requires them to comply with several specific tasks: • Researching and analyzing qualitative and quantitative information on the city’s formal and informal international connexions; • Contributing to the definition of the city diplomacy strategic plan; • Advising the mayor, the city council and other municipal offices/departments on foreign affairs and international partnerships; • Assisting the mayor and other elected officials in meetings with foreign officials and missions abroad; • Bidding for international events, and managing their international relations if the bid is successful; • Managing the daily interactions with foreign public and private partners, including partner cities, networks, NGOs, international organizations and development banks; • Expanding the city’s international relations by negotiating new partnerships and agreements and applying to international projects and networks; • Managing the relations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; • Implementing international city branding strategies; • Designing, managing, and evaluating international projects in all the domain of municipal action; • Fundraising for international activities; • Managing the relationship with the local diplomatic and consular community; • Training of foreign officers in the framework of development cooperation; • Supporting the press office in communicating on international affairs and dealing with foreign media; • Designing and running public public information and engagement on international activities; • Facilitating the local implementation of global agendas (Agenda 2030, Paris Agreement, New Urban Agenda, among others); • Coordinating the sending/receiving of emergency aid to/from foreign actors.

28

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Moreover, the evolution of city diplomacy and international relations require officers to update their knowledge and skills regularly (e.g., to creatively adapt partnerships to the COVID-19 pandemic limitations). Such a broad set of tasks often represents a challenge for cities’ human resources departments, given the limited availability of city diplomacy courses in universities or institutes of public administration. The absence of specific curricula in all but a few countries in the world is mainly addressed by hiring professionals with a study and professional background in international relations or diplomacy, to be coupled with in-place mentoring and a good dose of creativity. It should come with no surprise that some global cities such as Los Angeles, Montreal, or Paris, have appointed veteran diplomats at the head of their respective international relations departments. III. Economic Resources In terms of funding, city diplomacy activities can be divided into two groups: (1) self-funded activities, allowing the highest level of discretion. The maximum amount of money available for city diplomacy is usually defined by both national law and local budgets. This includes the municipality officers’ training activities, in the framework of “officers without borders” development cooperation projects— a popular choice for municipalities facing budget cuts (Dragone 2020). An audit of existing human resources to that purpose reveals to be very useful and should also include the venues (monuments, museums, schools, and other public buildings) the municipality owns or has access to, for hosting international events and foreign delegations. (2) Activities funded by external actors, such as international organizations, development banks, ministries and governmental agencies, embassies, consulates and cultural institutes abroad, NGOs, and the business sector. This also includes in-kind contributions from public and private partners, such as airplane companies providing tickets, hotels hosting delegations or museums, and universities contributing to international events with venues and speakers.

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

29

Understandably, private sector contributions are often provided in exchange for international visibility. IV. Choice and Engagement of the Right Foreign Partner(s) The choice of the right foreign partner(s) is essential to the success of any city diplomacy initiative. Municipalities generally face a choice between strengthening existing partnerships, i.e., twinned and friend cities, and the identification of new ones. As a matter of fact, the evolution in the goals and the methodology of city diplomacy has led many partnerships to be inactive for years. This is particularly frequent with those partnerships set up after World War II to reconcile former enemies—a goal that has lost its momentum. Nevertheless, the revitalization of existing partnerships might support the city’s international strategy, providing political or material support mass to its value-based activities or fueling its interest-based ones with local practices and ideas. To successfully revitalize these dormant partnerships, a joint action by the municipalities, local actors, and residents is needed. The anniversaries of the twinning/friendship agreement offer the opportunity to organize joint events (such as festivals, exhibitions, round tables) with bilateral side meetings where cities update the partnership’s priorities and goals, possibly with a broader participatory approach. This can represent the opportunity to involve in the partnership actors such as associations, education and research institutes, museums, and sports teams, thus renewing local engagement in the partnership. As mentioned, the research of new partners falls within the duties of the international relations staff. This search can benefit from the support of: – City networks, which often encourage partnerships between their members. Networks’ administrations can thus provide useful help in matching members. – National embassies and consulates in the targeted country and the latter’s diplomatic representations in the city might help identify the most suitable partner(s) based on the city’s goals and tools.

30

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

It is important to note that while partnerships with cities of similar size and geographic, social, cultural, or economic characteristics are the most frequent, this does not represent a rule. Rather than in similarities, the success of a partnership lies in the commitment to a shared goal and the capacity of city administrations to interact on a practical level. For that, the first two steps new partnerships should implement tend to be: (1) Dialogue, if possible in the framework of exploratory visits, in order to ensure commitment on both sides and agreeing on a rationale for the partnership. This also applies to current partnerships in order to keep them relevant. (2) Joint definition of a strategic plan to implement such a rationale. It is important to notice that a particularly challenging form of partnership consists of those with cities in nondemocratic regimes. Cities in democratic countries might have perfectly valid reasons to implement such partnerships, ranging from humanitarian aid to technical and cultural cooperation. Nevertheless, it is important to define a set of clear guidelines for all the actors involved in the initiative, taking in due consideration that (I) the foreign regime is likely to directly or indirectly influence the partnership, as nondemocratic systems rarely grant political autonomy to local governments; (II) cooperation with these cities could be easily instrumentalized by the regime to appear as an endorsement. V. Local Public Engagement and Communication Over the last few years, city diplomacy initiatives have been increasingly involving residents and local public and private actors such as civil society organizations, schools, universities and research organizations, museums, theaters, artists, and businesses. Their contribution to city diplomacy is essential in both the design and implementation of activities. These multi-stakeholders partnerships can vary a lot, but they usually feature one of the following three characteristics: – The municipality involves local actors in existing initiatives, usually by issuing calls for partners and grants;

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

31

– Municipalities and local actors jointly design and implement new international partnerships and initiative via co-creation methodologies; – The municipality follows the footsteps of local actors’ international connections. This choice is particularly frequent in the framework of decentralized cooperation activities (see Chapter 3). Regardless of the form the partnership may take, they usually allow the municipality to benefit from local actors’ creativity, energies, existing international connections, and political support. Local actors receive in exchange the opportunity to realize their own goals while acquiring international experience and exposure. As a result, these partnerships represent the primary tool to respond to the already mentioned criticism depicting city diplomacy as a policy without “return on investment” and a tangible impact on the territory. Moreover, they constitute the driver for international actions in line with expectations from residents and stakeholders. To provide for the best conditions for local partnerships’ development, municipalities across the world have developed a set of communication and engagement tools, including press releases and conferences, social media, workshops, and town meetings. Moreover, a solution that has proved to be particularly effective in French cities is creating physical spaces devoted to celebrating the city’s international activities and connecting them with residents and stakeholders (Kihlgren Grandi 2020). The agenda of these “international houses” usually includes debates, workshops, exhibitions, artistic performances, and other events organized by the municipality and its local partners. By strengthening and providing visibility to these actors’ contributions, the municipality creates the conditions to enhance the practice of co-creation and co-responsibility. Box 1.1: Voceros de Buenos Aires Buenos Aires is one of the few cities of the world to have deployed its own “diaspora diplomacy” (Rana 2011, 94–111). Launched in January 2017, the “Voceros de Buenos Aires” (“Buenos Aires’ Spokespersons”) is an initiative empowering expats from Buenos Aires as “honorary representatives” of their city of origin. The project

32

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

integrates the activities of the city’s international relations department by sharing Buenos Aires’ best practices with Voceros’ cities or residence, facilitating cooperation (including or financial nature) between Buenos Aires and foreign actors, and maintaining the contact between Buenos Aires and its diaspora. Their activities are frequently implemented in cooperation with Argentinian embassies or consulates. The IR department selects candidates based on their resume and integration in their host city. Their 2-year appointment is on a pro-bono basis, upon signature of a goodwill agreement. In the framework of the COVID-19 pandemic, Voceros around the world maintained a dialogue with the Municipality of Buenos Aires, sharing the mitigation and recovery strategies implemented in their host city. In June 2020, the program counts 33 Voceros in 31 cities across the world, including Mexico City, New York, London, Rome, Cape Town, Dubai, Beijing, Tokyo, and Sidney. It advertises its activities through a LinkedIn group. Source Struminger (2018) and Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires (2020).

References Acuto, Michele. 2013. ‘World Politics by Other Means? London, City Diplomacy and the Olympics.’ The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 8 (3–4): 287–311. https://doi.org/10.1163/1871191X-12341255. Acuto, Michele, Hugo Decramer, Mika Morissette, Jack Doughty, and Yvonne Ying. 2017. ‘City Networks: New Frontiers for City Leaders.’ In UCL City Leadership Lab Report. London: University College London. Acuto, Michele, Mika Morissette, Dan Chan, and Benjamin Leffel. 2016. ‘“City Diplomacy” and Twinning: Lessons from the UK, China and Globally,’ January. Bilsky, Edgardo, Andrea Ciambra, Mathieu Guérin, and Ludovic Terren, eds. 2017. GOLD IV: Co-Creating the Urban Future. Barcelona, Spain: UCLG. C40. 2015. ‘C40 Clean Bus Declaration.’ C40. http://c40-production-ima ges.s3.amazonaws.com/other_uploads/images/884_C40_CITIES_CLEAN_ BUS_DECLARATION_OF_INTENT_FINAL_DEC1.original_EC2.original. original.pdf?1479915583.

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

33

Campbell, Tim. 2001. ‘Innovation and Risk-Taking: Urban Governance in Latin America.’ In Global City-Regions. Trends, Theory, Policy, edited by Allen J. Scott, 214–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CEVIPOF. 2019. ‘Baromètre de La Confiance Politique – Vague 10.’ CEVIPOF. https://www.sciencespo.fr/cevipof/sites/sciencespo.fr.cevipof/ files/CEVIPOF_confiance_vague10-1.pdf. Comune di Milano. 2020. ‘Protocollo d’intesa Tra Milano, Genova e Torino per La Promozione Dei Rispettivi Territori.’ Press release, 30 April. https://www.comune.milano.it/-/turismo.-protocollo-d-intesa-tra-mil ano-genova-e-torino-per-la-promozione-dei-rispettivi-territori. Dierwechter, Yonn. 2010. ‘Metropolitan Geographies of US Climate Action: Cities, Suburbs, and the Local Divide in Global Responsibilities.’ Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 12 (1): 59–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 15239081003625960. Dragone, Monica. 2020. Interview to Monica Dragone, officer at the City of Milan’s City to City Cooperation Unit Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Favereau, Eric, and Thibaut Sardier. 2019. ‘Edgar Morin et Alain Touraine, une humanité de pensée.’ Libération.fr, 3 February. https://www.liberation. fr/debats/2019/02/03/edgar-morin-et-alain-touraine-une-humanite-de-pen see_1707195. Federal Republic of Germany, and French Republic. 2019. Franco-German Treaty of Aachen. https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/ger many/france-and-germany/franco-german-treaty-of-aachen/. Florida, Richard, Tim Gulden, and Charlotta Mellander. 2008. ‘The Rise of the Mega-Region.’ Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 1 (3): 459–76. https:// doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsn018. Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments. 2019. Outcome Document or the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments—Durban Formal Session, 15 November 2019. Durban: Global Taskforce of Local And Regional Governments. https://www.global-taskforce.org/sites/default/files/201911/WALRG%20Outcome%20Document%20Durban%2015%20November% 202019_0.pdf. Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. 2020. Voceros de Buenos Aires Por El Mundo. Buenos Aires: Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. https://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/sites/gcaba/files/brief_voceros_de_b uenos_aires.pdf. Gottmann, Jean. 1957. ‘Megalopolis or the Urbanization of the Northeastern Seaboard.’ Economic Geography 33 (3): 189–200. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 142307.

34

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Handley, Susan. 2006. ‘Take Your Partners—The Local Authority Handbook on International Partnerships.’ 10. LGIB International Reports. Local Government International Bureau. Hopkins, Valerie, and James Shotter. 2019. ‘Liberal Mayors from Visegrad Four Unite to Defy Own Governments.’ Financial Times, 16 December. https:// www.ft.com/content/e9128e40-1d72-11ea-97df-cc63de1d73f4. Keiner, Marco, and Arley Kim. 2007. ‘Transnational City Networks for Sustainability.’ European Planning Studies 15 (10): 1369–95. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09654310701550843. Kern, Kristine, and Harriet Bulkeley. 2009. ‘Cities, Europeanization and Multilevel Governance: Governing Climate Change through Transnational Municipal Networks*.’ JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 47 (2): 309–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2009.00806.x. Kihlgren Grandi, Lorenzo. 2020. Le Nouveau Rôle International Des Villes (et Pourquoi Il Faut l’encourager). Paris, France: Terra Nova. http://tnova. fr/notes/le-nouveau-role-international-des-villes-et-pourquoi-il-faut-l-encour ager. Kihlgren Grandi, Lorenzo, and Cecilia Emma Sottilotta. 2020. ‘Cities vs. COVID-19.’ Urban Flag. Paris: Urban Flag. https://soundcloud.com/urb anflag/cities-vs-covid-19. Kotras, Sophie. 2012. ‘La Coopération Décentralisée Selon Angers.’ In La Diplomatie Des Autorités Locales et Régionales, Un Outil Au Service Du Dialogue et de La Paix, edited by Patrick Debut. Angers: INSET. Lundqvist, Lennart J., and Chris Von Borgstede. 2008. ‘Whose Responsibility? Swedish Local Decision Makers and the Scale of Climate Change Abatement.’ Urban Affairs Review 43 (3): 299–324. https://doi.org/10.1177/107808 7407304689. Mendes, Marcos Vinícius Isaias, and Ariane Roder Figueira. 2017. ‘Paradiplomacy and the International Competitiveness of Cities: The Case of Rio de Janeiro.’ Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 60 (1). https://doi.org/ 10.1590/0034-7329201700103. Metropolitan District of Quito, Government of Mexico City, European-Latin American Cooperation Alliance Among Cities (AL-LAs), Global Taskforce of Local And Regional Governments, and United Cities and Local Governments, eds. 2016. ‘A Seat at the Global Table: Local Governments as DecisionMakers in World Affairs.’ https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/files/a_s eat_at_the_global_table.pdf. OECD/UCLG. 2019. ‘2019 Report World Observatory on Subnational Government Finance and Investment: Key Findings.’ OECD. http://www. sng-wofi.org/reports/Key_Findings_2019.pdf. Parmentier, Florent. 2020. ‘Union Européenne: Contre-Populisme et “Pacte Des Villes Libres” Dans Les Pays Du Groupe de Visegrad.’ Diplomatie, July.

1

CITY DIPLOMACY: A STRATEGIC CHOICE

35

Rana, Kishan S. 2011. 21st Century Diplomacy: A Practitioner’s Guide. Key Studies in Diplomacy. London and New York: Continuum. Sassen, Saskia. 1991. The Global City. Princeton University Press. https://doi. org/10.2307/j.ctt2jc93q. ———. 2017. ‘Global Cities: Places for Researching the Translocal.’ In The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City, edited by Suzanne Hall and Ricky Burdett, 143–58. London: Sage. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sci ences-po/detail.action?docID=5107309. Struminger, Brenda. 2018. ‘Los Embajadores de Larreta: Así Funciona La Red de Voceros Porteños En Las Principales Ciudades Del Mundo - LA NACION.’ La Nación, 28 February. https://www.lanacion.com.ar/politica/ los-embajadores-de-larreta-asi-funciona-la-red-de-voceros-portenos-en-las-pri ncipales-ciudades-del-mundo-nid2105688. Teles, Filipe. 2016. Local Governance and Inter-Municipal Cooperation / Filipe Teles,…. 1 vol. (IX-107 pages) vols. Palgrave Pivot. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. United Cities and Local Governments. 2013. The Power of I-Cities | Learning UCLG. Barcelona: UCLG. https://www.learning.uclg.org/file/ power-i-cities. ———. 2014. Building the New Urban Agenda for Intermediary Cities. Barcelona: UCLG. https://www.uclg.org/sites/default/files/intermediary_ cities._construyendo_nueva_agencia_urbana._eng.pdf. United Nations. 2016. New Urban Agenda. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and Population Division. 2019. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision. New York: United Nations.

CHAPTER 2

The Historical, Legal, and Geographic Evolution of City Diplomacy

Abstract After more than a century since the first appearance of city diplomacy, cities’ capacity to act internationally is no more in doubt. Around the world, the debate shifted from whether cities can act internationally to the limits of their influence. The high rate of urbanization worldwide and the concentration of the world’s economy in a number of global cities are not enough to explain such a trend. Alongside these elements, a major political turn has risen in city halls since the end of the Second World War. Reconciliation, solidarity, regionalism, sustainable development, resilience, and now post-pandemic economic recovery: cities international action has been continuously evolving, guided by their commitment to link local to global. The chapter will illustrate this progressive widening of city diplomacy’s scope and impact, including insight into interaction with other international actors, shifting legal boundaries, and mutating geographies. Keywords City diplomacy · International organizations · NGOs · North-South cooperation · South-South cooperation · Triangular cooperation · Multilateralism

© The Author(s) 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3_2

37

38

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

The Ancient Roots of a Modern Practice Modern-day city diplomacy is the result of a dual evolutionary trend in both international relations and city management. Even if cities’ agency in international relations and world politics has risen steadily over more than a century, it is hardly the first time cities play a relevant role on the international stage. The oldest of political institutions—the word “politics” itself comes from π´oλις (pólis ), the Greek word for the city—deeply influenced international relations for millennia. Even if today’s city diplomacy lies on unprecedented sociopolitical and institutional balances, history reveals the propensity of cities across the world to connect with each other in order to prosper in a common trait across civilizations: “Cities come in groups because they need each other to be successful” (Taylor 2012, 10). A core feature of today’s city diplomacy, the coexistence of competition and cooperation relations between cities (see Chapter 5), has acted as a driver of human civilization throughout history (Clark 2013). Archeologists and historians have proved that economic and demographic expansion generally occurs within clusters of cities connected by trade routes—along which culture and political ideas can spread (Taylor 2012; Taylor et al. 2012). Moreover, as illustrated by Peter Taylor, cities’ economic and demographic rise in the past mainly took place in the framework of weak forms of centralization. Across the world, such a condition originated either from specific institutional architecture—e.g., the fable centralization of the Roman Empire—or from the crisis of the central authority, leading to a period of political uncertainty—e.g., the transfer of power from the Yuan Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty in China (1368–1644) (Taylor 2012). Most famous examples of cities’ centrality in Western history are probably found in Greek Poleis and Italian Signorie, even if their action could probably be compared to micro-states’ diplomacy rather than city diplomacy in its modern meaning. Although, Europe’s Middle Age, with its complex framework of overlapping authorities and allegiances (kingdoms, aristocracy, the church, and cities), created the conditions for what could indeed be considered as the ancestor of modern-day city networks, the Hanseatic League,1 whose cross-border governance of nearly 200 cities

1 A new Hanseatic League was created in 1980 as a network reuniting cities that belonged to the original League or had active trading with it. In July 2020 its membership currently comprised 194 cities in 16 countries (Städtebund die Hanse 2020).

2

THE HISTORICAL, LEGAL, AND GEOGRAPHIC EVOLUTION …

39

enjoyed effectiveness and legitimacy and lasted five centuries (from 1160 to 1660) (Take 2017). Despite such a relevant role played by cities throughout the centuries, the founding moment of the current international order, the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, clearly stated that international relations are the exclusive realm of states. The concept of Westphalian sovereignty itself—i.e., legally equal states on the international stage, each entitled to the full control on their domestic affairs to the exclusion of every external power - long precluded the involvement of actors other than central governments in international relations. If that did not hinder cities from perduring their role as the beacon of social, cultural, and economic progress, it did mark the impossibility for cities to establish formal diplomatic relations with foreign actors. Two hundred sixty-five years after Westphalia, at the 1913 Universal Exposition in Ghent, a group of mayors from across the world met for the International Congress of the Art of Building Cities and Organising Community Life—generally considered as the birth of modern city diplomacy. Emile Braun, then mayor of the Flemish city, convened his foreign counterparts in order to “deliberate on the major problems that arise from the universal nature of the conditions of present-day life, which are more or less the same everywhere” (UCLG 2013). The congress originated the International Union of Cities (renamed in 1928 International Union of Local Authorities—IULA), the first global city network, whose goal consisted of fostering technical city-to-city cooperation in local administration and urban planning. Quickly resuming its activities after the Second World War, IULA emerged as a key supporter of cities’ empowerment as actors of post-war reconciliation. In fact, city twinnings spread in Western Europe with the explicit political desire to reconcile former enemies. The practice, started in the 1920s (see Chapter 1, footnote 3), was revived through the agreements signed by British and German municipalities in 1947: Oxford and Bonn, Reading and Düsseldorf, Bristol and Hannover and, quite evocatively, Coventry and Kiel—both heavily destroyed by bombing during the War. Three years later, the first Franco-German twinning agreement was signed in 1950 between Montbéliard and Ludwigsburg, an example quickly followed by dozens of cities on both sides of the border. City networks are in no little part responsible of such spreading of bilateral agreements: alongside IULA, a key role was played by the Council of European Municipalities, the first regional city network

40

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

(created in 1951 and later renamed the Council of European Municipalities and Regions—CEMR), by the People-to-people program launched in 1956 by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower (reorganized in 1967 as a nonpartisan nonprofit organization under the name of Sister Cities International), and by the United Towns Organisation (UTO, created in 1957). UTO’s international activism in favor of city diplomacy led in 1971 to the first official recognition by the United Nations of town twinnings’ role in fostering international cooperation (Town Twinning as a Means of International Co-Operation 1971). Municipal cooperation between French and German cities emerged as an example of city diplomacy’s capacity not only to predate but to facilitate official reconciliation between former enemies. In 1963, when France and West Germany signed the Élysée Treaty, 130 twinning agreements between the two countries had already been signed (Garcia 2017). Alongside reconciliation goals, bilateral city diplomacy quickly deployed to create new partnerships between cities in the North and the South of the world, complementing a core goal of long-term solidarity with cultural and friendship purposes. The first twinning agreement between a French and an African city was signed in 1958 by Marseille and Abidjan. In France this process also involved small and medium cities: Millau (Aveyron) signed a twinning agreement with Louga (regional capital in North-western Senegal) in 1963, in 1967 Loudun (Vienne) twinned with Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso. Meanwhile, in democratic nations, city diplomacy’s scope widened to include a political stance on international issues. Often acting in cooperation with local civil society organizations, cities in the United States and Western Europe started coordinating their opposition to a series of foreign policy issues, such as the arms race, migration, relations with nondemocratic regimes, and climate change (see Chapters 4 and 7). To enhance their international action and positioning, cities started multiplying and structuring their international partnerships: city networks rose from 43 in 1975 to 200 today (Acuto et al. 2017). Following a process that started in 1995 aiming to rationalize their actions and enhance the impact of local governments on the international stage, the two leading global networks, IULA and UTO, decided in 2004 to merge into United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). UCLG is currently the largest and most representative network of cities, featuring more than 240,000 member local authorities, either by direct membership or through the 175 adhering associations of local and regional

2

THE HISTORICAL, LEGAL, AND GEOGRAPHIC EVOLUTION …

41

governments. Metropolis, the network of major cities in the world, also participate in the merge, thus evolving into the metropolitan section of UCLG. At the European level, a group of secondary cities led by Lyon, Milan, Frankfurt, Birmingham, and Rotterdam created in 1986 Eurocities. Headquartered in Brussels, Eurocities reunites in June 2020 more than 140 major European cities and has established itself as a privileged partner of the European Union in urban policy, emerging as one of the most active regional city networks. Similar networks rose across the world, such as CityNet in the Asia-Pacific region (established in 1987 with the support of UNESCAP, UNDP, and UN-Habitat), or Mercociudades in Latin America (launched in 1995 as Mercosur’s city network). As Chapters 3–9 will highlight, cities’ reactivity on a set of transnational issues, coupled with intense advocacy campaigns to sustainably impact their global governance, has led them to become a praised partner in implementing the main multilateral agendas. Parallelly, central governments, both in democratic and nondemocratic countries, have been shifting their attitude toward such capacity of cities to act internationally.

The Relations Between Cities and the Other Actors of International Relations States In line with the mentioned concept of Westphalian sovereignty, international law has long recognized states as the only actors of international relations—a privilege now shared with international organizations. Even if today cities from all over the world are multiplying their international activities, there is little doubt of the hierarchical relationship between national and city diplomacies—regardless of some provocative, yet ineffective declarations of some mayors unhappy with the foreign policy of the national government and pondering the creation of a city-state. Across the world, governments have shown a wide variety of approaches toward their cities’ international actions. Both institutional and political factors impact the nature of this relationship. First, highly centralized countries, particularly those run by autocratic regimes, usually leave little to no space for independent city diplomacy. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily imply the absence of cities’ international actions. As further developed in the next section of this chapter, both democracies

42

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

and autocracies are increasingly recurring to city diplomacy as a tool of soft power, complementing their public diplomacy strategy. In doing so, nations acknowledge the impact of the relationships cities are able to establish with their foreign counterparts through their co-creation and participatory approach. Cities’ soft power appears in that distinct from conventional public diplomacy, often based on “asymmetrical one-way efforts to inform and build a case for a nation’s position” (Snow 2020). It is worth noticing that democratic governments are not per se a guarantee for cooperation between national and city diplomacies. Certainly, the local election of mayors and political independence from the central government are critical drivers of city diplomacy. Paradoxically, so has proven to be substantial political divergence between the two levels of government. Over the last few decades, controversial foreign policy decisions taken by democratic central government have allowed for mayors to rise as representatives of their constituencies opposition. This practice has often involved the creation of national coalitions of mayors voicing their criticism within and beyond national borders and receiving, as a result, the support of foreign cities-and sometimes even governments. Such an inter-institutional discord has peaked with regard to the topics of disarmament, the environment, and migration (see Chapters 4, 7, and 9, respectively). Even if many “rebel” cities have raised their (and their mayors’) international visibility across the world, the widening of the inter-institutional foreign policy hiatus rarely represented a goal of city diplomacy. As this handbook aim at illustrating, multilevel partnership emerges as a fundamental tool to tackle today’s main transnational challenges. International Organizations Over the last few decades, cities and international organizations have multiplied and strengthened their partnerships. For a long time, cities have been considered by international organizations as mere expressions of civil society (such is the framework of the mentioned 1971 resolution by the United Nations). Nevertheless, over the last few years, the approach of most organizations has consistently changed, as they recognized the specificities linked to the municipal level of government. The opportunity of their involvement in multilevel partnerships with national and other subnational governments is today mentioned in most international agendas, such as the Paris Agreement or the 2030 Agenda. Some

2

THE HISTORICAL, LEGAL, AND GEOGRAPHIC EVOLUTION …

43

international organizations have also issued specific agendas aimed at cities or local governments in general, such as the United Nations’ New Urban Agenda (2016), the Urban Agenda for the EU (2016) and the Union for the Mediterranean Urban Agenda (2017) (United Nations 2016; European Union 2016; Union for the Mediterranean 2017). Moreover, several international organizations have created their own programs targeting urban governments and communities, sometimes involving the creation of city networks. As an example, UNESCO alone currently features eight different initiatives involving cities.2 Even if the search for “a seat at the global table,” the widespread goal of many cities and city networks to be formally included in global governance’s mechanisms, remains unaccomplished, international organizations are offering them several opportunities to share their vision and thus influence world politics. Notable examples of such a trend include the role attributed by the New Urban Agenda to the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments mentioned in Chapter 1, the inclusion of cities in the Conference on Migrants and Cities in the framework the International Organization for Migration’s global policy forum, the International Dialogue on Migration (see Chapter 9), and the creation of the Urban 20 (U20), the G20’s stakeholder engagement group for cities (see Box 5.2). International Funds and Development Banks Currently, cities’ access to international loans depends on the approval of their national state. This is due to the fact that cities lack international law’s personality: the incapacity of the city government to pay off its debt would imply the responsibility of the national government. Cities across the world are advocating for a change in this situation, not only to avoid complex bureaucratic negotiations with the central government but also in consideration that some central governments might decide, for political reasons, to prevent cities governed by the opposition from receiving much-needed loans.

2 UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN), UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities (GNLC), the International Coalition of Inclusive and Sustainable Cities (ICCAR), World Heritage Cities Programme, Megacities Alliance for Water Climate, the Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Cities, UNESCO’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Programme, and UNESCO/Netexplo Observatory.

44

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Currently, international lobbying for changing such procedure is led by the mentioned U20, aiming at promoting a G20-led evolution of international finance (Rodas 2020). Nongovernmental Organizations City diplomacy features a strong tradition of cooperation with both local and foreign NGOs. As a result of the spread of the participatory approach to international relations discussed in Chapter 1, most cities’ international activities include partnerships with NGOs—a practice that is often required in calls for projects issued by governments, international organizations, and charities. Moreover, cities sometimes decide to follow NGOs’ footsteps, especially by getting involved in decentralized cooperation in cities where local NGOs were already active. Finally, cities themselves might issue calls for international projects in their partner cities open to their local NGOs. For example, such practice has been used by cities like Paris and Barcelona to provide rapid support to their partner cities during the COVID-19 crisis (see Chapter 3). As in their relations with businesses, the international relations department should make sure that NGOs with whom they partner are trustworthy, that their inclusion in the project would not negatively impact it in terms of public image, and that the NGOs are not following any hidden agenda. Private Sector As another consequence of the participatory approach to city diplomacy, municipalities are increasingly involving local businesses in their actions abroad. This allows municipalities to share the cost of international activities they could not afford otherwise. Furthermore, as municipalities frequently aim at capitalizing on existing international connections, they quite often create or strengthen official relations with cities where their local companies have been investing. This also works in the other way, with city-to-city relations leading to enhanced B2B relations (see Chapter 5). Finally, as the participatory approach is increasingly included in the call for projects issued by third parties such as international organizations and charities (see Box 3.1), cities are increasingly interacting with foreign businesses in the framework of bilateral and multilateral initiatives.

2

THE HISTORICAL, LEGAL, AND GEOGRAPHIC EVOLUTION …

45

This cooperation with the private sector generally does not entail specific issues, as long as the international relations department verifies the quality of private partners and the existence of any conflicts of interests or hidden agendas.

The Legal Framework City diplomacy activities have to comply with two legal frameworks simultaneously. First, each national (or statal, in case of some federation like the United States) legal system defines (either through constitutional or ordinary law, or a combination of the two) the limits of its cities’ international action. For example, this might include the need for a pre-emptive approval of twinning agreements by national governments. Needless to say, highly centralized countries, especially when coupled with authoritarian regimes, tend to build legal systems preventing cities from most, or any autonomy in designing their own international strategy. This does not preclude cities from implementing a set of city diplomacy activities, as long as they comply with often strict national guidelines. As mentioned, central governments in democratic and decentralized countries as well might put in place tools to directly influence the content of their cities’ diplomacy. Such a practice is usually implemented by issuing calls for projects to support the creation of city-to-city partnerships in selected countries, and on topics that correspond to national foreign policy’s priorities. The second legal framework, that of international law, pays little attention to cities. As discussed, such a framework has been designed around the assumption that only states and intergovernmental organizations are entitled to international law’s personality. This means that subnational governments act, from a perspective of international law, as mere agents of their national administration, responsible for their action in case of illegal conduct.3 It is worth noticing that, despite the situation is not likely to dramatically change in the next future, both of these frameworks experience a de

3 Even if it is not a common procedure, central governments could charge a mayor with the task of signing binding international treaties on behalf of the central government—i.e. granting them the “Full Powers”.

46

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

facto shifting. On a national level, a growing number of central governments are welcoming and encouraging city diplomacy. While specific goals and modalities might change, this approach generally shares, as mentioned, a public diplomacy perspective: cities are increasingly seen as important actors in raising the country’s international profile—particularly in those situations where direct national involvement is considered ineffective or even counterproductive. This trend of “proxy actions” differs slightly across the world but encompasses democratic and autocratic, centralized, decentralized countries. An example from democracies is that of France’s action in Francophone Africa. Well aware of France’s mixed perception by the local population and political leaders in that region—a consequence of both colonization and postcolonial relationships—the French government is increasingly encouraging and supporting French cities’ actions in Africa. By doing so, the government aims to benefit from their capacity to establish cooperative relations with local governments and build trust between populations, while opening the door to export and business expansion opportunities (‘Speech at the University of Ouagadougou’ 2017; Philippe 2019; Ledoux 2019). Clearly, the French government can only suggest its cities such a strategy, as any imposition would violate both the national and international legal systems (Kihlgren Grandi 2020; Council of Europe 1985). Following a similar public diplomacy goal—but with much more robust capacity to influence the decision of its municipalities—China is reinforcing its Belt and Road Initiative with a city diplomacy component (UNOSSC 2020), and is encouraging its cities to join a number of city networks. More recently, Chinese cities’ have been participating in the government’s “mask diplomacy”: Chinese local governments offered personal protective equipment (PPE) to their twin and friend cities across the world, just like the Chinese governments did with foreign states. Notwithstanding the very different level of political pressure to comply with the political priorities of their central governments, both French and Chinese cities active in the framework of these governmental programs receive an enhanced international exposure, with the potential of further international opening and connections. Nevertheless, the perception of

2

THE HISTORICAL, LEGAL, AND GEOGRAPHIC EVOLUTION …

47

a governmental drive of city actions can lead foreign partners to cancel partnerships.4 On the international level, two elements are pushing toward a more influential position of cities: 1. Increasingly widespread recognition of their mastery in swiftly addressing transnational challenges through international networks, programs, and campaigns. This point can be seen as a success for cities’ and city networks’ advocacy, to a large extent focused on the international recognition of city diplomacy’s added value on the regional/global stage; 2. The mentioned rise of partnerships between cities and international organizations and bodies, namely the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union, and G20. Mayors and city networks representatives are increasingly invited to international meetings and summits to express their voice on the implementation of major global agendas. Parallelly, international organizations have created a series of city networks themselves, to enhance local government contribution to their goals. This includes the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, the World Health Organization’s Healthy Cities network, as well as Cities Alliance, launched in 1999 by the World Bank and UN-Habitat to foster sustainable development in the world’s poorest neighborhoods. As a result of this dual shifting, cities frequently find themselves in a somewhat paradoxical situation featuring a hiatus between strict legal limitations of their international activities, and de facto empowerment. This situation is likely to perdure in the upcoming future, while on the long term it might evolve into a more structured engagement of cities in national foreign policy and international organizations, possibly tending to a mixed system of international relations where the voice of cities is integrated into national and international decision-making processes with an urban impact (see Afterword). 4 In October 2019, Prague mayor Zdenek Hˇrib’s opposition to the “One China” policy clause in his city’s twinning agreement with Beijing led the latter to prematurely end the agreement. Three months later, Prague’s decision to sign a twinning agreement with Taipei led Shanghai to cancel its twinning agreement with the Czech capital (AFP 2020a, b).

48

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Shifting Geographies Another major feature of city diplomacy lies in its unequal geographical spread. Despite the active participation of a rising number of (mainly large) African and Asian cities, city diplomacy remains a phenomenon concentrated in Europe, which hosts the highest number of city networks’ headquarters (107 over a total of 200) (Acuto et al. 2017; Bansard et al. 2017) and the Americas. This effect can be linked to three main dynamics: 1. Modern city diplomacy originated in Europe in the early twentieth century and quickly expanded to the Americas thanks to the solid political, economic, and cultural connections and similarities between these regions; 2. The relatively higher rate of participation of cities in Europe and the Americas to global networks, and the spread of networks connecting these two regions, in particular Europe and Latin America, such as the Euro-Latin American Alliance for Cooperation between Cities (AL-LAs), the Union of Ibero-American Capital Cities (UCCI), and the Union of Portuguese-Language Capital Cities (UCCLA); 3. Despite being a global trend, decentralization—a core driver of city diplomacy5 —remains far more accentuated in Europe and the Americas compared to Africa and Asia. Nevertheless, these geographies are gradually shifting, with a constant rise of global networks’ membership by cities in Africa and Asia, and the multiplication of regional city diplomacy in these two continents, mainly as a result of the mentioned global trend toward decentralization. Moreover, as highlighted in Chapter 3, city diplomacy is experiencing the spreading of more-balanced and mutually beneficial partnerships between cities in the South and the North, based in no little part on the rise of transnational challenges affecting cities worldwide, such as climate change, migration, violent extremism, and the digital revolution.

5 As cities cooperate mainly in the topics they directly manage, it is not surprising that decentralized countries, such as the Netherlands or Canada, experience higher international activism of cities.

2

THE HISTORICAL, LEGAL, AND GEOGRAPHIC EVOLUTION …

49

This new approach has led some cities in the North to restructure their international relations department to merge the team devoted to relationships with cities in the North with those in charge of cooperation with developing countries.6 In line with this trend, international donors are increasingly modifying their call for projects: an example is the European Union, which introduced calls for projects whose lead applicant shall be a local authority from a developing country (European Commission 2015). Another key transformation consists of the spread of South-South city diplomacy, both in the framework of bilateral and multilateral partnerships. This includes cities’ involvement in conflict and post-conflict situations (see Chapter 4) and development cooperation (Chapter 3). An example is provided by the South American cities’ cooperation in the framework of citizen security, which emerged as a human rights response to a shared legacy of authoritarian regimes between the 1960s and 1980s (Rodrigues and Mattioli 2017).

References Acuto, Michele, Hugo Decramer, Mika Morissette, Jack Doughty, and Yvonne Ying. 2017. ‘City Networks: New Frontiers for City Leaders.’ In UCL City Leadership Lab Report. London: University College London. AFP. 2020a. ‘Prague Mayor Condemns China, Unveils Taipei Partnership.’ France 24, 11 January. https://www.france24.com/en/20200111-praguemayor-condemns-china-unveils-taipei-partnership. ———. 2020b. ‘Shanghai Cuts Prague Ties After Mayor Announces Taipei Twinning.’ France 24, 14 January. https://www.france24.com/en/202 00114-shanghai-cuts-prague-ties-after-mayor-announces-taipei-twinning. Bansard, Jennifer, Philipp Pattberg, and Oscar Widerberg. 2017. ‘Cities to the Rescue? Assessing the Performance of Transnational Municipal Networks in Global Climate Governance.’ International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 17 (2): 229–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784016-9318-9. Clark, Peter, ed. 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

6 The subdivision in institutional relations and decentralized cooperation has long been a common feature of Municipalities in the Global North. European municipalities sometimes also feature a dedicated office for applying to and managing European projects and grants. For example, this has been the case in Milan (La Ferla and Commodaro 2020). Understandably, IR departments in Global South’s cities tend not to have such division.

50

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Council of Europe. 1985. European Charter of Local Self-Government. ETS No. 122. https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/Displa yDCTMContent?documentId=090000168007a088. European Commission. 2015. ‘Participação e Oportunidades de Desenvolvimento Local: Actividades Culturais, Criativas e Direitos Ambientais.’ European Union. https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/europeaid/online-services/ index.cfm?ADSSChck=1595341577535&do=publi.welcome&orderby=upd& nbPubliList=15&aofr=150577&searchtype=RS&orderbyad=Desc&userlangu age=en. European Union. 2016. Pact of Amsterdam—Urban Agenda for the EU. https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/system/files/ged/pact-of-amsterdam_ en.pdf. Garcia, Elise. 2017. ‘Les Collectivités Territoriales Dans La Coopération Française : Origines, Spécificités et Perspectives.’ Pour Mémoire. La Révue Des Ministères de La Transition Écologique et Solidaire et de La Cohésion Des Territoire, Fall. Kihlgren Grandi, Lorenzo. 2020. Le Nouveau Rôle International Des Villes (et Pourquoi Il Faut l’encourager). Paris, France: Terra Nova. http://tnova. fr/notes/le-nouveau-role-international-des-villes-et-pourquoi-il-faut-l-encour ager. La Ferla, Silvia, and Gianfranco Commodaro. 2020. Interview to Silvia La Ferla and Gianfranco Commodaro, City of Milan’s International Relations Department Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Ledoux, Vincent. 2019. ‘Ouvrir Nos Territoires à La Priorité Africaine de La France.’ Rapport au premier ministre et au ministre de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères. Philippe, Édouard. 2019. ‘Lettre de Mission à M. Vincent Ledoux, Député Du Nord,’ 25 February. Rodas, Mauricio. 2020. Interview to Mauricio Rodas Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Rodrigues, Gilberto Marcos Antonio, and Thiago Mattioli. 2017. ‘Paradiplomacy, Security Policies and City Networks: The Case of the Mercocities Citizen Security Thematic Unit.’ Contexto Internacional 39 (3): 569–87. https://doi.org/10.1590/s0102-8529.2017390300006. Snow, Nancy. 2020. ‘Rethinking Public Diplomacy in the 2020s.’ In Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, edited by Nancy Snow and Nicholas John Cull, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge. ‘Speech at the University of Ouagadougou.’ 2017. https://www.elysee.fr/emm anuel-macron/2017/11/28/emmanuel-macrons-speech-at-the-university-ofouagadougou.en. Städtebund die Hanse. 2020. ‘The Hanseatic League.’ https://www.hanse. org/en/.

2

THE HISTORICAL, LEGAL, AND GEOGRAPHIC EVOLUTION …

51

Take, Ingo. 2017. ‘The Hanseatic League as an Early Example of CrossBorder Governance?’ Journal of European Integration History 23 (1): 71–96. https://doi.org/10.5771/0947-9511-2017-1-71. Taylor, Peter J. 2012. ‘Historical World City Networks.’ In International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities, edited by Derudder Ben, Hoyler Michael, Taylor Peter James, and Frank Witlox. Elgar Original Reference. Cheltenham and Northhampton (MA): Edward Elgar. Taylor, Peter J., Michael Hoyler, and Dennis Smith. 2012. ‘Cities in the Making of World Hegemonies.’ In International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities, edited by Derudder Ben, Hoyler Michael, Taylor Peter James, and Frank Witlox. Elgar Original Reference. Cheltenham and Northhampton (MA): Edward Elgar. Town Twinning as a Means of International Co-Operation. 1971. UCLG. 2013. ‘100 Years: Testimonies.’ https://www.uclg.org/sites/default/ files/libro%20centenario-web%20(1).pdf. Union for the Mediterranean. 2017. Union for the Mediterranean Urban Agenda. Vol. 13/17 EN. https://ufmsecretariat.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2017/05/EN-FINAL-SUD-Ministerial-declaration.pdf. United Nations. 2016. New Urban Agenda. UNOSSC. 2020. ‘South-South and Triangular Cooperation among MaritimeContinental Silk Road Cities for Sustainable Development Project.’ http:// southsouthcities.org/.

CHAPTER 3

Decentralized Cooperation

Abstract Decentralized cooperation refers to a broad array of local governments’ international actions sharing the goal of fostering socioeconomic development in one or more of the participant cities. Born in the aftermath of the Second World War as a purely value-based activity fueled by solidarity, this practice has evolved to generate added value and benefits for both “donor” and “recipient” cities. This chapter aims at presenting the core features and challenges of today’s decentralized cooperation activities. It will take into consideration the partnerships with the other actors of development cooperation, i.e., governments, international organizations, and NGOs. Finally, it will include a focus on the practice of co-development, consisting of the involvement of migrant communities in cooperation activities in their countries and cities of origin. Keywords City diplomacy · Decentralized cooperation · Development aid · Transnational solidarity · Solidarity · Reciprocity · Co-development · COVID-19

© The Author(s) 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3_3

53

54

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

When Solidarity Connects Cities Across the World Through decentralized cooperation1 activities, cities are supported in their socioeconomic development by their peers. As highlighted in Chapter 2, such an approach emerged in bilateral frameworks since the end of the Second World War. It was an integral part of many of the first twinning agreements, through which cities deeply affected by the war received much-needed material support from their foreign peers. The fact that such an action connected cities in former enemy countries speaks of the high level of political commitment of many cities toward transnational solidarity, a key driver of city diplomacy itself. This bilateral approach quickly expanded to connect cities in developed countries with those in developing ones. The process aimed at accompanying decolonization—e.g., French cities showed a particular commitment in supporting the independence process in Francophone Africa. This process slowly moved toward more pronounced reciprocity between “donor” and “recipient” cities and local partners’ involvement on both sides. Moreover, it received increased recognition from central governments, who generally support this kind of activity for its positive impact in terms of public diplomacy (see Chapter 2).

A Unique Approach Cities’ action in development cooperation has often been compared to that of states and NGOs. Albeit cities frequently cooperate with these two actors, their approach stands out in terms of goals and methodology. – Unlike states, cities with independent city diplomacy strategies can hardly be accused of having hidden agendas to influence or 1 In France, the term “coopération décentralisée” (decentralized cooperation) has been used in the past to cover all international activities implemented by local governments. Today, the generally accepted term for city diplomacy is “action internationale des collectivités territoriales” (territorial collectivities’ international action) (ARRICOD 2018). Nevertheless, the initial term is still found in name of the main public body connecting national and city diplomacies, the Commission National de la Coopération Décentralisée (National Commission of Decentralized Cooperation). Since 2008, the European Union uses the term decentralized cooperation to indicate local governments’ development aid (European Commission 2008).

3

DECENTRALIZED COOPERATION

55

control foreign cities’ politics and economy. Moreover, states tend to concentrate on central administration support, leaving space for specific partnerships with local governments. – Differently from NGOs, whose involvement in foreign cities tends to be framed by the temporal limits of their projects, cities aim at creating a stable, long-term relationship with the local partner. Nevertheless, this does not mean that fiscal distress might not impact the scale and temporality of cities’ actions.

The Evolution of Decentralized Cooperation Over time, decentralized cooperation has faced a three-fold evolution in terms of its content, methodology, and geographic scope. First, in terms of content, over the last few years, cities have realized they share a set of common, mostly unprecedented challenges, ranging from the rising temperatures to air pollution, from violent extremism to epidemics such as the COVID-19. As a result, decentralized cooperation has been evolving accordingly. Initially intended as a mere act of solidarity toward urban communities in need, decentralized cooperation represents today an opportunity to cooperate in realizing shared goals—even if costs and impact generally remain unbalanced, and solidarity still plays a relevant role in driving the practice. Such an approach has been widely adopted by cities and city networks, as shown by the increased use of the term “partnership” to qualify this kind of activities. Moreover, political alignment on shared goals has fostered increased technical cooperation between partner cities’ municipal services sharing similar tasks. Such practice, also known as “Officers without Borders,” allows for increased learning on both sides and presents limited costs for municipalities, making it available also for those experiencing budget cuts (Dragone 2020). This evolution finds its main institutional supporter in the United Nations, whose development strategy has shifted from addressing the needs of the least developed countries (Millennium Development Goals) to a global partnership framework for achieving sustainable development in the whole world (Agenda 2030 with its Sustainable Development Goals—SDGs). This notably includes a specific accent on “making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” (SDG number 11).

56

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Second, in terms of methodology, the practice evolved toward a more significant implication of the receiving administration, and of population and stakeholders on both sides. This horizontal and vertical participatory process received its first formal recognition in 2005 by OECD’s Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.2 It is nevertheless linked to a major trend in development cooperation emerged in the early 1990s and today embraced by the different actors in the field, such as national agencies, international development banks, and NGOs, who became progressively aware of the limits of “top-down,” ready-made approaches (Mansuri and Rao 2012). On both sides of the partnership, the implemented activities involve empowering communities to contribute to the definition of shared goals, and allow for co-ownership of the achievements. As a result, projects feature a stronger adherence to local needs, values, and interests of both sides. Moreover, the methodology has evolved to include enhanced monitoring and impact evaluation, traditionally weak points of decentralized cooperation, an evolution encouraged by donor institutions.3 Box 3.1: The Quelimane (Clean Quelimane) Limpa Project Located on Mozambique’s eastern seaboard, Quelimane is the capital of the Zambezia province. Like many other cities in Africa, it has been experiencing rapid urbanization. Its population increased from 193,300 in 2007 to around 350,000 in 2017, mainly due to the influx of migrants from the rural hinterland. The impact in terms of waste overwhelmed

2 Even if the 2005 Paris Declaration in Aid Effectiveness was the result of a debate

between national governments, with no local governments’ participation, the relevance of their involvement appears in the declaration. The central role of local governments was further stressed in OECD‘ Accra Agenda for Action (2008), as well as in the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Co-Operation (2011), two instruments whose definition benefited from the contribution of cities and local governments (and of other non-state actors of development cooperation) (OECD 2005, 2008; ‘The Busan Partnership for Effective Development Co-Operation’ 2011). 3 Today, most calls for projects to support decentralized cooperation issued by international organizations, central governments, development agencies, and NGOs demand qualitative and quantitative impact assessment procedures to be included in the application, with a part of the total budget explicitly allocated to that purpose.

3

DECENTRALIZED COOPERATION

57

the management capacities of the dedicated municipal agency, EMUSA, leading to environmental damage (mainly water contamination) and the spread of diseases. The existing relationship with Milan—enhanced by Quelimane participation in the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact —facilitated a concrete collaboration on such an issue. The two municipalities cowrote the application to the European Union’s new generation of grants requiring the lead applicant to be a local authority from a developing country. The project was awarded a contribution of e338.530 by the EU and enjoyed additional funding from the Lombardy region, the City of Milan, Novamont, and the Peppino Vismara foundation. Activities took place between December 2016 and August 2019. In line with its multi-stakeholder approach to city diplomacy, the city of Milan involved in the project a series of local actors, including its waste management agency, AMSA (A2A Group), which conducted training to EMUSA staff, offering advice on the evolution of their waste management strategy. As a result, new practices of waste collection and compost processing have been introduced. Moreover, both municipalities involved local and international NGOs (namely Celim ONLUS) to support the design, implementation, and monitoring of activities. On Quelimane’s side, the project outcomes included a quantified increase in waste management and the spread of composting, which translated into increased availability of locally produced fruits and vegetables in local markets. Through the project, the Municipality of Milan could improve its experience in co-creation and co-ownership of projects, as well as in knowledge transfer and local stakeholders’ mobilizations. Local partners from Milan could expand their expertise and visibility through such international project while exchanging knowledge with foreign partners.The successful implementation of the project led the two cities to start a new cooperation project on Quelimane’s water management (2018–2021). It features a similar capacity building and pilot project approach, this time implemented in cooperation with MM SpA, the City of Milan’s engineering company. Sources (European Commission 2015), Halliday et al. (2019), and La Ferla and Commodaro (2020).

Third, in geographical terms, decentralized cooperation is a key component of the rising practice of South-South and triangular city cooperation mentioned in Chapter 2. Examples include Chinese cities’

58

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

initiatives in the frame of the “Belt and Road” initiative,4 as well as the activities of several city networks: Mercociudades, the regional network of Mercosur launched in 1995, finds in South-South cooperation its own raison d’être, just like United Cities and Local Governments of Africa, UCLG’s African section, funded in 2005 by merging three existing city network, namely the African Union of Local Authorities (AULA); the Union des Villes Africaines (UVA); and the Africa Chapter of the Unao dos Ciudades y Capitaes Lusofono Africana, (UCCL AFRICA).

The Challenges of Decentralized Cooperation The most common challenge in decentralized cooperation activities lies in institutional, political, socioeconomic, and cultural differences between partners. This implies that copy-paste activities are likely to meet obstacles if involved cities have not taken the time to familiarize with each other and establish tailor-made, common strategies based on both local specificities. In order to establish such fruitful collaboration, cities can leverage on existing connections, such as those created by migration (see Box 3.3 on co-development), NGOs, universities, and businesses. Additional support can come from embassies or consulates from both nations. Another challenge consists in avoiding duplication. The Atlas of Decentralized Cooperation published by the European Committee of the Regions shows that most activities implemented by European local authorities concentrate on a limited number of cities of a limited number of countries, usually those connected with Europe by migration (Committee of the Regions 2020). These concentrations reduce the impact of cooperation initiatives and open to the risk of overlaps of projects. Instead of following the footsteps of their peers, cities interested in establishing new partnerships should consider the opportunities stemming from interacting with less connected cities, where they would enjoy the advantage of being the leading foreign partner. Calls for projects by actors such as national governments, development agencies, and the European Union have also been reported to have a distortive impact, leading cities to design international activities based on 4 In 2017 the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) launched the “South-South and Triangular Cooperation(SSTC)among Maritime-Continental Silk Road Cities for Sustainable Development Project”. The project involves around 50 cities in the Pacific Region, Eurasia, MENA countries and Africa (UNOSSC 2020).

3

DECENTRALIZED COOPERATION

59

the call rather than on concrete needs (Kihlgren Grandi 2020, 32–34). Luckily, the likelihood of such an issue seems to significantly diminish whenever cities are able to establish long-term partnerships featuring preparatory talks to identify potential topics of cooperation, and then apply for compatible grants as soon as their call for project is issued (La Ferla and Commodaro 2020). The limited decentralization in most developing countries represents an important point to take into consideration. It usually entails the need to involve the central government in the process. This is, for example, a frequent scenario in the Sahel region in Africa, where local authorities are primarily perceived by governments as enablers of their policies (Mestre 2020). To avoid ambiguity, cities should consider making a preliminary assessment on which level of government is responsible for taking the needed decisions and for their implementation. Moreover, the process’s timeline might need to include extra time to allow the different levels of governance to interact. Compared to the other dimensions of city diplomacy, solidarityinspired initiatives frequently offer the local opposition—regardless of its political color—with the opportunity to attack the municipality’s action. This criticism generally goes along two lines, connected and often used simultaneously: the accusation of waste of money (sometimes coupled with a more or less explicit accusation of embezzlement based on the trope of personal tourism for the mayor and the involved municipal staff), and that, more political, of putting foreign relations before the wellbeing of citizens. Such allegations might find fertile ground in the mentioned widespread lack of evaluation and impact analysis in decentralized cooperation projects. By periodically assessing the impact of projects and sharing their results with residents and stakeholders, municipalities will have the tools to raise support for the continuation of ongoing projects and constant evolution toward more effective and efficient initiatives. Municipalities should take the opportunity of decentralized operation projects for sharing the overall international strategy of the city, and how it is implemented through the project in question. The communication should include a pedagogical component informing the population about the project and the partners’ situation. As illustrated in the first chapter, a focus on the activity’s impact on the involved partners, including storytelling techniques, could help share the understanding of the tangible impact of the partnership. Finally, public information should include a solid final report of the impact of the project in the short, mid, and long

60

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

term, providing figures such as the value of the economic participation of local companies, the number of volunteers and young people involved in the project, the jobs created if any, as well as the financial support received by public and private donors. Hence, such a report would testify the capacity of the cities investment to mobilize the financial participation of other actors (financial leverage). Needless to say, a specific communication should be put in place if the project was awarded prestigious grants and awards by actors such as international organizations and NGOs.

Local Corruption Corruption, in its different forms, is a well-known obstacle to development cooperation. Across the world, corruption can be found in both centralized and decentralized countries, and has shown to have a positive correlation with poverty and inequality (Mansuri and Rao 2012). Moreover, poverty and lack of public information on municipal activities are perceived as factors limiting local monitoring and sanctioning of corruption. Therefore, complementing the decentralized cooperation project with a strong strategy to empower the local population in the perspective of co-creation and co-responsibility—if possible combined with an external and independent audit—is likely to contribute to fighting local corruption (ibidem).

Ongoing and Future Evolution A core component of city diplomacy since the 1950s, development cooperation has shown its capacity to evolve toward the mutually benefiting and participatory approaches described in this chapter, thus unlocking its full potential for local community empowerment, tailor-made actions, shared agency, and pride. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented health and economic challenges in most cities globally. Moreover, the crisis quickly highlighted cities’ inequalities and unsolved challenges, with a harsher impact on the most fragile population, for whom social distancing and sometimes even basic hygiene precautions were not an option. In such a situation, municipalities across the world have reacted by putting in place a series of unprecedented measures to limit the spread of the disease and support those in need, while taking precautions to protect their agents.

3

DECENTRALIZED COOPERATION

61

Besides these compelling planning and budgetary efforts, cities found themselves in need of disruptive social, economic, and technological innovations to cope with the increasing fragility of both individuals and communities. City diplomacy rapidly rose as a key component in providing cities with the know-how, and sometimes even the resources, to cope with the crisis. First, most city networks created online platforms and hosted virtual meetings to allow member cities exchange their best practices on the topic—an action particularly useful given the progressive spread of the disease across the globe, allowing cities not yet hit by the virus to benefit from the many lessons learned by their peers. Moreover, networks started cooperating with each other, in contrast with the competition they sometimes showed in the past. Examples of such cooperation include Metropolis and AL-LAs joining forces in creating “Cities for Global Health”, a platform for spreading best practices from cities across the world. This trend also includes cooperation in designing strategies for economic recovery: the C40 has created a dedicated working group, chaired by the Mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala, whose works produced a strategy made available to other cities in the world (C40 2020, 40; Sala et al. 2020). In terms of concrete solidarity, a number of cities in the Global North, including those deeply affected by the virus, reinforced their support to cities in developing countries. Examples include the e400,000 call for projects by the Municipality of Barcelona (Ajuntament de Barcelona 2020) or the e200,000 emergency fund by the city of Paris to NGOs working in cities in developing countries (Sparacino 2020). Given both the global, yet unequal nature of the pandemic, hitting at diverse intensity cities and states both in the Global North and Global South, the direction of city-to-city solidarity was sometimes different, with expressions of North-North solidarity, such as that between Frankfurt and its sister city Milan (Eurocities 2020), or the cities in Europe and North America (USC Center on Public Diplomacy 2020) in Latin America (Alvarez 2020) and Africa (Xinhua 2020) receiving help from their Chinese twin cities. In multilateral terms, city diplomacy measures included the almost e2 million fund created by AIMF to assists its members in developing countries cope with the crisis (see Box 3.2), and the fund for African municipalities created by Cités Unies France. Smaller cities also

62

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

showed their solidarity, as happened within the Cittaslow network, whose members exchanged best practices and donated masks and medical equipment to most affected cities in Italy, France, and Poland (Kihlgren Grandi and Sottilotta 2020). Due to the harsh impact of the COVID-19 crisis on municipal finances across the world, the chances are that cities’ reduced funding availability will mark the immediate future of decentralized cooperation. Nevertheless, digital technology—and in particular the spread of videoconferencing tools—will allow for at least a part of this cooperation to shift over the Internet, in particular for training and sharing of best practices. Box 3.2: City networks based on shared history: the International Association of Francophone Mayors (AIMF) and the International Union of Iberoamerican Capitals (UCCI) The Association Internationale des Maires Francophones (AIMF ) was created in 1979, at the initiative of the then mayors of Paris and Quebec, Jacques Chirac and Jean Pelletier, in order to foster solidarity and cooperation between French-speaking cities around the world. In March 2020, the AIMF features 307 member cities in 52 countries (23 in France), and four permanent commissions (Cities and sustainable development; Training of territorial executives and issues related to gender; Innovative cities—Social and solidarity economy; Living together). By means of its funds and partnerships with donors such as the European Union and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the AIMF supports several initiatives in its member cities in developing countries. Through its activities and publications, the AIMF has raised awareness of the impact of city diplomacy on the quality of life of residents, in line with its objective of improving municipal management and strengthening local democracy. A vocal advocate of decentralization, the AIMF contributed to highlighting the role of mayors in implementing local solutions to transnational challenges, such as sustainable development, social cohesion, and the integration of digital technologies in public policies. The Unión de Ciudades Capitales Iberoamericanas (UCCI ) was created in 1982 in Madrid to bring together the Iberian and Latin American capitals and is also based on linguistic and cultural ties. Like the AIMF, the Union focuses its activities on cooperation and solidarity between member cities. It is notably at the origin of two cultural celebrations inspired by the European Capital of Culture: the Capital Iberoamericana de la Cultura

3

DECENTRALIZED COOPERATION

(launched in 1991) and the Plaza Mayor de la Cultura Iberoamericana (1994). With a membership policy limited to capitals and major cities, the UCCI has 25 full members and 4 associated cities in 24 countries in March 2020. Both networks supported cooperation and knowledge sharing in the framework of the COVID-19 pandemic and are currently fostering an internal debate on urban recovery policies, with the contribution of external experts. Moreover, AIMF put in place an extraordinary fund of almost e2 M to support the response to COVID-19 in around 20 of its member cities. Sources AIMF (2016, 2020), Baillet (2020), and UCCI (2018, 2020).

Box 3.3: Co-development Co-development is one of the most tangible examples of how city diplomacy provides municipalities with the opportunity of matching moral values and local interests both locally and abroad. The enabler of such dynamic lies in migration. Sometimes referred to as “migration for development” (Alvarez Tinajero and Sinatti 2012), the term co-development was coined in 1997 by French scholar Sami Naïr in a report for the French Government to define the opportunity of “going beyond cooperation in order to establish common objectives. The shared interest of France and the countries of origin is to make migration a vector of development - because it means stabilizing migratory flows in the country of origin and guaranteeing integration into France itself” (Naïr 1997, 3). For municipalities, this approach implies local migrant communities’ involvement in decentralized cooperation activities aimed at their city or country of origin. This allows for the empowerment of migrants—with positive impacts in terms of integration— and has the potential of strengthening the project with the know-how, the personal connections, and the generally high commitment shown by migrants involved in such actions. Alongside countries and regions, cities have been implementing a broad set of co-development activities (Joint Migration and Development Initiative 2013). As the destination of ample and sustained migration flow

63

64

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

from African countries, French cities have implemented many initiatives featuring a co-development approach, as reported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Atlas de la Coopération Décentralisée. An example is represented by the Montreuil–Cercle de Yélimané partnership. Located in Paris’ metropolitan area, the city of Montreuil has been involved in cooperation activities with Cercle de Yélimané, Mali, since the signing of their twinning agreement in 1985. Cercle de Yélimané, a grouping of 13 municipalities, is the birthplace to a fair part of the vast Malian community residing in Montreuil, informally known in France as the “little Bamako.” Several local migrant associations participate in city diplomacy activities, including the Association of Malian Women in Montreuil (Association des Femmes Maliennes de Montreuil ) and the Association for the Development of Yélimané in France (Association pour le Développement du Cercle de Yélimané en France – ADCYF ). One of the outcomes of this framework is the creation of a women center in Yélimané, inspired on the one in Montreuil and implemented with the support of the Malian diaspora and associations. Sources (Naïr 1997), Alvarez Tinajero and Sinatti (2012), Sembene (2016), and Ville de Montreuil (2020).

References AIMS. 2016. Statuts de l’ Association Internationale Des Maires et Responsables Des Capitales et, Métropoles Partiellement Ou Entièrement Francophones. https://aimf.asso.fr/IMG/pdf/statuts_reglement_interieu_ag_sept_2 016.pdf. ———. 2020. ‘#Covid-19 : Le Plan d’appui de l’AIMF Aux Villes,’ July. https:// www.aimf.asso.fr/Covid-19-le-plan-d-appui-de-l-AIMF-aux-villes.html. Ajuntament de Barcelona. 2020. ‘Crida per a La Resposta a Una Emergència Determinada: Covid-19.’ https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/relacionsintern acionalsicooperacio/sites/default/files/info_detallada_crida_covid19_cat_def. pdf. Alvarez, Mariano. 2020. ‘Opinion—Paradiplomacy in Times of Pandemic: The Paths Ahead.’ E-International Relations (blog), 1 July. https://www.e-ir. info/2020/07/01/opinion-paradiplomacy-in-times-of-pandemic-the-pathsahead/.

3

DECENTRALIZED COOPERATION

65

Alvarez Tinajero, Sandra Paola, and Giulia Sinatti. 2012. Migration for Development: A Bottom-Up Approach. Brussels: EC-UN Joint Migration and Development Initiative. http://www.migration4development.org/sites/m4d. emakina-eu.net/files/jmdi_august_2011_handbook_migration_for_develo pment_0.pdf. ARRICOD. 2018. ‘L’action Internationale Économique Des Collectivités Territoriales.’ ARRICOD. https://www.arricod.fr/wp-content/uploads/ ARRICOD-Laction-internationale-%C3%A9conomique.pdf. Baillet, Pierre. 2020. Interview to Pierre Baillet, Secretary Permanent of AIMF Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Telephone. C40. 2020. ‘C40: Global Mayors Launch COVID-19 Economic Recovery Task Force.’ C40, 15 April. https://www.c40.org/press_releases/global-mayorscovid-19-recovery-task-force. Committee of the Regions. 2020. ‘Atlas of Decentralised Cooperation.’ https:// lra4dev.cor.europa.eu/portal/en/atlas/Pages/Maps.aspx. Dragone, Monica. 2020. Interview to Monica Dragone, officer at the City of Milan’s City to City Cooperation Unit Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Eurocities. 2020. ‘European Cities Respond to the Coronavirus Crisis: Frankfurt—Solidarity with Twin City Milan.’ Live Updates COVID-19, 9 June. https://covidnews.eurocities.eu/2020/06/09/frankfurt-solidaritywith-twin-city-milan/. European Commission. 2008. ‘Local Authorities: Actors for Development.’ European Union. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri= COM:2008:0626:FIN:EN:PDF. ———. 2015. ‘Participação e Oportunidades de Desenvolvimento Local: Actividades Culturais, Criativas e Direitos Ambientais.’ European Union. https:// webgate.ec.europa.eu/europeaid/online-services/index.cfm?ADSSChck=159 5341577535&do=publi.welcome&orderby=upd&nbPubliList=15&aofr=150 577&searchtype=RS&orderbyad=Desc&userlanguage=en. Halliday, Jess, Laura Platenkamp, and Yota Nicolarea. 2019. A Menu of Actions to Shape Urban Food Environments for Improved Nutrition. GAIN, MUFPP and RUAF. Joint Migration and Development Initiative. 2013. Mapping Local Authorities’ Practices in the Area of Migration and Development: A Territorial Approach to Local Initiatives and Needs. Brussels: EC-UN Joint Migration and Development Initiative. http://www.migration4development.org/sites/ m4d.emakina-eu.net/files/revised_condensed_mapping_report_1.pdf. Kihlgren Grandi, Lorenzo. 2020. Le Nouveau Rôle International Des Villes (et Pourquoi Il Faut l’encourager). Paris, France: Terra Nova. http://tnova. fr/notes/le-nouveau-role-international-des-villes-et-pourquoi-il-faut-l-encour ager.

66

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

———, and Cecilia Emma Sottilotta. 2020. ‘Cities vs. COVID-19.’ Urban Flag. Paris: Urban Flag. https://soundcloud.com/urbanflag/cities-vs-covid-19. La Ferla, Silvia, and Gianfranco Commodaro. 2020. Interview to Silvia La Ferla and Gianfranco Commodaro, City of Milan’s International Relations Department Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Mansuri, Ghazala, and Vijayendra Rao. 2012. Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? Herndon, VA: World Bank Publications. http://ebookc entral.proquest.com/lib/sciences-po/detail.action?docID=1076074. Mestre, Christophe. 2020. ‘Le développement territorial, facteur de paix, de stabilité et de développement ?’ CIEDEL (blog), 3 March. https://www. ciedel.org/ressources-2/le-developpement-territorial-facteur-de-paix-de-stabil ite-et-de-developpement-article/. Naïr, Sami. 1997. Rapport de Bilan et d’orientation Sur La Politique de Codéveloppement Liée Aux Flux Migratoires. Paris: Ministère des Affaires Etrangères. https://www.vie-publique.fr/sites/default/files/rap port/pdf/984000139.pdf. OECD. 2005. Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264098084-en. ———. 2008. Accra Agenda for Action. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi. org/10.1787/9789264098107-en. Sala, Giuseppe, Ahmed Aboutaleb, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, LaToya Cantrell, Sally Capp, Jenny Durkan, Wong Kam-sing, et al. 2020. C40 Mayors Agenda for a Green and Just Recovery. London: C40. http://www.c40knowledgehub.org/ recoveryagenda. Sembene, Mamadou. 2016. Étude Évaluation de La Coopération Décentralisee Montreuil Yélimané. Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso: Association de Coopération et de Développement des Initiatives Locales. Sparacino, Patrizianna. 2020. Interview to Patrizianna Sparacino-Thiellay, Head of the International Relations Department, City of Paris Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. The Busan Partnership for Effective Development Co-Operation. 2011. Busan, Korea. UCCI. 2018. Estatutos de la Unión de Ciudades Capitales Iberoamericanas. https://ciudadesiberoamericanas.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ Estatutos-2018.-XVIII-Asamblea-General-SJO-1.pdf. ———. 2020. ‘Iberoamérica refuerza su lucha contra el coronavirus,’ March. https://ciudadesiberoamericanas.org/iberoamerica-refuerza-su-luchacontra-el-coronavirus/. UNOSSC. 2020. ‘South-South and Triangular Cooperation among MaritimeContinental Silk Road Cities for Sustainable Development Project.’ http:// southsouthcities.org/.

3

DECENTRALIZED COOPERATION

67

USC Center on Public Diplomacy. 2020. ‘Q&A with CPD: Ron Nirenberg | USC Center on Public Diplomacy.’ USC Center on Public Diplomacy, 19 May. https://www.uscpublicdiplomacy.org/story/qa-cpd-ron-nirenberg. Ville de Montreuil. 2020. ‘Coopération Avec Le Cercle de Yélimané (Mali).’ https://www.montreuil.fr/solidarites/solidarite-internationale-et-cooper ation/cooperation-decentralisee/cooperation-avec-le-cercle-de-yelimane-mali. Xinhua. 2020. ‘Ethiopia Receives Chinese Donation of 520,000 Masks, Medical Supplies.’ Xinhua, 2 June. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/africa/202006/02/c_139108819.htm.

CHAPTER 4

City Diplomacy for Peace

Abstract In the aftermath of the Second World War, the goal of contributing to conflict prevention and post-conflict reconciliation emerged as the main driver of city diplomacy’s expansion. Today, not only cities continue to be vocal supporters of world peace (e.g., through international advocacy campaigns and city networks such as Mayors for Peace), but their direct involvement in conflict-prone areas has repeatedly proved to be highly beneficial in descaling tensions and fostering reconciliation. Their focus on the local dimension of conflicts—often neglected by nations’ peace initiatives—matched with a more “neutral” image and a proneness to long-term involvement, make cities particularly praised an effective partners in these complex settings. Although, a few structural weaknesses strongly limit such action, namely the lack of an army to secure the zone and protect their officers on the ground, or the limited tools to acquire information on foreign conflicts. As a result, cities often need to cooperate with other actors involved in order to avoid risks of limited or even counter-productive impact. The chapter will discuss this action’s features and challenges from the perspective of municipalities inside and outside conflict areas. Keywords City diplomacy · Conflicts · Post-conflict situations · War prevention · Peace-making · Peace-building · Reconciliation · Giorgio La Pira · Municipal Alliance for Peace in the Middle East · Balkans · COVID-19 © The Author(s) 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3_4

69

70

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Cities’ Drive for Peace The commitment of cities in addressing conflict and post-conflict situations has been one of the first components of city diplomacy to emerge and be recognized by states and international organizations. The initial definition of city diplomacy itself was limited to this specific field: “the tool of local governments and their associations for promoting social cohesion, conflict prevention, conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction with the aim of creating a stable environment, in which the citizens can live together in peace, democracy and prosperity” (UCLG 2008). As mentioned in Chapter 2, the spread of twinning agreements after the Second World War is, to a wide extend, linked to the wish of cities to foster reconciliation among former enemies. In some cases, city diplomacy even pre-dated official cooperation between states, like it happened with the 130 twining agreements signed before the 1963 Élysée Treaty between France and West Germany (Garcia 2017). At the 1955 Mayors’ Conference in Florence, a call for peace was subscribed by mayors from all over the world, including from the USSR and the People’s Republic of China—the latter not yet officially recognized by countries of the Western bloc (see Box 4.1). Quite frequently, city diplomacy became a tool to voice a different approach to international relations to that of member states. This became particularly evident in the second part of the Cold War with the emergence of the “Municipal Foreign Policy Movement” in the United States and in Western Europe. In such a framework, cities opposed their federal foreign policy in mainly three areas: 1. Undocumented migrants—cities criticized US actions in Central America and the management of the connected refugee crisis—see Chapter 9 for the emergence of the Sanctuary cities movement; 2. Nuclear proliferation—the first International Nuclear Free Zone Local Authorities Conference took place in Manchester in 1984; over 160 US cities passed nuclear free zone ordinances, prohibiting production activities in their jurisdiction (Leffel 2018). A similar approach was taken by more than 3800 cities across the world (Ibidem). 3. Human rights abuse—Demand for harder condemnation of the South African apartheid regime and the boycott of involved businesses.

4

CITY DIPLOMACY FOR PEACE

71

In cities enacting such an approach, municipalities often benefited from the support of local civil society organizations, activists, and religious groups, thus showing a united front based on shared values. Besides their local impact—including, in the United States, winning legal battles against the federal government (ibidem)—it is hard to assess their influence over national governments’ foreign policy. Nevertheless, these local actions provided cities and their mayors with strengthened international exposure and fueled self-identification and peace branding of the involved cities. Cities’ engagement for peace led to the creation of ad hoc city networks, both global—such as Mayors for Peace (1989)—and national, such as the Italian Coordination of Local Authorities for Peace and Human Rights (1986), or the Network for Municipal Peace Policy (PGV) in the Netherlands (1989). A pivotal moment in the global commitment of cities for peace was the first World Conference on City Diplomacy, which took place in The Hague in June 2008, organized by UCLG, the host city and the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG), in cooperation with the province and city of Barcelona and the Italian Coordination of Local Authorities for Peace and Human Rights. The event featured the participation of representatives of many local governments from conflict areas, and produced The Hague Agenda on City Diplomacy. This declaration reaffirms city diplomacy’s role in “preventing and resolving violent conflicts“ and invites signatories to create a local government peace prize—whose first edition took place in 2016 as the UCLG Peace Prize (UCLG 2008; Stelder and Poelman 2017). What is the driver of such cities’ commitment to world peace? Just like development cooperation, their involvement for peace stems mainly from the moral value attributed to transnational solidarity. The wider extent of such a trend in cities compared to nation-states, is to be connected to the nature itself of the municipal government. Called to ensure the quality of life of citizens, municipalities’ proximity to the electorate allows them to connect, and represent, their values, creating local coalitions advocating and acting for peace.1 Moreover, a key element of the fertile ground of pacifism in cities lies in the lack of tools to impose 1 . An example of cities’ capacity to partner with citizens to express their desire for peace is represented by the “Cities are not target” campaign launched in 2006 by Mayors for Peace and resulting in 1.020.000 signatures of citizens across the world (Mayors for Peace 2006; Shibata 2012).

72

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

their will on foreign populations. As armed forces are strictly a central government’s prerogative, cities’ identity has generally developed without those elements fuelling adversarial positioning between states, namely national myths of military power, ethnic/cultural superiority, political and economic expansionism, or desire for vengeance arising from military defeats.

Cities’ Added Value in Conflict and Post-conflict Situations Cities within and outside conflict areas enjoy a series of unique assets supporting the de-escalation of violence and reconciliation. Their added value is found primarily in the three roles they can play before, during, and after armed violence: lobbyists, peace-makers, and peace-builders. Lobbyists As the closest institution to citizens, they can play a central role in calling for the reduction of violence and humanitarian cease-fires, raising awareness on the concrete impact on citizens’ lives, and asking for international support and humanitarian intervention. Over the last few years, such calls have been repeatedly issued by mayors in Afghanistan and Northern Syria (Pasta 2015). Municipalities outside the area, even before the conflict starts, can raise attention on peace being at risk, express their opposition to the use of force, and advocate for a peaceful resolution. For example, this approach led to La Pira‘s 1955 mayoral congress in Florence, to the creation of Mayors for Peace and the resolutions passed in 2013 by 70 US cities to ask the Federal government to refrain from military intervention in Iraq (van der Pluijm and Melissen 2007, 21). For ongoing conflicts, cities outside the affected area can contribute to raising international attention on the impact of violence on citizens. This lobbying approach can complement that of municipalities in the affected area, or even substitute it when they are not in the possibility to build their own global reach campaign. To such purpose, cities can implement an extensive series of activities, including organizing conferences and round tables, issuing press releases, addressing letters to national governments and international organizations. An example is provided by the City of Florence‘s Unity in Diversity conferences (three annual

4

CITY DIPLOMACY FOR PEACE

73

editions between 2015 and 2017), featuring the participation of mayors from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, among others (Zamparella 2020). Peace-Makers Cities in conflict areas stand out as facilitators or mediators in peace talks. Mayors played that role, for example, in the context of the South African conflict followed the end of apartheid, or in the framework of Touareg rebellions in Mali (Klem and Frerks 2008). Moreover, in the case of areas experiencing guerrilla movements, municipalities can be in a position to foster disarmament and reintegration in the socioeconomic tissue of combatants. It has been, for example, the case of the Municipality of Kauswagan, in the Philippines (Lanao del Norte province), who won the 2016 UCLG Peace Price for its “From Arms to Farms” program. In Kauswagan, local secessionism’s socioeconomic root causes are addressed by involving former combatants in agricultural education and dialogue programs with the other members of the community (Stelder and Poelman 2017). Cities outside the conflict zone can act as a safe haven, and host formal and informal talks to ease tensions and contribute to a solution. This has been done repeatedly in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with mixed results (see Box 4.2), and during conflicts generated by the dissolution of Yugoslavia. In that last context, between 1993 and 1995, the Hungarian city of Mohács hosted a series of meetings between young people and civil society organizations from Croatia, Serbia, and the Republic of Serbian Krajina, paving the way for regional reconciliation (Klem 2008). Moreover, when both sides of the conflict accept their help, foreign municipalities can play an active role in peace-making, intervening in negotiations as a mediator. An example is provided by French city network Cités Unies France, which organized talks in Ivory Coast’s capital Yamoussoukro between mayors on opposite sides of the civil war (2010–2011) (Gallet 2012). Peace-Builders When armed violence has come to an end thanks to a peace agreement or a stable cease-fire, cities can play an influential role in peace-building,

74

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

i.e., descaling tensions by addressing the root causes of the conflict— often linked to a mix of political, economic, and cultural frictions between communities. Their role lies therefore in promoting a “culture of peace,” defined in The Hague Agenda on City Diplomacy as having two dimensions: “raising awareness of citizens for the importance of peace-building in conflict situations and promoting human rights and harmonious relationships within the municipality’s own community” (UCLG 2008). As providers of basic services, municipalities in conflict areas can make sure inequalities in their access are duly addressed and solved. Once a diagnostics of the situation is produced, municipalities can share it with international partners and design with them actions responding to concrete needs and expectations by the diverse members of the urban community. Moreover, cross-border cooperation has been a useful tool to ease perduring tensions. This is, for example, the case of the interethnic triangle of partnerships signed in 2001 by the cities of Novi Sad in Serbia, Tuzla in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Osijek in Croatia, started with sport and cultural activities and quickly expanded to include business, academic, and environmental cooperation. This paved the way to the creation, in 2003, of the Association of Multiethnic Cities —Philia (Klem 2008; Klem and Frerks 2008; Popov 2010). The combination of political and technical expertise at the local level—often neglected in peace-building initiatives led by international organizations and governments—matched with a more “neutral” image and a proneness to long-term involvement, provide cities from outside the conflict area with the potential to effectively contribute to paving the ground for long-lasting peace, namely by supporting local municipalities in providing essential services and by training their officers. The accent in this intervention is increasingly set on fostering the conditions for (I) an active reduction of inequalities, perceived as fuel for divisions and violence, and (II) a general improvement of socioeconomic conditions of urban residents through a focus on innovation-led local economic strategies (Zamparella 2020). Finally, cities’ familiarity with both bilateral and multilateral long-term cooperation frameworks (i.e., city networks, twinning/cooperation/friendship agreements and MoUs) increases the likelihood for their involvement to perdure after the conflictual situation is solved, with the potential to evolve into a more balanced and mutually beneficial partnership.

4

CITY DIPLOMACY FOR PEACE

75

Comparative Advantages with Other Involved Actors Such manifold added value of cities in peace-making and reconciliation emerges therefore as unique, complementing the action of other actors sharing the same peaceful goals. Compared with countries, cities’ involvement is generally more widely accepted. In the words of Johan Galtung, “Municipalities are generally less pathological than states, not serving as depositories of national traumas and myths, such as the idea of being chosen to be above everything else” (Galtung 2000). Moreover, in reconstruction, countries tend to focus on the national administration, leaving space for municipalities’ support to their peers. Compared with intergovernmental organizations, the deployment of their action is often quicker, as there is no need for negotiations to avoid vetos. Compared with NGOs, their action is less dependent on grants and fundraising, thus allowing for long-term partnerships. Moreover, cities’ diversity, by definition broader than NGO‘s, might result in an asset, with the involvement of different categories of local actors (youth, women’s organizations, migrants—including those from the affected territory— cultural institutions, and the private sector). Compared with religious groups, they benefit from broader acceptance in conflicts featuring a confessional component. Nevertheless, cities’ can rarely act alone in conflictual situations, as highlighted by the following preconditions, whose absence either deeply limits or prevent cities’ action, as highlighted by Sizoo and Musch (2008, 24).

A Series of Preconditions Cities outside the conflict zone face four main preconditions, which need to be met to allow the deployment of this component of city diplomacy: 1. Security. Violence must be under a sufficient level of control to allow the local involvement of foreign municipalities. While useful in guaranteeing the security of civil servants in times of peace, local police forces are usually not trained to act in conflict areas. In such a case, the deployment of foreign cities’ personnel in conflict situations

76

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

relies on their capacity to negotiate with national/multilateral armies involved in the conflict in order to obtain their military protection. 2. National politics. The central government might oppose such action and block it, on account of the risks for the involved personnel, and of the lack of personality of international law of local governments which would make it responsible for their action in such a delicate situation. 3. Local politics. Local governments might want to refrain from cooperating with their counterparts in conflict situations when the latter have taken an active part in the perpetuation of the conflict. Such involvement would almost surely be perceived as choosing a side in the conflict and open to instrumentalization. 4. Knowledge of the area. Cities wishing to contribute to peace processes need to possess a deep understanding of the different dimensions of the conflict, its chains of causality, and the actors involved. Lacking this information, foreign municipalities risk designing and implementing ineffective, or even harmful action, thus worsening the conflict. Such information is generally harder for cities to obtain than for states. Therefore, partnerships with their own Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as universities and research institutions, are often needed. For municipalities inside the conflict area who are able to maintain their operating capabilities, the main precondition lies in national politics and institutional balance, as conflicts tend to involve a (re)centralization of power. Therefore, central governments—or the political entity exerting effective hierarchical control over municipalities—often limit, if not eliminate, the possibility of the latter to act independently on the international scene. In fact, the limited decentralization is in itself a factor worsening confrontations and violence, as it limits local authorities’ capacity to provide local communities with political representation and dialogue opportunities. The link between decentralization and peace, vocally highlighted by city networks such as AIMF (AIMF 2015; 2016a; Baillet 2020), has led to the creation of the Rwandese Association of Local Government Authorities (RALGA), officially launched in 2003 with the support of VNG International. Despite such best practices and the

4

CITY DIPLOMACY FOR PEACE

77

general agreement on the connection between peace and decentralization, centralization remains the rule in many regions with widespread violence such as the Sahel, where national governments redirect city networks’ and single foreign cities’ cooperation activities to a limited number of cities. As a result, city diplomacy could worsen inequalities between cities and contribute to raising tensions within the poorest—and unsurprisingly most violent—urban areas. Box 4.1: A city diplomacy founding father: Giorgio La Pira, Mayor of Florence Since the end of the Second World War, municipal commitment to international peace has been a constant in contemporary geopolitics and has sometimes pushed cities to position themselves against the military escalation led by their respective central governments. Following up to a proposal he presented the year before at International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, in 1955 the mayor of Florence, Giorgio La Pira, convened in his city the “Congress of the Mayors of Capital Cities”. 59 cities from across the world—including those from the Soviet Union and even from the People’s Republic of China, not yet recognized officially by Western governments—met to reaffirm their will to establish peaceful relations while denouncing the validity of war as a tool to solve international disagreements. La Pira’s declaration on this occasion constitutes one of the first definitions of city diplomacy: “We will give life, so to speak, to a new diplomatic instrument: an instrument which expresses the will for peace of cities around the world and which weaves fraternity pact at the very basis of the life of nations” (La Pira 2015). The name of La Pira is also associated with that of United Towns Organization (UTO), which he chaired from 1965 to his death in 1977, notably enhancing mayors‘ advocacy for peace in the framework of both the Cold war and of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. To commemorate his action, the City of Florence, in cooperation with Fondazione Giorgio La Pira, created the Giorgio La Pira Prize, awarded to cities and city networks who distinguished themselves for their commitment to peace, dialogue, and solidarity. Sources La Pira (2015), Comune di Firenze (2015, 2018), and Taddei Elmi (2016).

78

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Box 4.2: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Successes and failures of the municipal approach to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict In the complex framework of the Israeli–Palestinian situation, cities have been repeatedly active in an attempt to foster a climate of reconciliation and cooperation. Unfortunately, with some exceptions, city diplomacy initiatives have not been able to meet their goals. Nevertheless, a series of successes show how city diplomacy can lead to cooperation even when the respective counties are involved in a conflictual situation. The most ambitious and structured municipal cooperation initiative in such a field has been the Municipal Alliance for Peace in the Middle East (MAP). MAP was launched in 2005 as a result of a process started in 1999 involving the Association of Palestinian Local Authorities (APLA), the Union of Local Authorities in Israel (ULAI), and a number of foreign municipal partners who joined APLA and ULAI in MAP’s board, namely VNG International, UCLG, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the European Network of Local Authorities for Peace in the Middle East, and the cities of Rome, Barcelona, Cologne, and Hamar. MAP counted with the support of several international organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), who hosted its secretariat in its Jerusalem office. Despite initial successes in fostering a series of technical agreements between municipalities, operations were quickly hindered due to rising political tensions linked to Hamas’ victory at the 2005 Palestinian municipal elections. This caused the Alliance to experience a series of financing and managerial issues and swinging commitment by APLA and ULAI. Since 2012, the Alliance remains dormant: its high institutional profile revealed to be an obstacle in such a tense situation. More informal, practical, and result-driven city diplomacy achieved results, such as in the case of the meetings between APLA and ULAI mayors hosted by the municipalities of Milan (2010) and Turin (2011, 2013) with the support of Italian NGO CIPMO. These talks led to technical agreements regarding issues such as purification of border waterways or wildlife management. Unfortunately, over the last few years, despite a practical, pragmatic recognition of the importance of collaboration by many mayors on both sides, the very complex political environment has prevented them from pursuing operating procedures of cooperation.

4

CITY DIPLOMACY FOR PEACE

79

Sources van Hemert (2008), UCLG (2013), Knip (2017), and Mushasha (2020).

Evolution and Future Challenges Over the last few years, peace city diplomacy has been undergoing a broadening of its scope. If the accent was initially placed almost exclusively on armed conflicts between states, city diplomacy has been expanding the remit of its action to include all threats to urban security. Such an approach seems to respond to a threefold evolution of large-scale violence across the world: (I) most of it currently taking place within or across states, rather than between them; (II) it impacts mainly civilian population, and (III) it is frequently perpetrated by a plurality of nonstate actors (terrorist groups, drug cartels, organized crime, paramilitary groups, etc.). In line with that, the UCLG Peace Prize has been accepting applications from cities not currently involved in formal conflicts but experiencing high levels of violence, linked, for example, to widespread crime (such as the city of Canoas, Brazil) or drug trafficking (city of Palmira, Colombia). Cities’ commitment to the localization of the Sustainable Development Goal number 16 on Peaceful and Inclusive Societies2 symbolized this shift to a broader concept of peace and security. Through UNHabitat, the United Nations are providing technical support to cities affected by high levels of violence and promoting multilevel partnerships to tackle the problem. This approach is now common in city diplomacy itself, both within city networks such as VNG International and UCLG, through ad hoc capacity building initiatives such as the “Peace in Our Cities campaign” launched in 2019 by a coalition of eleven cities and thematic partners (United Nations 2019), and through the Strong Cities Network (SCN), launched at the UN in 2015. With more than 140 cities across 45 countries, the SCN aims at fostering city-to-city cooperation to

2 “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”.

80

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

counter violent extremism in all its forms by building social cohesion and community resilience. Nevertheless, the progressive dismissal of arms limitation international agreements (Sanger 2020), coupled with the expansion of military budgets by some of the most powerful states in the world (Sanger and Broad 2020), suggest rising risks of new formal conflicts. Meanwhile, the existing conflicts in countries such as Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan are likely to perdure, despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the related appeal by UN Secretary-General António Guterres for an immediate global cease-fire to fight such a “common enemy” (United Nations 2020). Fortunately, there is little doubt that cities around the world will remain faithful to the commitment to peace and solidarity that has accompanied city diplomacy since its origin.

References AIMF. 2015. ‘Mémoire & Développement.’ Raisonnance. Paris: AIMF. ———. 2016. ‘Prevention Des Conflits et Gestion de La Diversité.’ Raisonnance - Les Cahiers. Paris: AIMF. Baillet, Pierre. 2020. Interview to Pierre Baillet, Secretary Permanent of AIMF Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Telephone. Comune di Firenze. 2015. ‘Premio Giorgio La Pira.’ http://www.mayorsfor peace.org/english/history/2020_2011/data/PremioLaPira.pdf. ———. 2018. ‘Unity in diversity, il premio La Pira a Genova, Matera e Nuevo Cuscatlàn.’ Città di Firenze, 7 November. https://www.comune.fi.it/com unicati-stampa/unity-diversity-il-premio-la-pira-genova-matera-e-nuevo-cus catlan?language_content_entity=it. Gallet, Bertrand. 2012. ‘Diplomatie Des Villes : Le Combat Pour La Légitimité.’ In La Diplomatie Des Autorités Locales et Régionales, Un Outil Au Service Du Dialogue et de La Paix, edited by Patrick Debut. INSET. Galtung, Johan. 2000. ‘Local Authorities as Peace Factors/Actors/ Workers.’ Journal of World-Systems Research 6 (3): 860–72. https://doi.org/10.5195/ jwsr.2000.207. Garcia, Elise. 2017. ‘Les Collectivités Territoriales Dans La Coopération Française : Origines, Spécificités et Perspectives.’ Pour Mémoire. La Révue Des Ministères de La Transition Écologique et Solidaire et de La Cohésion Des Territoire, Fall. Klem, Martijn. 2008. ‘Local Governments Building Peace in Eastern Croatia.’ In City Diplomacy: The Role of Local Government in Conflict Prevention, PeaceBuilding, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, edited by A. Musch, A. Sizoo, Chris van der Valk, and Kian Tajbakhsh, 141–63. http://edepot.wur.nl/2595.

4

CITY DIPLOMACY FOR PEACE

81

———, and Georg Frerks. 2008. ‘How Local Governments Contribute to Peace-Building.’ In City Diplomacy, edited by Arne Musch, Chris van der Valk, Alexandra Sizoo, and Kian Tajbakhsh, 47–73. The Hague: VNG International. Knip, Peter. 2017. ‘Reflections on the History of the UCLG Peace Prize.’ In The UCLG Peace Prize 2016: Local Government Initiatives for Peace, edited by Daan Stelder and Tim Poelman, 13–16. Barcelona: United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). https://peaceprize.uclg.org/wp-content/upl oads/2019/02/UCLG-Peace-Prize-2016-Local-Government-Initiatives-forPeace-1.pdf. La Pira, Giorgio. 2015. Le città non vogliono morire / The Cities Do Not Want to Die. Edited by Marco Pietro Giovannoni and Pietro Domenico Giovannoni. I libri della Badia Studi e testi, 21/7. Firenze: Edizioni Polistampa. Leffel, Benjamin. 2018. ‘Animus of the Underling: Theorizing City Diplomacy in a World Society.’ The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 13 (4): 502–22. https:// doi.org/10.1163/1871191X-13040025. Mayors for Peace. 2006. Mayors for Peace Newsletter No. 24. Mayors for Peace. http://www.mayorsforpeace.org/english/statement/newsletter/24.pdf. Mushasha, Sufian. 2020. Interview to Sufian Mushasha, Assistant Special Representative, UNDP Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Skype. Pasta, Stefano. 2015. ‘Il sindaco di Kobane e la comandante curda Nessrin: “Stiamo respingendo l’Is”.’ la Repubblica, 26 June, sec. solidarieta. https://www.repubblica.it/solidarieta/emergenza/2015/06/26/news/il_ sindaco_di_kobane_e_la_comandante_curda_nessrin_stiamo_respingendo_ l_is_-117785569/. Pluijm, Rogier van der, and Jan Melissen. 2007. City Diplomacy: The Expanding Role of Cities in International Politics. Clingendael Diplomacy Papers, No. 10. Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’, The Hague. Popov, Aleksandar. 2010. ‘Triangle of Cooperation: Tuzla, Osijek, and Novi Sad.’ In Managing Multiethnic Cities in South Eastern Europe: Case-Based Solutions for Practitioners, edited by Meghan Simpson, Radomir Šovljanski, and Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative. Budapest: Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative: Open Society Institute. Sanger, David E. 2020. ‘Trump Will Withdraw From Open Skies Arms Control Treaty.’ The New York Times, 21 May, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/ 2020/05/21/us/politics/trump-open-skies-treaty-arms-control.html. ———, and William J. Broad. 2020. ‘A New Superpower Competition Between Beijing and Washington: China’s Nuclear Buildup.’ The New York Times, 30 June, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/us/politics/trumprussia-china-nuclear.html.

82

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Shibata, Yoshio. 2012. ‘Diplomatie Des Villes et Désarmement Nucléaire.’ In La Diplomatie Des Autorités Locales et Régionales, Un Outil Au Service Du Dialogue et de La Paix, edited by Patrick Debut. Angers: INSET. Sizoo, Alexandra, and Arne Musch. 2008. ‘Introduction.’ In City Diplomacy: The Role of Local Government in Conflict Prevention, Peace- Building, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, edited by A. Musch, A. Sizoo, Chris van der Valk, and Kian Tajbakhsh, 7–25. Stelder, Daan, and Tim Poelman, eds. 2017. The UCLG Peace Prize 2016: Local Government Initiatives for Peace. Barcelona: United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). https://peaceprize.uclg.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/ 02/UCLG-Peace-Prize-2016-Local-Government-Initiatives-for-Peace-1.pdf. Taddei Elmi, Giancarlo. 2016. ‘Un Osservatorio informatico sulle azioni internazionali delle Città per la pace e lo sviluppo.’ Informatica e diritto XXV (2): 207–19. UCLG. 2008. The Hague Agenda on City Diplomacy. The Hague: UCLG. ———. 2013. Development Cooperation and City Diplomacy Committee— Report 2012 and Work Plan 2013. Barcelona: United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). https://www.uclg.org/sites/default/files/DCCD_C. 7_ENG_Report%202012%20Workplan%202013.pdf. United Nations. 2019. ‘Peace in Our Cities Campaign: SDG16 Action Pledge.’ United Nations Partnerships for SDGs Platform. https://sustainabledevelop ment.un.org/partnership/?p=33394. ———. 2020. ‘COVID-19: UN Chief Calls for Global Ceasefire to Focus on “the True Fight of Our Lives”.’ UN News, 23 March. https://news.un.org/ en/story/2020/03/1059972. van Hemert, Chris. 2008. ‘A Study in City Diplomacy / the Municipal Alliance for Peace in the Middle East.’ In City Diplomacy, edited by Arne Musch, Chris van der Valk, Alexandra Sizoo, and Kian Tajbakhsh, 47–73. The Hague: VNG International. Zamparella, Miriam. 2020. Interview to Miriam Zamparella, Adviser, International Relations and Cooperation Department, City of Florence Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Skype.

CHAPTER 5

Economic City Diplomacy

Abstract Economic development is today the strongest driver of city diplomacy—and it generally enjoys the broadest level of local and national political support. Economic city diplomacy mainly aims at providing cities with the tools to position themselves in the global competition to attract investments, companies, tourists, talents, students—and international events. Alongside this goal—symbolized by the spread of international rankings of city competitiveness—cities have put in place a number of economic cooperation practices, including knowledge exchange and the co-creation of joint programs. The chapter will analyze this apparent contradiction between economic competition and cooperation, and present the added value of the economic dimensional city diplomacy to cities of all sizes. The second part of the chapter will take into consideration the economic impact of hosting international events. Finally, the conclusions will offer an insight into the possible impact of COVID-19 to the economic component of city diplomacy. Keywords City diplomacy · Global cities · City competitiveness · Global cities · City rankings · Urban development · Global events · COVID-19

© The Author(s) 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3_5

83

84

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

The Rise of Economic City Diplomacy The economic dimension of city diplomacy consists of a set of measures meant to reinforce economic relations with foreign actors and enhance local economic development. Since the 1990s, the relatively fast expansion of this diplomatic action is linked to the rising desire of municipalities to direct their international efforts toward those actions promising faster and easier return on investment. Just like national economic diplomacy, this component of municipal action generally features the dual goal of boosting economic growth and job creation and is used both to strengthen an already positive trend or to reverse economic stale or decline. While most city diplomacy dimensions are deeply grounded in solidarity and cooperation goals, the economic one mainly stems from local self-interest, even though notable exceptions exist. As a result, cities face the challenge of integrating this dimension in a coherent general city diplomacy strategy: how to connect international competitiveness-driven measures with the level of cooperation required for successful city diplomacy? How to link the desire of cities to climb economic hierarchies and the apparently conflictual goal of harnessing the potential of city-to-city partnerships in a plurality of fields—including economic development? As highlighted in Chapter 2, history teaches that cities’ desire to excel has always been coupled with the need for them to cooperate to prosper. City diplomacy represents the tool to provide cities with the direction to follow in order to solve this conundrum.

Winners and Losers of Globalization? The widespread belief that economic globalization has led to the emergence of a small group of “winners” and large numbers of “losers” is corroborated by sound quantitative research. In its comprehensive report on the competitiveness of the 750 biggest cities in the world, the World Bank has highlighted that the top 5% of cities has obtained as much foreign direct investments (FDIs) as the bottom 95% of cities combined, and that the top 10% of cities achieved 9.2% annual jobs growth, compared with 1.9% in the remaining 90% (World Bank Group 2015, 12). The fact that a little group of cities has economies which match those of middle-size countries (Tokyo with South Korea, New York City with

5

ECONOMIC CITY DIPLOMACY

85

Spain and Canada, London with the Netherlands) (Florida 2017) is just the consequence of a structural change of our economy described by Dutch-American sociologist Saskia Sassen by introducing the term of global cities (Sassen 1991). As illustrated in Chapter 1, these cities represent the backbone of today’s global economy, concentrating in themselves the headquarters of main international firms, as well as the many services these companies need to smoothly run their networks, i.e., the consultancies in the fields of management, accountancy, advertising, banking/finance, and law. Such definition is reflected in many international rankings of urban competitivity, the most famous of which is “The World According to GaWC“, published biennially since 1998 by the Loughborough University’s Globalization and World Cities Research Network. In this list, the position of cities, ranked in alpha, beta, and gamma, is based upon the magnitude of their business service connections to other major cities around the world (707 in the 2018 edition). This ranking value the contribution of private businesses in an intricate economic network composed of cities, reinforcing the point that “cities in networks need each other” (Derudder Ben et al. 2012, 2). Other city rankings include indicators such as Cultural experience and Political engagement (A.T. Kearney’s Global Cities Index) or Cultural Interaction, Liveability, Environment, and Accessibility (Global Power City Index by the Mori Memorial Foundation). The inclusion of such elements has an impact on the rankings: Paris ranked 8th in the 2018 edition of World According to GaWC, 3rd in the 2019 Global Cities Index by A.T. Kearney and 4th in the 2019 Global Power City Index. What all these ranking reveals is that, indubitably, there is an international economic hierarchy of cities. Most of these rankings are, in fact, dominated by Western cities, even if a small group of cities from the Global South is beginning to rise (Myers 2018). This geography has further fueled an international debate about winners and losers of economic globalization. Florida et al. consider that the distinction between cities based on their capacity to be part of the global economy might lead to broad social consequences, with the development of similar shared “social mores, cultural tastes, and even political leanings” in globalized cities all across the world, and increasingly disconnected from rural and less globally integrated urban centers (Florida et al. 2008, 8). This might contribute to explain tension emerging in different places across the metropolises/rest

86

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

of the country fracture, such as in the case of the “gilet jaunes” protest in France (Baléo 2020). Moreover, the wish of some cities to increase their ranking through higher appeal to national and international capital could negatively impact social protections and the quality of life of the most fragile part of the population (Habitat III 2015). In 2008, then United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Raquel Rolnik expressed such concerns in a report to the UN General Assembly: “Urban planning directed to creating so-called “world-class cities” rather than controlling speculation and reining in rising rental and home prices through appropriate land management tools have contributed to boosting property prices in cities and diverted land for higher-income groups” (Rolnik 2008). Despite being solidly grounded on the political and socioeconomic indicators (OECD 2019), the winners/losers duality risks of oversimplifying a complex and multifold situation build on a multiplicity of causes, including those partially or totally independent on the will of the municipality (e.g., the connection of the city with national infrastructure, lack of national investments and transfers to the local economy). Nevertheless, the scholarly focus on global cities, together with mentioned figures and indicators, should not lead to the misconception that only those cities feature the needed set of scale, resources, and skills to benefit from today’s globalized economy substantially. City diplomacy shows that new forms of international cooperation can enable cities with staling or declining economies to benefit, just like their more successful peers, from knowledge transfers and co-creation opportunities stemming from international partnerships.

Cities’ Economic Cooperation Alongside the competition, economic development has also emerged as a field of cooperation between cities, at both bilateral and multilateral levels. First, cities linked with twinning and cooperation agreements, or with an established interaction based on the participation in networks or projects, often cooperate in exchanging best practices on that field. Over the last few years, this cooperation has mainly focused on the establishment of development cooperation agencies, with cities already having one advising and sharing information with those in the process of creating one (see Box 5.1). Moreover, cities sharing similar economic

5

ECONOMIC CITY DIPLOMACY

87

conditions—both highly successful global cities, cities suffering from a particular challenge such as unemployment or deindustrialization, and low-income cities—are putting in place a series of multilateral initiatives to cooperate in enhancing their economies. Examples include 45 Urbact projects (May 2020), focusing on strengthening local attractiveness, revitalize small and middle-sized cities’ economies, or jumpstart sustainable and circular economic development. Most regional networks, such as Mercociudades, the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, and CityNet, feature programs and host events on sustainable economic development, thus enhancing peer learning and the spread of co-design of solutions, particularly through the introduction of pilot projects featuring the introduction of new technologies (see Chapter 6). This duality is often reflected in municipalities’ structure, usually featuring a sector devoted to cooperation and solidarity—the international office/department—and an economic department/agency whose tasks include raising the city’s position in rankings of competitiveness. Understandably, cooperation between these two sectors—and with the economic development agency, when present—reveals to be a precondition to a thriving city diplomacy strategy. As illustrated in Chapter 1, the economic strategy should be coherent with the other priorities of international action—e.g., by strengthening historic partnerships through joint actions on issues of mutual interests—and making sure the SWOT analysis is constantly updated. The lack of such strategy—namely of its coordination and evaluation components—might result in short-lived initiatives driven by fads: though some of them might have a positive impact, incoherent actions tend to impede the creation of a strong international reputation of the city based on its competitive advantages. Finally, the municipal coordination of economic diplomacy should take into consideration a series of risks that might arise from this activity. This includes keen attention to the choice of local and international partners, taking into consideration any potential impact on the reputation of the city stemming from cooperating with controversial economic actors. Moreover, cities should be aware that economic cooperation, particularly involving innovation and technology, bears the risk of knowledge and information stealing—especially in countries with loose intellectual property laws. Therefore, the international relations department should provide involved local actors with all relevant information concerning the

88

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

foreign partners, the legal system, and the potential risks. Finally, the city must be aware that the involvement of private partners in economic diplomacy could lead to delocalizing production facilities, with the consequent negative impact on local economy and employment. For an initial evaluation of COVID-19’s potential impact on re-localizing facilities, please see the conclusions of this chapter.

Urban Entrepreneurialism: Mayors as Entrepreneurs The spread of economic city diplomacy largely depends on its inclusion, by elected officials, in the local political priorities. In particular, impactful economic city diplomacy has often emerged as a consequence of a new approach to local economic development implemented by many mayors and characterized by a proactive, risk-taking attitude toward the international market, namely regarding the attraction of capitals, people, and ideas. This political focus on the global positioning of the city and on supporting locally produced goods and services has led to the definition of mayors as “city entrepreneurs,” whose attitude goes by the term of “urban entrepreneurialism” (Brenner 2004; Acuto 2013). This trend has deeply impacted city diplomacy, notably through the multiplication of entrepreneurial missions in friends cities—with the mayor acting as the head of local intrapreneurs’ delegations—and the mayor’s participation to business forums both at home and abroad (Stren and Friendly 2019). In the search for the best conditions to enable this approach, many cities in the Global North took the decision to enhance the local economy through bilateral and multilateral partnerships with cities in other highincome, or fast-paced economies (e.g., China, Singapore, the Gulf monarchies, Brazil), sometimes to the expenses of existing partnerships with the least developed countries. Moreover, just like in the other dimensions of city diplomacy, the success of the economic one largely depends on the municipality’s capacity to empower local stakeholders and reinforce their international remit. To harness the full economic potential of a city, the World Bank highlights the role of the “mayor’s wedge” in making economic development a local priority and creating “growth coalitions.” These include

5

ECONOMIC CITY DIPLOMACY

89

local economic actors and other public entities such as neighbor cities,1 regions, and the central government (World Bank Group 2015). Finally, one of urban entrepreneurialism’s key components consists of city branding, a practice originating from the private sector that cities use to link their perception by external public and actors with a set of unique and attractive assets and qualities. Branding campaigns are generally designed to encompass all economic dimensions of the city by supporting the external visibility of the goods and services, and by making the city more appealing to foreign companies, investments, talented professionals, tourists, and students. As it will be further expanded in Chapter 8, this practice’s outcome largely depends on the participation of local public and private stakeholders, such as the tourism office, the chamber of commerce, and the cultural and creative industries. Box 5.1: The Spread of Economic Development Agenties Over the last few years, a rising number of cities has created economic development agencies to enhance urban economic dynamism and national and international competitiveness by means of strengthened cooperation between the public and the private sectors. They usually consist of mixed economy companies, supporting the city economy by providing a set of services, many of which related to economic city diplomacy, such as: – City branding;

1 Regardless of the existence of institutional frameworks connecting them (e.g. metropolis, province, association of collectivities), neighbor cities might benefit from joining forces—forgetting sometimes fierce historic rivalries when present—and creating a partnership that offers foreign investors and companies a more attractive and diverse offer. In France, the metropolitan city of Nice (Métropole Nice Côte d’Azur) decided to leverage its international attractivity through enhanced coordination of policies, thus sharing investment and positioning costs and achieving relevant economic results shared between the core city and the 48 smaller surrounding municipalities. Of course, there is no standard form of successful cooperation, as the latter cannot be but the result of partnerships based on local specificities. As Teles warns, “larger communities can entail a greater number of cleavages, but are also more capable of being organisationally developed” (Teles 2016, 36).

90

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

– Consulting (usually for free) to potential foreign investors in the city; including information on national and municipal law; – Supporting the export of local products and services; – Attracting foreign entrepreneurs; – Attracting both foreign leisure tourists and students; – Supporting the city’s bid to major sport, cultural, and business events; – Cooperating with their foreign counterparts in twin/friend cities. Two best practices have deeply influenced the spread of such agencies across the world, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and London & Partners. The latter has, in particular, supported a series of London’s partner cities in establishing their own agency, including Milan’s Milan & Partners and Rio de Janeiro’s RioNegócios. Direct international cooperation between economic development agencies has also emerged in the framework of the cooperative component of economic city diplomacy. Examples include the “Global Business Exchange” program implemented between 2016 and 2017 by the NYCEDC, Paris’ development agency Paris&Co, and the City of Milan (Milan & Partners not been already in place) to support the international expansion of the three cities’ startups. The initiative consisted of calls issued by the three partners and open to startups wishing to expand their business in one of the two other cities. The selected startups received free acceleration in one of the partner’s own incubators, benefiting from guidance to adapt their product/service to the foreign market. Sources Minicucci and Carlini (2020), Mendes and Figueira (2017), and NYCEDC (2016).

The Economic Impact of International Events As mentioned in Chapter 1, international events present a high potential to raise the international profile of the city while boosting its economy both in the short and long term. Nevertheless, over the last decade, many municipalities’ bids for such events have generated intense opposition among residents. While bids highly differ in their strategies, they are often perceived by local actors and residents as a risk of bribery and exorbitant costs, coupled with opaque selection procedures (Woertz 2016), as financial scandals led

5

ECONOMIC CITY DIPLOMACY

91

to the resignation of IOC officials (2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics) and sentences against FIFA officials (2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa). Such a perception resulted in numerous cancellations of bids. Out of the nine candidates for the 2022 Winter Olympics, seven retired their bids (Stockholm, Oslo, Krakow, Munich, Davos, Barcelona, Quebec City), leaving only Almaty and Beijing compete for the title, the latter being chosen. A similar situation has occurred with the Summer Olympics: the popular protests-led decisions of Hamburg, Budapest, and Rome to withdrew from the 2024 bid, leaving only Paris and Los Angeles. Discussions with the two bid committees led to the 131st IOC Session decision in Lima, Peru in September 2017 of awarding 2024 games to Paris and the 2028 ones to Los Angeles. The economic impact of such events is also an object of intense debate. While the short-term economic impact of major events is usually granted (investments and new jobs in construction, communication, service industries), the long-term one has varied a lot from city to city. Some cities were able to build a sustainable economic legacy after these main events, such as Barcelona (1992 Summer Olympics) (Woertz 2016) and Milan (2015 Expo). In other cases, the heritage of such events revealed to be a burden: the Summer Olympics in Montréal (1976), Athens (2004) or Beijing (2008) generated massive debts (De Aenlle 2015), while most of South Africa’s football stadiums built for the 2010 FIFA World Cup struggled to be filled even before the COVID-19 outbreak, thus representing a loss of money for the municipalities who own them.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Economic City Diplomacy Across the world, COVID-19 has deeply impacted urban economies and is likely to generate bold long-term evolutions. First, the COVID-19’s impact on international trade and production has confronted many cities with complex challenges in terms of PPE and primary need goods’ availability. This might result in a re-localization of productions in order to strengthen the city’s resilience to future shocks. In the long term, such practice might impact the local economy of cities relocalizing, creating jobs and economic development opportunities, while weakening the socioeconomic situation of cities currently hosting these industrial facilities.

92

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

While the competition for tourists, investments, and talents stopped almost completely, due to travel restrictions and social distancing measures, city-to-city cooperation on economic recovery was put in place by several city networks. In April 2020 C40 launched the Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force, chaired by the Mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala (C40 2020, 40), whose Agenda, shared in July 2020 through C40’s website, presents a set of principles, guidelines, and best practices to create more resilient, just, and sustainable city economies. Other networks fostering knowledge exchange and debates among members include the International Associations of Cities and Ports (AIVP), the Organization of World Heritage Cities (OWHC), and the Association Internationale des Maires Francophones (AIMF). Capacity building workshops were organized by many actors, including UCLG, the OECD’s Division on Cities, Urban Policies and Sustainable Development, CityNet, Eurocities, and ASToN network (ASToN Network 2020). As the pandemic continues to ravish vast regions of the world, such a cooperative component of economic city diplomacy prevails on the competition on the lesser amount of international resources available. Time will tell if such a trend will be able to impact the future of city diplomacy sustainably. Box 5.2: Urban 20 The Urban 20 (U20) was presented in 2017 at the One Planet Summit in Paris by host mayor Anne Hidalgo and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, Mayor of Buenos Aires. To date, it constitutes one of the highest forms of recognition of the international role of cities. As G20’s stakeholder engagement group for cities, U20 brings together major cities (27 in 2019) from G20 member states to discuss global challenges, define a common position, and present it as recommendations to G20. At its second summit in Tokyo in 2019, U20 orientated its action toward three priorities: climate action, sustainable economic growth, and social inclusion and integration. U20 is chaired by the host city of the upcoming G20 annual summit, and its actions benefit from the coordination of UCLG and C40 Cities. Lacking a permanent staff and a headquarters, U20 appears for now more a knowledge exchange and advocacy group than a fully fledged city

5

ECONOMIC CITY DIPLOMACY

93

network. Nevertheless, through its connection with G20, U20 has the potential to enhance the role of cities in global finance. Currently, U20 is concentrating its advocacy efforts on reforming international finance to allow cities to borrow money from development banks without the need for authorization and backing by their central government (see Chapter 2). In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, U20 has launched a working group chaired by the City of Rome, advocating for stronger national support to municipal finances, under high stress for having to deal directly with most of the socioeconomic impact caused by the crisis. Sources U20 Mayors (2018, 2019) and Rodas (2020)

References Acuto, Michele. 2013. Global Cities, Governance and Diplomacy: The Urban Link. London: Routledge. ASToN Network. 2020. COVID-19 Open Calls—A Summary. Paris: ASToN Network. https://aston-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/OpenCOVID-calls-summary.pdf. Baléo, Marie. 2020. ‘Les gilets jaunes : simple révolte anti-métropolitaine ou symptôme d’une crise plus profonde?’ La Fabrique de la Cité, 10 March. https://www.lafabriquedelacite.com/publications/les-gilets-jaunes-simple-rev olte-anti-metropolitaine-ou-symptome-dune-crise-plus-profonde/. Brenner, Neil (1969–….) 2004. New State Spaces : Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood : Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood / Neil Brenner. 1 vol. (xix, 351 p.) vols. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. C40. 2020. ‘C40: Global Mayors Launch COVID-19 Economic Recovery Task Force.’ C40, 15 April. https://www.c40.org/press_releases/global-mayorscovid-19-recovery-task-force. De Aenlle, Conrad. 2015. ‘World’s Fairs and Their Legacies.’ The New York Times, 1 May, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/arts/int ernational/worlds-fairs-and-their-legacies.html. Derudder, Ben, Hoyler Michael, Taylor Peter James, and Frank Witlox, eds. 2012. International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities. Elgar Original Reference. Cheltenham and Northhampton (MA): Edward Elgar. Florida, Richard. 2017. ‘When Cities Are More Economically Powerful Than Nations.’ Bloomberg CityLab, 16 March. https://www.bloomberg.com/ news/articles/2017-03-16/top-metros-have-more-economic-power-thanmost-nations.

94

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Florida, Richard, Tim Gulden, and Charlotta Mellander. 2008. ‘The Rise of the Mega-Region.’ Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 1 (3): 459–76. https:// doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsn018. Habitat III. 2015. ‘Issue Paper on Inclusive Cities.’ Habitat III Issue Papers. New York. http://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/Habitat-IIIIssue-Paper-1_Inclusive-Cities-2.0.pdf. Mendes, Marcos Vinícius Isaias, and Ariane Roder Figueira. 2017. ‘Paradiplomacy and the International Competitiveness of Cities: The Case of Rio de Janeiro.’ Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 60 (1). https://doi.org/ 10.1590/0034-7329201700103. Minicucci, Marco, and Alessandro Carlini. 2020. Interview to Marco Minicucci e Alessandro Carlini, Milano & PartnersMicrosoft Teams. Myers, Garth. 2018. ‘The Africa Problem of Global Urban Theory: Reconceptualising Planetary Urbanisation.’ International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de dévelopement (10) (October): 231–53. https://doi.org/10.4000/poldev.2739. NYCEDC. 2016. ‘New York City And Milan Launch Business Exchange To Connect Local Companies To International Opportunities And Markets.’ New York City Economic Development Corporation, 16 May. https://edc. nyc/press-release/new-york-city-and-milan-launch-business-exchange-con nect-local-companies-internation. OECD. 2019. OECD Regional Outlook 2019: Leveraging Megatrends for Cities and Rural Areas. Paris: OECD Publishing. Rodas, Mauricio. 2020. Interview to Mauricio Rodas Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Rolnik, Raquel. 2008. Report of the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing as a Component of the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living, and on the Right to Non-Discrimination in This Context. UN. http://digitallibrary.un. org/record/636996. Sassen, Saskia. 1991. The Global City. Princeton University Press. https://doi. org/10.2307/j.ctt2jc93q. Stren, Richard, and Abigail Friendly. 2019. ‘Toronto and São Paulo: Cities and International Diplomacy.’ Urban Affairs Review 55 (2): 375–404. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1078087417722862. Teles, Filipe. 2016. Local Governance and Inter-Municipal Cooperation / Filipe Teles,…. 1 vol. (IX-107 pages) vols. Palgrave Pivot. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. U20 Mayors. 2018. Urban 20 Joint Statement. Buenos Aires: U20. ———. 2019. 2019 Urban 20 Tokyo Mayors Summit Communiqué. Tokyo: U20.

5

ECONOMIC CITY DIPLOMACY

95

Woertz, Eckart, ed. 2016. Olympics and Cities: Opportunities, Ambitions and Failures. Barcelona, Spain: CIDOB. http://www.cidob.org/en/publicati ons/publication_series/monographs/monographs/olympics_and_cities_opp ortunities_ambitions_and_failures. World Bank Group. 2015. Competitive Cities for Jobs and Growth: What, Who, and How. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank. org/handle/10986/23227.

CHAPTER 6

Smart City Diplomacy

Abstract One of the key drivers of cities’ international action lies in the commitment of local governments in offering innovative, world-class services to citizens through the introduction of new technologies. Public transportation, energy, health, education, and waste management are only a few of the many sectors in which digital innovation has shown its potential to improve residents’ quality of life and make the city more attractive to foreign capitals, companies, and tourists. Nevertheless, no city (nor nation) can fully implement such transition alone. Besides domestic coordination with other cities and the central government, such a process requires direct involvement of city diplomats. As the chapter will show, there are numerous opportunities to match smart city and city diplomacy, including peer learning between friend cities and within city networks, partnership with foreign firms, and participation in programs and funding mechanisms implemented by international organizations. Moreover, a series of challenges arise from the international dimension of smart city diplomacy, namely in terms of foreign technologies’ impact on residents’ rights and the job market. The chapter will end with some considerations on the role of smart technologies in supporting cities’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Keywords City diplomacy · Fourth industrial revolution · Smart city · Technology · Innovation · Privacy · Big data · Benchmarking · Apps · Sharing economy · COVID-19 © The Author(s) 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3_6

97

98

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Defining the Smart City Cities across the world have been experiencing the profound impact of the fourth industrial revolution, characterized by digital technologies and leading to the “transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance” (Schwab 2015). In urban terms, such transformation is generally associated with the concept of smart city. Despite being a buzzword, the concept of smart city is somehow vague, having spread as a result of a “strong self-congratulatory tendency” (Hollands 2008, 304). In fact, smart city has been used to brand a plurality of different urban approaches and phenomena, generally sharing an approach where “information technology is wielded to address problems old and new” (Townsend 2013, xii). In 2014, as a result of the study of more than 100 definitions of smart city, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), specialized agency of the United Nations, had defined the smart sustainable city as “an innovative city that uses information and communication technologies (ICTs) and other means to improve quality of life, efficiency of urban operation and services, and competitiveness, while ensuring that it meets the needs of present and future generations with respect to economic, social and environmental aspects” (ITU-T 2014). In line with that approach, the UN system has advocated for the spread of a digital innovation compatible with its general goal of fostering sustainable development across the world. The 2016 New Urban Agenda—a commitment signed by States at the Habitat III conference in Quito, includes an explicit reference in that sense: “We commit ourselves to adopting a smart city approach that makes use of opportunities from digitalization, clean energy and technologies, as well as innovative transport technologies, thus providing options for inhabitants to make more environmentally friendly choices and boost sustainable economic growth and enabling cities to improve their service delivery” (United Nations 2016).

The Impact of Digital Technologies on Cities As its definitions reveal, incorporating digital technologies into urban life generates a manifold impact, resulting in both benefits and challenges for a plurality of actors. Each comprehensive municipal strategy to deal with such a transition should take into consideration all the involved actors’ perspectives. Beyond the already mentioned level of global international

6

SMART CITY DIPLOMACY

99

organizations—involved in the process in their dual goal of supporting the transition through research and standardization, and linking it to the main global agenda—the quite crowded list of actors include: • Citizens, as the widespread incorporation of digital technologies in everyday urban life is shaping the way people work and interact, both within and across urban communities. The introduction of digital technologies produced a series of positive impacts linked to access to information, enhanced knowledge sharing, and communication capabilities. Moreover, the introduction of web platforms and mobile apps has shown its potential to improve public services, namely public transport, and allow for a more accessible and rapid interaction with the different levels of public administration. Moreover, the numerous benchmarking and dashboards projects to visualize data on city indicators allow citizens and local actors (notably CSOs and the media) to assess the extend of local issues and evaluate the impact of municipal action, potentially enhancing transparency and accountability. In terms of challenges, digital technology might create/strengthen inequality, as access to digital tools differs across populations, with lower levels in marginalized communities and the elderly. Furthermore, the digital transition involves a series of challenges to citizens’ rights, including privacy issues related to personal data collected both with and without the consent of the citizen. • The impact on city administrations has been equally relevant. By adopting smart technologies, municipalities worldwide aim at collecting information and realize benchmarking on a set of indicators relevant to their action thus identifying criticalities in service delivery (e.g., big data on urban sprawl, traffic, public transport, or electric consumption), share such information to increase transparency and accountability, and obtain the tools (both digital platforms and physical infrastructures) to qualitatively and quantitatively improve their offer of public services, with the overall goal of increasing citizens’ quality of life. This potential impact can be very wide, e.g., enhancing municipal action in the fight to climate change, increasing the city resilience to both human and natural threats, and strengthening participatory decision-making processes. In terms of challenges, municipalities are urged to regulate digital technologies negatively impacting the population and local actors. The negative impacts reported around the world include the rise of renting prices

100

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

in tourist cities due to home-renting platforms and the labor rights concerns raised by some food delivery services’ practices. For what pertains to this book’s topic, digital technologies represent non only a tool to enhance relationships with distant partners, but also a core topic of action, and as such it should be integrated into the international strategy (see below). • The city can usually benefit from the national government’s cooperation and coordination, which might support the city evolution as part of its economic development strategies. Many countries across the world have produced their national strategies—e.g., Spain’s Plan Nacional de Ciudades Inteligentes, India’s Smart Cities Mission, Canada’s Smart Cities Challenge, or Rwanda’s Smart City Masterplan. These plans are often implemented in the framework of international cooperation, just like cities do. Central governments create frameworks for the exchange of best practices in guiding and enhancing the digital transition; it is not infrequent for developing countries to access subvention and technical support from other countries, international organizations, or international development banks. Similarly to cities, states have to take into consideration a balance between international competition and cooperation with their foreign counterparts (see below), as well as the ownership of the data collected—an issue that is currently causing harsh political frictions between the United States and China (Barnes 2020). Moreover, central governments face unprecedented challenges linked to the use of digital technologies by criminal organizations, like drug cartels in Mexico. • Local, national, and international private companies are competing as technical suppliers and advisors to the public sector. All of them are attracted by the bold investments that many local and central governments around the world are making to enhance digital transition in urban areas. The digital market has shown a tendency for the “winner takes all” dynamic, with the emergence of giant companies such as Cisco, Google, Siemens or Huawei, expanding their remit to the expenses of smaller local businesses. Overall, digital technologies and telecommunication infrastructures, together with the deregulation of financial markets easing investments abroad, have had a twofold impact on cities’ economies. On one side, they contributed to the dispersal of the production chain, both within and outside national boundaries, in search for lower labor and land occupancy

6

SMART CITY DIPLOMACY

101

costs. On the other side, as Sassen pointed out, by the 2000s, evidence showed a centralization of most advanced economic sectors has been taking place in cities. Digital technologies allowed many cities to become truly global in Saskia Sassen‘s threefold definition “(1) command points in the organization of the world economy; (2) key locations and marketplaces for the leading industries of the current period - finance and specialized services for firms; and (3) major sites of production for these industries, including the production of innovations in these industries” (Sassen 2012, 7). • Regional international organizations have been supporting cooperation between their member states and their cities, mainly in the framework of shared strategies, such as the African Union-endorsed Smart Africa Manifesto, or the EU-supported European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities. Moreover, the EU stands out for its support in testing innovative solutions to sustainable development through its Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) initiative1 , and its funding to city partnerships aimed at adopting best practices in digital transition (Urbact program, see below).

A Transversal Strategy In the framework of activities where smart technologies’ introduction represents the main goal, city diplomats are usually asked to pursue two different types of goals: 1. Establishing and managing international partnerships aimed at knowledge transfer and the creation of pilot projects; 2. Smart city international branding, in cooperation with the economic development department/agency, in order to attract investments, companies, and talents. This raises the challenge for city diplomats to find a balance between the cooperative nature of the first goal and the competitive one of the

1 Open to cities with a population of at least 50,000 residents, Urban Innovative Actions co-finances 80% of the project’s activities, for a total of up to e5 million. The initiative, implemented through the European Regional Development Fund, had a e372 million budget for 2014–2020 (European Regional Development Fund 2020).

102

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

second, e.g., by complementing bilateral and multilateral partnerships with common city branding strategies. City diplomats should also take the opportunity to foster any positive integration of smart city diplomacy into other sectors of municipal action. The connection appears particularly strong in the framework of the city’s social and economic development: just like city diplomacy, the city’s mastery of digital technologies represents not only a goal but also an enabler of social and economic development. Strong connections also exist with the culture and creative sector, in both its local and international components. This link is found in activities such as enhancing cultural branding through monuments’ and museums’ digitalization, the creation of platforms to promote local artists (see conclusion of chapter 8), or international projects introducing new practices and technologies for creative professionals (e.g., 3D printers in fablabs). In facilitating such a transversal integration, the municipality should take into due consideration the final impact of these technologies in terms of services, opportunities, and rights. International relations departments should therefore place an extra effort in their need to connect the smart city‘s international and local dimensions through public information and engagement campaigns related to the ongoing international smart city initiatives. This will allow projects to provide benefits for the broadest numbers of residents and local actors, responding to their wishes, values, and expectations, and possibly reducing local inequalities. Accordingly, interactions should include a focus on concerns such as foreign ownership and management of personal data. Like in other dimensions of city diplomacy, a clear and vocal leadership by the mayors is needed for both said public information and engagement purposes, as well as for enhancing multilevel cooperation with national (and regional, if present) government, in a joint effort to enhance the city competitivity on the international stage. Evidently, such a broad scope of smart city technologies urges cities to integrate them as both a topic and a tool in the general city diplomacy strategy presented in chapter 1.

6

SMART CITY DIPLOMACY

103

International City Partnerships for Digital Transition If digital innovation first emerged in Global North cities, the rapid and global spread of the internet, mobile phones, ground sensors, and satellite technologies is providing cities, citizens, and local actors in low-and middle-income countries with similar opportunities to take advantage of this trend (Monroe 2017). Nevertheless, even if a large volume of data is increasingly available to these cities, its analytics, including the tools to visualize it clearly and build benchmarking, might be more challenging to acquire. In fact, cities’ intent to use innovation to enhance their international competitiveness has not prevented them from engaging in cooperative efforts with their peers, mainly for knowledge transfer and co-creation of pilot projects. For example, in 2012 a cooperation was launched between the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) and Centre for Municipal Research and Advice (CMRA), a sister company of VNG International, the International Co-operation Agency of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities. The project led to the launch of the Municipal Barometer (www.municipalbarometer. co.za), an online portal allowing municipalities and citizens to access an extensive set of local-level data, such as demographic trends, economic and environmental indicators, and information on municipal finance. The platform is inspired by a similar tool in the Netherlands (www.waarstaat jegemeente.nl) (Kaliati et al. 2017). Alongside such a North-South dimension, smart city diplomacy often features a strong regional one. Notable examples of regional coalitions include the Nordic Smart Cities Network (2018, based in Copenhagen, see Box 6.1), the six ongoing (July 2020) European Urbact networks on digital transition, or the ASToN project in Africa (2019, based in Paris—see Box 6.2). Multipurpose regional networks such as Mercociudades (Latin America) and CityNet (Asia-Pacific) have been running specific capacity building activities on smart city transition and management. Eurocities cooperated with six of its members in Sharing Cities (2016–2020), a e28 M project, mainly financed by the European Union‘s Horizon 2020 program, aiming at introducing replicable smart technologies to enhance the local sharing economy (Sharing Cities 2016). Finally, these networks might cooperate in projects aimed at assessing the impact of digital resources in cities—e.g., the Urban Network for the

104

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

innovation in municipal management initiative, implemented by Mercociudades and the Inter-American Development Bank between 2015 and 2016 (Mercociudades 2016). In global terms, cities have been cooperating on smart technologies in several ways, namely in the framework of global partnerships, such as the World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization (WeGO, created in 2010 and based in Seoul). Main global city networks addressing climate issues have shown to share the UN vision connecting technologies to sustainable development. C40 highlights the opportunity for cities to address their carbon reduction goals by close partnerships with the private sector, and supports its members in introducing data management to assess their climate action (Empowering Cities with Data program). ICLEI, together with Cities Alliance, 100 Resilient Cities (predecessor of the Resilient Cities Network) and UN-Habitat, has been active in fostering data-driven climate measures in cities to enhance their resilience, namely face to climate hazards. The broadest partnership in the field is the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance on Technology Governance, launched at the June 2019 G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan by 15 city networks, including UCLG, ICLEI, and WeGo. The Alliance, managed by the World Economic Forum, has the main task of defining global norms and policy standards “to help accelerate best practices, mitigate potential risks, and foster greater openness and public trust” (World Economic Forum 2019; G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance 2020).

Future Evolution Many cities have enhanced their response to the COVID-19 pandemic through smart technologies (OECD 2020; AIMF 2020). The extent of such practice depended on the availability of digital tools and capabilities by municipalities and their legal framework. As an example, while Paris accessed anonymous data on how many residents left the city to avoid spending there the lockdown (Untersinger 2020), Singapore, Seoul, and Hong Kong put in place contact-tracing mechanisms hardly compatible with most Western legislations (Beech 2020). As cities are designing their recovery strategies, many of them showing strengthened commitment in enhancing the quality of life of their residents, namely through a bolder approach to sustainable development, both in its social, environmental, and cultural components. This has called to a resurgence of the sustainable smart city concept, updated to include a bolder human-centered

6

SMART CITY DIPLOMACY

105

component. It is likely that the spread of smart working procedures in firms across the world will asymmetrically impact cities in the long run. First commentaries on the topic consider a possible spread of digital technologies in intermediary and small cities—namely through the creation of public Wi-Fi system and co-working spaces—as a number of residents living in large cities would be willing to move in greener areas, as long as they do not have to commute every day to their downtown office. Meanwhile, largest cities are adopting an approach based on proximity. This strategy, revamped by smart city expert Carlos Moreno (Whittle 2020) under the name of the 15-minute city, implies that all core activities, including working, buying groceries, going to school or going to the hospital, are available in a 15-minutes radius from home either by walking or cycling. As a result, smart cities seem to move the focus from groundbreaking innovation to wellbeing, discreetly supporting a more sustainable and enjoyable urban life. The expansion of city diplomacy partnerships incorporating such an approach is to be expected. Box 6.1: The Nordic Smart City Network Smart city research and implementation represent a priority for many cities in Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland). Even though these cities’ expertise in such a field was globally recognized, there was no platform to support their interactions until recently. Nevertheless, these cities used to meet at international smart city events, where they could discuss and share best practices. At the 2017 Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, fourteen of these cities decided to structure their cooperation. Hence, to promote “the advancement of Nordic-wide innovation and smart city solutions,” the Nordic Smart City Network was launched, benefiting from the financial support of Nordic Innovation, an institution of the Nordic Council of Ministers. The network’s first project, “Nordic Urban Living Labs” (2018–2020), has led to the creation of a web platform to foster cooperation and communication, the organization of series of workshop for knowledge transfer, and the introduction of five thematic projects (one per country involved, each featuring a lead city and several follower cities) exploring the contribution of smart technologies in the fields of shared mobility, living lab methods, waste collection, collect of people flow data, and wayfinding.

106

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

The network, enlarged to include 21 member cities, launched in Spring 2020 the “Nordic Healthy Cities” project, planned to run until April 2022 and aimed at testing innovative practices to tackle health challenges in urban areas through four thematic projects: Reduction in pollution, Healthy liveable neighbourhoods, Crowdsensed Data to Support Healthy Liveable Cities, and Health Data—each featuring a lead city and four participating cities. Sources City of Copenhagen (2020) and Spiegelberg Stelzer (2020).

Box 6.2: The Rise of Smart Cities in Africa Across the African continent, the digital economy is blossoming. Although a series of structural problems limit the spread of digital technologies in many urban centers across the continent (i.e., lack of access to broadband, computer literacy, or electricity shortages), the entrepreneurial spirit of its inhabitants, coupled with the nature of digital industries allowing international cooperation and granting almost immediate global success to inspired solutions, has led many African companies to success—with a positive impact in terms of jobs and growth and a concentration of digital technologies in a number of African cities. This appears to be an accelerating process, subverting the once prevailing opinion that all national economies would have to experience the same evolutionary path. Moreover, this trend has allowed cities in Africa to impact, at least in part, the traditional economic dependencies to the Global North, thanks to rising domestic markets and South-South trade and partnerships. This phenomenon has found in city diplomacy a tool to enhance the global positioning of the city as rising innovation hubs, including Accra, Lagos, Lusaka, Monrovia, and Nairobi. In terms of multilateral initiatives, since September 2019 12 African cities are currently involved in the ASToN project, an initiative supported by the French Development Agency (AFD), managed by the French National Urban Renovation Agency (ANRU) and inspired by URBACT methodology. Through peer learning and the involvement of experts and local stakeholders, the project aims at enhancing the use of digital technologies to answer participating cities’ challenges. The outbreak of

6

SMART CITY DIPLOMACY

107

COVID-19 led the ASToN management to include a focus on the ongoing health threat in both its immediate and long-term components. One of the main challenges ASToN and similar international initiatives are addressing consists in the fact that the development of the digital sector does not necessarily imply advantages are shared. Inequalities between social classes—and between urban and rural dwellers—can indeed be reinforced by an unmanaged digital transition. For real, sustainable positive change, investments in the fields of education, including lifelong education and digital infrastructures, are needed to allow a broader share of society to benefit from this digital revolution. Sources Benner (2014), Lazar (2020), and ASToN Network (2020).

References AIMF. 2020. ‘Covid-19 - Agir Aujourd’hui et Préparer Demain.’ Association Internationale Des Maires Francophones, July. https://www.aimf.asso. fr/AIMF-COVID19.html. ASToN Network. 2020. COVID-19 Open Calls—A Summary. Paris: ASToN Network. https://aston-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/OpenCOVID-calls-summary.pdf. Barnes, Julian E. 2020. ‘White House Official Says Huawei Has Secret Back Door to Extract Data.’ The New York Times, 11 February, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/us/politics/white-house-hua wei-back-door.html. Beech, Hannah. 2020. ‘Tracking the Coronavirus: How Crowded Asian Cities Tackled an Epidemic.’ The New York Times, 17 March, sec. World. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/asia/coronavirus-sin gapore-hong-kong-taiwan.html. Benner, Chris. 2014. Digital Dynamics. Routledge Handbooks Online. https:// doi.org/10.4324/9780203387832.ch21. City of Copenhagen. 2020. Nordic Urban Living Labs. Copenhagen: Nordic Innovation. European Regional Development Fund. 2020. ‘What Is Urban Innovative Actions?’ What Is Urban Innovative Actions? https://uia-initiative.eu/en/ about-us/what-urban-innovative-actions. G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance. 2020. ‘About the Alliance.’ G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance. https://globalsmartcitiesalliance.org/about/. Hollands, Robert G. 2008. ‘Will the Real Smart City Please Stand Up?’ City 12 (3): 303–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604810802479126.

108

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

ITU-T. 2014. ‘Smart Sustainable Cities: An Analysis of Definitions.’ https:// www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/ssc/Pages/default.aspx. Kaliati, Andrew, Paskaliah Kachieng’a, and Indra de Lanerolle. 2017. ‘What Data Do We Want? Understanding Demands for Open Data among Civil Society Organisations in South Africa.’. Lazar, Simina. 2020. Interview to Simina Lazar, ASToN Network Coordinator Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Mercociudades. 2016. Informe de La Presidencia y La Secretaría Técnica Permanente de Mercociudades - Período 2015–2016. Montevideo: Mercociudades. Monroe, Trevor. 2017. Big Data and Thriving Cities: Innovations in Analytics to Build Sustainable, Resilient, Equitable and Livable Urban Spaces. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/ 10986/26299. OECD. 2020. ‘Cities Policy Responses.’ OECD Policy Responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19). https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=126_126769-yen458 47kf&title=Coronavirus-COVID-19-Cities-Policy-Responses. Sassen, Saskia. 2012. Cities in a World Economy, 4th ed. Sage Publications. ———. 2017. ‘Global Cities: Places for Researching the Translocal.’ In The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City, edited by Suzanne Hall and Ricky Burdett, 143–58. London: Sage. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sci ences-po/detail.action?docID=5107309. Schwab, Klaus. 2015. ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution,’ 12 December. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-12-12/fourth-industrial-rev olution. Sharing Cities. 2016. ‘Sharing Cities Programme—Management Plan.’ Ref. Ares(2016)7104222. Brussels: European Union. https://ec.europa.eu/res earch/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5a f18d117&appId=PPGMS. Spiegelberg Stelzer, Kim. 2020. Interview to Kim Spiegelberg Stelzer, Smart City Senior Advisor, City of Copenhagen Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Townsend, Anthony M. 2013. Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. 1st ed. New York and London: W. W. Norton. United Nations. 2016. New Urban Agenda. Untersinger, Martin. 2020. ‘Confinement: plus d’un million de Franciliens ont quitté la région parisienne en une semaine.’ Le Monde, 26 March. https:// www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2020/03/26/confinement-plus-d-un-mil lion-de-franciliens-ont-quitte-la-region-parisienne-en-une-semaine_6034568_ 4408996.html. Whittle, Natalie. 2020. ‘Welcome to the 15-Minute City.’ Financial Times, 17 July. https://www.ft.com/content/c1a53744-90d5-4560-9e3f-17ce06 aba69a.

6

SMART CITY DIPLOMACY

109

World Economic Forum. 2019. ‘Unprecedented Global Alliance for Smart City Technology Launched to Counter Growing Tensions.’ World Economic Forum, 10 October. https://www.weforum.org/press/2019/10/unprecede nted-global-alliance-for-smart-city-technology-launched-to-counter-growingtensions/.

CHAPTER 7

Environmental City Diplomacy

Abstract Cities are currently the primary source of climate change. Although they cover less than 2% of the earth’s surface, urban areas account for 50% of the world’s population, between 60 and 80% of energy consumption, and generate 70% of the human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, climate deregulation is affecting cities of all sizes, and its impact is expected to worsen. The chapter will highlight how local leaders have been addressing these threats by starting broad innovation, engagement, and advocacy campaigns and creating multiple, often overlapping networks of cities. As will be described, this has facilitated the introduction of concrete measures, often enjoying the support and praise of numerous NGOs, nations, and international organizations. Finally, the chapter will discuss the possible evolution of the field as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Keywords City diplomacy · Climate change · Environmentalism · Sustainable development · Resiliency · Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments · ICLEI · C40 · Paris Agreement · Un-Habitat · COVID-19

© The Author(s) 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3_7

111

112

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Cities’ Message to the World On December 2015, while heads of state and government were attending the United Nations’ climate change conference in Paris (COP21), Anne Hidalgo, mayor of the city, convened 1000 of her colleagues from all over the world to the Climate Summit for Local Leaders to show a municipal united front in the fight to climate change (Cities for Climate 2015). In fact, this fight has become the priority of numerous cities’ international action, as shown by the growing relevance of networks such as the C40 or ICLEI, and the multiplication of multilateral projects, declarations, and events cities organize on such a topic. This positioning is widely based on local leaders’ acknowledgment that climate change originates mainly in urban areas. Although they cover less than 2% of the earth’s surface, urban areas account for 60 to 80% of energy consumption and generate 70% of the human-induced greenhouse gas emissions (UN-Habitat 2016, 16). Moreover, the rise of global temperatures is affecting cities of all sizes, and its impact is expected to worsen. Extreme temperatures, floods, storms, increased precipitation, and sea levels’ rise are affecting urban areas, their populations, their biodiversity, and their economies. Understandably, informal settlements, home to more than 1 billion citizens worldwide, are the most prone to suffer from these climate hazards. Confronted with such a harsh reality, many mayors from across the world decided to firmly position their cities as laboratories of innovation and engagement in the fight to climate change. To achieve a sustainable impact on such a global threat, they committed to cooperating with their counterparts in transnational knowledge transfer, co-creation and coordination of activities, and joint advocacy.1 This trend is so pronounced that such urban action is often presented as the most tangible example of city diplomacy’s impact and of the commitment of municipalities across the world to address transnational challenges. As Teles puts in, “it is no longer possible to analyse the 1 A small group of mayors from global cities has been standing out for the capacity to use their visibility to contribute to public awareness on the climate change challenge: such as the mentioned Paris’ Anne Hidalgo (2014 onward); New York’s Bill de Blasio (2014 onward); Buenos Aires’ Horacio Rodríguez Larreta (2015 onward); Montreal Valérie Plante (2017 onward); London’s Sadiq Khan (2016 onward); Dakar’s Soham El Wardini (2018 onward); Melbourne’s Sally Capp (2018 onward), Tokyo’s Yuriko Koike (2016 onward).

7

ENVIRONMENTAL CITY DIPLOMACY

113

global politics of the environment without considering its various urbanization(s)” (Teles 2016, 1). Moreover, the environmental component of city diplomacy often emerges as a perfect example of how municipalities can combine international cooperation and advocacy on values with concrete actions granting a much-needed positive local impact. The accents on urban resilience to climate deregulation, central to a growing number of cities and city coalitions, symbolize it.

The Rise of Environmental City Networks It is not rare for cities to cooperate on sustainability and climate changerelated issues bilaterally,2 such action has found in city networks its most powerful expression. The number of city networks whose primary goal is related to climate and the environment has been rising steadily over the years to reach more than 50, which is equivalent to 29% of total city networks (Acuto et al. 2017). In fact, among thematic city networks, those devoted to such issues rose to the widest visibility, mainly as a result of effective advocacy strategies centered on the assumption that they represent a “viable substitute for ambitious international action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)” (Bansard et al. 2017). The action of these networks tends to be twofold: – on one side, spreading inspired solutions to tackle climate change. The tools to achieve that result mainly lie in sharing best practices among members, the introduction of pilot projects, and support to member cities through diagnostics, research, and capacity building activities (sometimes in cooperation with universities and NGOs); – on the other side, issuing global or regional advocacy campaigns addressing the international public opinion, national governments, and international organizations.

2 Examples of bilateral environmental city diplomacy include the cooperation between

Paris and Rio de Janeiro, which led to the adoption of bike and car-sharing projects in the latter (Bike Rio and Carro Elétrico Carioca) based on the former’s experience (Vélib’ and Autolib’ ) (Mendes and Figueira 2017). Mexico City exchanged with Rotterdam to adapt to its needs the latter’s best practice of “water squares” to temporarily store downpours’ rainwater (Ilgen et al. 2019).

114

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Nevertheless, city networks’ horizontal nature, coupled with cities’ voluntary participation in their initiatives, often leads to a diverse impact of membership in terms of concrete environmental actions on the ground. Across the environmental networks, two of them stand out for their capacity to enhance cities’ commitment in concrete actions and advocacy for the global recognition of the role of cities in the fight to climate change: ICLEI and C40. Launched in September 1990 by 200 cities reunited at the United Nations, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, now renamed ICLEI—Local Governments for Sustainability, has grown to represent the broadest coalition of local authorities committed to sustainable urban development. With more than 1750 local and regional governments in 100 + countries, ICLEI is headquartered in Bonn and features today a network of 22 offices across the world. ICLEI provides its member cities with numerous capacity building opportunities: in its 30 years of activity, ICLEI realized more than 1000 training activities attended by a total of 50,000 local government officials. Moreover, ICLEI provides the framework for peer exchange and joint projects, with 200 active sustainability initiatives in January 2020 (Roberts 2020). The international stance of ICLEI is testified by its focal point status within the three Rio Conventions (Climate Change, Biodiversity and Desertification)—a unique position that it has committed to using to represent the position of the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments and the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments, of whom ICLEI is a member (Global Taskforce of Local And Regional Governments 2019) (see Chapter 1). Box 7.1: C40 C40 was launched in 2005 by London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone, who convened large cities with a strong environmentalist commitment under the assumption that their pooled leverage would allow greater international influence than their individual actions (Acuto 2013b, 307). Although it only reunites 96 large cities highly committed to fighting climate change, their sizes and economic weight—collectively accounting for around a quarter of the world’s GDP—speaks of the network’s relevance on the global stage. C40 has risen to represent a key advocate

7

ENVIRONMENTAL CITY DIPLOMACY

115

of the international action of cities against climate change. The chair of C40, an elected, rotating position held in 2020 by Los Angeles’ mayor Eric Garcetti, has risen to represent probably the most vocal representative of environmental city diplomacy, and one of the core supporters of city diplomacy as a tool to tackle main transnational challenges. In line with the best available science, C40 champions the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping the average temperature to 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels. C40’s ongoing focus consists of providing its members with guidance on how to implement their city-wide strategies for carbon neutrality, adaptation, and inclusive and equitable climate action, including the tools to assess their impact. By publication of reports and organization of meetings between political leaders and technical staff of its member cities, C40 aims to empower local administrations with research-backed tools and best-practices sharing to implement quick and effective actions. Finally, the C40 celebrates the most ambitious and impactful projects by its member cities by the mean of its own annual award (the “C40 Cities Bloomberg Philanthropies Awards,” from the name of the sponsoring charity), launched in 2013 and awarded to 6 innovative projects by member cities in the framework of the annual C40 World Mayors Summit. Sources Acuto (2013a), Pinault (2020), and C40 (2019)

The City–State Relationship Multilevel partnerships involving both central and local governments are the most effective tools to achieve bolder results in climate action, as clearly stated in the Paris Agreement (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 2015). However, their deployment has not always been possible, namely for the opposition of a (small) number of national governments with little or no commitment to global environmental agendas. As a result, cities in such countries have increasingly chosen to connect with each other through national coalition, and by enhancing their commitment in the framework of international fora, starting from city networks devoted to the fight to climate change. The first large-scale city mobilization of that type took place in 2005 and coincided with the decision of the US Federal Government led by

116

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

George Bush sr. not to sign the Kyoto Protocol. On February 16, 2005, the day the Protocol came into action for the 141 countries who ratified it, Seattle mayor Greg Nickels launched the Climate Protection Agreement, the first formal engagement of cities to implement an international agreement disregarded by their national government. In four months, 141 mayors signed the Agreement—symbolically reaching the number of ratifying nations. The number continued to rise, reaching 500 signatures in May 2007 and 1066 signatures June 2020 (‘Mayors Climate Protection Center’ 2020). More recently, the “We Are Still In” Declaration by American mayors has renewed this practice. Launched in June 2016 as a reaction to the Federal Government’s decision to exit the Paris Agreement, it gathers the commitment of mayors (as well as states’ governors and heads of education and cultural institutions, businesses, faith groups, tribes, and health care organization) “to help the United States fulfill its international obligations under the agreement.” The Declaration benefits from the coordination and advocacy support of numerous partners, including city networks (C40, ICLEI, Climate Mayors, and the National League of Cities), NGOs (e.g., the World Wildlife Fund—WWF) and charities (Bloomberg Philanthropies, among others). The initiative received vast praise and support from cities across the world, as well as from nation-states, providing participating cities with vast visibility and raising their mayors (despite being a bi-partisan initiative) to globally recognized opponents to the White House’s environment policy. This notably led to the meeting at the Élysée Palace, symbolically held on June 2, 2017—the day after the withdraw of the United States from the Agreement— between French president Emmanuel Macron, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo and Michael Bloomberg, in his roles of representative and sponsor of the Declaration and of UN Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change (Macron et al. 2017). The Declaration is complemented by “America’s Pledge”, launched in July 2017 by Michael Bloomberg (sponsor of the Declaration) and then California Governor Jerry Brown. The initiative aims to quantify and report progress made toward the US pledge through all non-national climate actions (The America’s Pledge Initiative on Climate Change 2019).

7

ENVIRONMENTAL CITY DIPLOMACY

117

International Organizations As already mentioned, cities action to build a more sustainable future is widely recognized by the United Nations, the European Union, the OECD, and other international organizations. Among them, a key interlocutor is the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), created two years after the 1976 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I), held in Vancouver. Headquartered in Nairobi, UN-Habitat has contributed to the international recognition of the link between cities and environmental sustainability, and the need for environmental policies to be both localized and shared between cities. The wish to establish a direct exchange between the UN and cities led to the creation of the First World Assembly of Cities and Local Authorities (WACLA), held just before the Habitat II Conference in Istanbul in 1996. WACLA’s successor, the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments, had around 400 mayors meeting and discussing the New Urban Agenda ahead of the Habitat III conference (Quito, 2016). The New Urban Agenda has institutionalized the World Assembly’s role in reviewing its dispositions (United Nations 2016a, b). As a result, the Assembly is convened annually by UCLG on behalf of the already mentioned Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments to ensure the local follow-up of the New Urban Agenda, discuss the other global agendas, and defining cities’ contribution in achieving them. Further international recognition of the role of cities in addressing climate change comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations: the Global Research and Action Agenda on Cities and Climate Change Science, primary outcomes of IPCC cosponsored Cities and Climate Change Science Conference (Edmonton, Canada, March 2018), called to that purpose for further financial and political empowerment of cities (Prieur-Richard et al. 2018). International bodies are also issuing prestigious awards to recognize the leadership of cities in environmental issues. It is the case of the European Commission’s European Green Capital (for cities with a population of over 100,000 inhabitants, launched in 2010) and the European Green Leaf Award (for cities with a population between 20,000 and 100,000 inhabitants, launched in 2015), ISESCO’s Islamic Green City Excellence Award (launched in 2018), or UNEP-supported “Sustainable Cities And

118

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Human Settlements Awards” (launched in 2005 by the Global Forum on Human Settlements).

Three Sets of Challenges In its environmental and sustainable dimension, the common city diplomacy’s issue of overlap and duplication between networks’ initiatives is particularly visible. With almost 60 regional and global networks operating on such issues (Acuto et al. 2017), city diplomats have an increasingly hard time choosing what network to join and cooperate with based on their specific situation. Moreover, the overlap complexifies the evaluation of these networks, considering that a city, its county/department, and its region might all be part of different networks. Second, if the commitment of cities for the environment is undeniable, further effort to integrated it in the framework of multilevel governance is needed. In line with this point, in May 2020 a coalition formed by the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM), the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments, ICLEI, UCLG, UNDP, UN Environment, and UN-Habitat launched a global campaign advocating national governments to integrate regional and local emissions reduction commitments into COP26 commitments. In parallel, in order to help local governments in quantifying their contributions, the GCoM has launched its common reporting framework (see Box 7.2). Finally, given the prestige enjoyed by some of the key networks fighting climate change, their membership’s figures are likely to hide a certain amount of opportunistic memberships, as a number of mayors might join them due to the visibility and political gains rising from their networking opportunity, rather than to implement shared goals. This contributes to explain the diverse commitment of cities within some of these networks and might lead city networks to stricter membership management. Box 7.2: Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) is the world’s largest city alliance addressing climate change, representing the commitment of more than 10,000 cities across 138 countries, for a

7

ENVIRONMENTAL CITY DIPLOMACY

119

total of over 864 million people, equivalent to more than 10% of the global population. The GCoM was created in June 2016 by merging two existing initiatives, the Covenant of Mayors (created in 2008 by the European Union after the adoption of the 2020 European Union Climate and Energy Package), and the Compact of Mayors (started in September 2014 at the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in New York City by UCLG, C40, and ICLEI). In 2020 the GCoM is co-chaired by European Commission Executive Vice President for the European Green Deal Frans Timmermans and Michael Bloomberg. It features a board of ten mayors and a secretariat based in Brussels. In January 2019, the GCoM launched its common reporting framework in order to assist its member cities in assessing the local impact of climate change and tracking their progress transparently. The framework is also instrumental in enhancing multilevel governance of climate issues with all other government levels, including integrating local governments’ actions into the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement framework. The GCoM is one of the city initiatives to have best defined its impact goals. In 2019, the existing GCoM city targets would avoid the emission of 2.3GtCO2, thus delivering a 35% reduction in emissions compared with the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario in 2030. With global urban abatement potential in 2030 estimated at 45% compared with BAU, GCoM cities have the ambition to contribute to the global goal significantly. Source Global Covenant of Mayors (2019, 2020)

Future Evolution Across the world, the COVID-19 outbreak led many cities to adopt bolder municipal climate policies. Two factors have likely contributed to such a shift: studies suggesting a correlation between pollution and the spread of COVID-19 (Carrington 2020), and the profound global psychological impact of lockdown on urban residents. In fact, the imposition of lockdowns—especially when limiting access to parks and green areas—coupled with the global spread of images of magnificent mountain views once blocked by pollution, fishes in canals, and wild animals in

120

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

city centers, played an important role in awareness-raising on the current economic system’s environmental impact, strengthening bottom-up calls for greener, less polluted cities. Such a trend has empowered bold decisions by mayors across the world, namely in an optic of tactic urbanism involving the creation of new bike lanes and pedestrian zones. Should this environmental trend reveal to be permanent, it might also lead to more environmentally friendly national governments, at least in democratic countries. This would undoubtedly advance city networks’ and international organizations’ campaigns for strengthened multilevel climate governance.

References Acuto, Michele. 2013a. Global Cities, Governance and Diplomacy: The Urban Link. London: Routledge. ———. 2013b. ‘World Politics by Other Means? London, City Diplomacy and the Olympics.’ The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 8 (3–4): 287–311. https:// doi.org/10.1163/1871191X-12341255. Acuto, Michele, Hugo Decramer, Mika Morissette, Jack Doughty, and Yvonne Ying. 2017. ‘City Networks: New Frontiers for City Leaders.’ In UCL City Leadership Lab Report. London: University College London. Bansard, Jennifer, Philipp Pattberg, and Oscar Widerberg. 2017. ‘Cities to the Rescue? Assessing the Performance of Transnational Municipal Networks in Global Climate Governance.’ International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 17 (2): 229–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784016-9318-9. C40. 2019. Defining Carbon Neutrality for Cities & Managing Residual Emissions. London: C40. https://www.c40.org/researches/defining-carbon-neu trality-for-cities-managing-residual-emissions. Carrington, Damian. 2020. ‘“Compelling” Evidence Air Pollution Worsens Coronavirus—Study.’ The Guardian, 13 July, sec. World news. https://www. theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/13/compelling-evidence-air-pollutionworsens-coronavirus-study. Cities for Climate. 2015. ‘Paris City Hall Declaration.’ https://www.uclg.org/ sites/default/files/climate_summit_final_declaration.pdf. Global Covenant of Mayors. 2019. ‘Climate Emergency: Unlocking the Urban Opportunity Together.’ 2019 Impact Report. Global Covenant of Mayors. ———. 2020. ‘Over 10,000 Cities Worldwide Call on All Governments for a Global Green Recovery.’ Global Covenant of Mayors (blog), 3 June. https://www.globalcovenantofmayors.org/press/statement-global-cov enant-of-mayors-mayoral-board-on-covid-19-green-recovery/.

7

ENVIRONMENTAL CITY DIPLOMACY

121

Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments. 2019. Outcome Document or the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments—Durban Formal Session, 15 November 2019. Durban: Global Taskforce of Local And Regional Governments. https://www.global-taskforce.org/sites/default/files/201911/WALRG%20Outcome%20Document%20Durban%2015%20November% 202019_0.pdf. Ilgen, S., F. Sengers, and J.A. Wardekker. 2019. ‘City-To-City Learning for Urban Resilience: The Case of Water Squares in Rotterdam and Mexico City.’ Water (Basel) 11 (5): 983. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11050983. Macron, Emmanuel, Michael Bloomberg, and Anne Hidalgo. 2017. ‘Point presse à l’issue de l’entretien avec Michael BLOOMBERG, Envoyé Spécial des Nations-Unies pour les Villes et le Changement Climatique et Anne HIDALGO, Marie de Paris.’ Présidence de la République Française. https:// www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2017/06/02/point-presse-a-l-issue-de-lentretien-avec-michael-bloomberg-envoye-special-des-nations-unies-pour-lesvilles-et-le-changement-climatique-et-anne-hidalgo-marie-de-paris-2. ‘Mayors Climate Protection Center.’ 2020. United States Conference of Mayors. https://www.usmayors.org/mayors-climate-protection-center/. Mendes, Marcos Vinícius Isaias, and Ariane Roder Figueira. 2017. ‘Paradiplomacy and the International Competitiveness of Cities: The Case of Rio de Janeiro.’ Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 60 (1). https://doi.org/ 10.1590/0034-7329201700103. Pinault, Emmanuelle. 2020. Interview to Emmanuelle Pinault, C40’s Head of City Diplomacy—Political Engagement Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Skype. Prieur-Richard, Anne-Hélène, Brenna Walsh, M. M. Colbert, Minal Pathak, Sarah Connors, Xuemei Bai, and Aliyu Salisu Barau. 2018. Global Research and Action Agenda on Cities and Climate Change Science. Edmonton, Canada: World Climate Research Programme. https://www.wcrp-climate. org/WCRP-publications/2019/GRAA-Cities-and-Climate-Change-ScienceFull.pdf. Roberts, Kale. 2020. ‘History of ICLEI: 30 Years of Sustainability Action.’ ICLEI USA (blog), 16 January. https://icleiusa.org/iclei-at-30/. Teles, Filipe. 2016. Local Governance and Inter-Municipal Cooperation / Filipe Teles,…. 1 vol. (IX-107 pages) vols. Palgrave Pivot. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. The America’s Pledge Initiative on Climate Change. 2019. Accelerating America’s Pledge. New York: Bloomberg Philanthropies. https://assets.bbhub.io/ dotorg/sites/28/2019/12/Accelerating-Americas-Pledge.pdf. UN-Habitat. 2016. Urbanization and Development: Emerging Futures. World Cities Report 2016. UN-Habitat, Nairobi, Kenya. United Nations. 2016a. New Urban Agenda.

122

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

———. 2016b. ‘HABITAT III: “Take Strong Ownership” of Vital New Agenda to Create Cities of the Future, Ban Urges World’s Mayors.’ UN News, 16 October. https://news.un.org/en/story/2016/10/542922-hab itat-iii-take-strong-ownership-vital-new-agenda-create-cities-future-ban. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 2015. ‘Paris Agreement.’ United Nations. https://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/con vention/application/pdf/english_paris_agreement.pdf.

CHAPTER 8

Cultural City Diplomacy

Abstract Culture and creativity represent an almost ubiquitous component of the international action of cities. A core feature—and a driver—of bilateral ties such as twinning or cooperation agreements, culture and creativity are frequently integrated into the economic strategies aimed at supporting local economic growth and job market. Additionally, over the last decade, cities have been implementing cultural and creative policies to foster social cohesion, promote diversity, and welcome migrants. City networks such as the Organization of World Heritage Cities, the World Cities Culture Forum, and the UNESCO Creative Cities Network act as both representatives of such approaches and as peer learning and advocacy platforms. The chapter will offer an insight into the tools and practices of cultural city diplomacy, taking into consideration both opportunities and challenges. Finally, the chapter will consider the impact of COVID-19 on such a component of city diplomacy. Keywords City diplomacy · City branding · Cultural diplomacy · Public diplomacy · Creativity · Cultural and creative industries · Cultural events · European Capital of Culture · COVID-19

© The Author(s) 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3_8

123

124

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

The New Season of an Ancient Practice The external cultural action of cities is among the most widespread expressions of city diplomacy. It formalizes an age-old practice, in which culture and creativity become tools for asserting a city’s prominence inside and outside the national boundaries. Throughout history, thriving cities such as fifth century Athens, fourteenth century Florence, nineteenth century Paris, up until today’s Abu Dhabi, Auckland, Bogotá, Dakar, Istanbul, Lagos, Montreal, Sapporo, or Shenzhen, have strengthened their political stance and attractivity by systematically patronizing the arts and enriching their urban tissue with monuments, museums, and cultural events. Today, cities of all sizes and geographic locations have been multiplying their actions in such a field, often due to a dual evolution in its management. First, since the second part of the twentieth century, culture has expanded its meaning to include intangible heritage. Such a process has notably led to the UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003. This broadening is mostly the result of an international debate criticizing a restrictive vision of cultural heritage based on its monumental component—an approach widely considered as little adapted to cultural traditions in some developing countries. As a result of such a trend, cities worldwide started to include in their cultural policy—and in its international component—the many expressions of intangible cultural heritage, such as music, gastronomy, and crafts. Second, cultural policies have been experiencing a rising participatory approach, sustained by both municipalities and cultural institutions ranging from UNESCO to neighborhood associations. This led cities to increasingly involve their local cultural actors in the definition and implementation of strategies to support the sector, preserve cultural heritage, and enhance the global positioning and the attractiveness of the city. Moreover, international cultural actions share this updated approach by creating synergies between horizontal, city-to-city cooperation with vertical partnerships inspired by the principle of co-creation and coownership between the municipality, civil society organizations, the private sector, and inhabitants. By strengthening social bonds—a goal worth pursuing in itself—such strategies allow for a dynamic, shared definition of a place’s cultural identity and branding strategies aligned with local strengths, challenges, and aspirations.

8

CULTURAL CITY DIPLOMACY

125

Cultural City Branding Since the 1990s, the practice of place branding has emerged in cities all over the world, strengthening the connection between the cultural and the economic dimensions of city diplomacy. This approach stems from the widely accepted assumption that “Future competition between nations, cities, and enterprises looks set to be based less on natural resources, location or past reputation and more on the ability to develop attractive images and symbols and project these effectively” (Landry and Bianchini 1995, 12). As a result, municipalities, just like companies do with their products, put in place strategies to forge external audiences’ perception of their city by linking it to appealing narratives. In fact, the connection between a place and a specific identity is ageold and encompasses many cultures. Ancient Romans attribute it to a guardian deity, the genius loci, considered responsible for the unique qualities to a location (Jackson 1995). Nevertheless, what was mainly a concept related to residency and experience of a city’s physical space has become, in today’s city management, an intangible asset to target a foreign public. Logos and slogan used to convey such message reveal it clearly: “Joburg—A World Class African City” “Hong Kong—Asia‘s World City” or “Lviv—Open to the World” all show they are mainly directed to a foreign audience. Traditionally, residents have been little involved in branding procedures (Campelo et al. 2014). Moreover, while the purpose of city branding is clearly to assess the unique identity of a city, the spread of similar techniques and the alignment on other cities’ strategies led to campaigns little connected to the city’s specificities (Vuignier 2017). More recently, many new campaigns show a rising accent on residents’ involvement in the definition of such “spirit of the place,” thus creating a more grounded, specific strategy allowing for coherence between internal and external perceptions of the city. Namely, these processes involve the active participation of citizens in the identification of local cultural heritage. Examples include two ongoing activities: “Community-based inventorying of intangible heritage in urban areas” (2018–2021), a project implemented by UNESCO in nine cities across the world, and the EU-funded “Part-Her” project (2019–2020), involving six intermediary cities in different European countries engaging their citizens to identify and promote what they consider local cultural heritage, in both its tangible and intangible components (UNESCO 2020a; PartHer 2020).

126

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

In terms of design and management, the cultural branding strategy is usually the result of the cooperation between the municipal departments of international relations, culture, and economic development (see below).

A Broad Array of Available Tools As mentioned, this component of city diplomacy is known for its pervasiveness. As a matter of fact, cities use it to complement and strengthen political and economic partnerships at both bilateral and multilateral levels, as well as in the framework of the cooperation with the national government and international organizations. Moreover, similar cultural traits have been acting as a connector between cities: for example, the French city of Reims has signed twinning agreements with other cities featuring renowned cathedrals—i.e., Florence, Canterbury, and Aachen. In multilateral terms, city cooperation in the fields of culture and creativity has led to the creation of a number of dedicated city networks. These networks are based on a shared approach to culture on creativity: • The wish to promote and protect the city’s tangible heritage: Organization of World Heritage Cities (OWHC), or the Alliance of Euro-Mediterranean Cultural Cities (AVEC); • The desire to elaborate cultural agendas in line with the city’s specificities, be them global cities (World Cities Culture Forum) or small centers below 50,000 inhabitants (Cittaslow); • An accent on creativity and cultural traditions as a sustainable development driver: the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (see Box 8.2), the Délice Network, or the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation Cities of Ceramics (AEuCC); • Celebration of shared cultural past: including the already mentioned International Association of Francophone Mayors (AIMF), Union of Ibero-American Capital Cities (UCCI), and the Union of Portuguese-Language Capital Cities (UCCLA). The mentioned networks, and many more, support members cities’ cultural actions through knowledge exchange, the organization of joint cultural projects and celebrations. Moreover, membership in such

8

CULTURAL CITY DIPLOMACY

127

networks contributes to the city’s international branding. This leads to the extensive use by member cities of these networks’ logos. International cultural events represent a widespread tool for cities of all sizes to jointly pursuing international and local goals. Locally, the event represents an opportunity to enhance economic development, particularly within the cultural, creative, and tourism sectors. Moreover, it is an opportunity for cities to engage in dialogue with residents and local stakeholders and empower target communities such as specific neighborhoods, minorities, or migrants (see Chapter 9). Internationally, such events allow the city to deeply enhance its visibility, thus attracting tourists and—depending on the characteristics and the scope of the event—investments, and companies from abroad. Usually, these events are tailored to complement the city’s branding strategy. Across the world, international cultural events can be divided into recurring events—such as festivals and exhibitions—and events requiring an international bidding campaign. The most famous of the last typology of events is by far the European Capital of Culture (ECC), an EU initiative launched in 1985 by then Greek Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri and intended to celebrate culture and the arts in two European cities every year. Since 2021, the program will also open to a third city from EU candidate counties. On several occasions, European cities were able to use such an event to rebrand themselves effectively and harness substantial socioeconomic benefits. For example, 2004 ECC Lille was able to transition from years of economic stagnation due to deindustrialization to the status of international creative capital. The cooperation with local cultural and creative stakeholders, launched in the ECC framework, has fueled such a dynamics ever since, leading the city to become the 2020 World Design Capital. The World Design Capital is a biennial year-long cultural program aimed at showcasing the hosting city’s design policy. The initiative is directed by the World Design Organization, an NGO based in Montreal. The success of ECC led to the creation of similar programs in Africa (African Capital of Culture, launched in 2020 by United Cities and Local Governments of Africa—UCLGA) and in Ibero-America (Capital Iberoamericana de la Cultura, since 1991, and the Plaza Mayor de la Cultura Iberoamericana, since 1994, both implemented by UCCI—see Box 3.2). In terms of multilevel diplomatic action involving both city and national governments, culture, particularly its heritage component, tends

128

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

to play a central role. Many countries’ embassies, consulates, and cultural institutes abroad have a tradition of partnering up with municipalities to organize cultural activities as part of the country’s cultural diplomacy, generally aiming at improving the perception of the country abroad while fostering tourism attractivity. Finally, international organizations have supported cultural city diplomacy to empower cities as partners in their general goals. Most notable examples include the UNESCO’s Cities platform comprising eight different initiatives (see Box 8.2 and Chapter 1) and the Council of Europe’s Intercultural Cities programme (see Chapter 9).

The Management of an International Cultural Strategy Two main solutions emerge regarding the design and management of cities’ external cultural action. In some municipalities, such task pertains to the international relations office or department, as one of the components of city diplomacy. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon for cities to attribute the lead to the culture sector—a frequent choice in major European cities (Eurocities 2017). When a city has both services, it is advisable for them to cooperate and include the economic development department/agency in the whole process. In order to do that, the two services should cover different roles. The culture sector should define the contents, while the international relations department should create/join and manage partnerships at regional and global level. This cooperation reveals to be particularly useful with those cultural projects featuring an explicit political stance on a challenge shared by cities around the world, such as intercultural dialogue, migration, or protection of intangible heritage. By building international partnerships to that purpose, cities are given the possibility to define an urban approach and advocate for it internationally. This way, cultural initiatives with a strong political component—e.g., participation, democracy, inclusion—can be integrated into a broader multilateral strategy connecting cities internationally. Finally, the economic development department/agency could complement the strategy creating coherence and synergies with the city’s economic goals, adding an accent on the opportunity to build

8

CULTURAL CITY DIPLOMACY

129

international cultural partnerships capable of generating economic growth and job creation.

Goals and Guiding Principles The spread of these practices stems from its multiplicity of goals. Those can be divided into two groups, depending on the inward or outward nature of their guiding principles. First, inward-oriented activities aim at using international cultural actions to impact residents and local actors positively. Namely, these include: • Acquiring skills and techniques to protect and promote local heritage and supporting its capacity to attract tourists; • Promoting creative industries, and enhancing their capacity to generate revenues and jobs by enhancing their international exposure; • Enhancing social inclusion, when cultural initiatives take place in the framework of co-development (see Chapters 3 and 9). Outward-oriented approaches tend to enhance the contribution of culture to the city’s international goals. This notably features: • Adopting a public diplomacy perspective—independent or in line with the national strategy. This expression of soft power recurs to local cultural assets to make the city more appealing to foreign actors, namely tourists, investors, companies, talents, and students; • Sharing of best practices, in order to support partner cities in their culture and creativity-led development; • Supporting cultural and creative diaspora (music, film, gastronomy, etc.), notably by involving them in bilateral events celebrating cityto-city cooperation. Inward and outward goals are often combined. Just like the other dimensions of city diplomacy, the full potential of these activities can only be reached by establishing a two-way connection between local and international dimensions, enhanced with a participatory approach. Thus, the

130

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

municipality, residents, and local actors can cooperate at the definition and implementation of goals, learn from foreign partners’ best practices, and follow up on the project implementation while strengthening their city’s international positioning. Like other public policies, awareness and participation reveal to be vital for success. Box 8.1: City Modeling: from Coloniality to Co-creation Across the world, cities are tackling similar urban planning goals, such as historic neighborhood revitalization or regeneration of waterfronts, by deploying similar solutions. According to Carlos Vainer, such a worldwide spread of best practices in city modeling is linked to an approach to modernity stemming from Europe and North America (Vainer 2014). Hence, the spread of practices developed by Global North urbanists through colonialism, continued in the framework of development aid, with the support of national and multilateral agencies. The promotion of tangible and intangible local heritage specificities calls city leaders and urbanists outside the Western world to define an autonomous way of matching heritage with economic development. Challenges include the preservation of traditional urban tissue, which in Sub-Saharan Africa often consists of intricate networks of relatively fragile buildings made of earth and vegetation. The protection and promotion of such heritage can play an essential role in expanding tourism, while it might generate challenges of compatibility with the introduction of much-needed utility networks (electricity, water, sewers). In order to define a coherent approach respectful of local culture and society, a “decolonized” approach to urban planning appears as the only solution, to be implemented through “multiple, open dialogue” between academia, professionals and, above all citizens (ibidem). This approach appears to be compatible with the current evolution of city-to-city learning: instead of applying to a city in the South a best practice coming from a city in the North (the original fundament of decentralized cooperation), partnerships’ content is now co-designed, with the involvement of local actors on both sides. Cities appear to be committed to such a complex process requiring extensive consideration of the geographical, socioeconomic, cultural, and political differences while harnessing local creativity to innovate and answer the real needs and wishes of the population. Sources Vainer (2014), Sow (2015), and Mane (2015)

8

CULTURAL CITY DIPLOMACY

131

Local and International Challenges The cultural component of city diplomacy is relatively less controversial than the other ones—which explains why it is so often used to complement them. For example, when city delegations travel abroad, they are frequently accompanied by local artists such as musicians, actors, dancers, chefs, who will perform for foreign officials and audience to celebrate the bond between the cities. Nevertheless, cultural diplomacy can raise a series of additional challenges to the preconditions listed in Chapter 1. I. Cultural differences Cultural displays and performances in the framework of international partnerships should always take into consideration the counterparts’ political and religious sensibilities to avoid inadvertently offend or embarrass them (e.g., nudity, topics evocative of traumatisms). If needed, to avoid risks of diplomatic incidents, the international relations/culture staff could consult with national diplomats or researchers in cultural and area studies specialized in the partner’s culture and protocol. II. Balance between cooperation and competition In the past, cities competed with each other to attract talented architects and artists—a common practice, for example, in Italian Renaissance’s Signorie, whose impact brings tourists from all over the world to cities like Florence, Verona, Ferrara or Mantova. While this form of competition still exists—and often at a much larger, global scale—the rise of city diplomacy has spread a firm commitment for city-to-city cooperation. Today, major European cities tend to qualify this component of city diplomacy as “international cultural cooperation,” a term which denotes, according to Eurocities, a “paradigm shift” (Eurocities 2017). For this shift to reach its full potential, it needs to be shared by all actors involved in this dimension of city diplomacy—municipality, tourism organizations, development agency (when present), artists, cultural and creative industries, tourism sector, cultural associations, and residents. A coherent, ambitious strategy well connected to a city’s specificities opens up to the possibility of boosting cultural and creative industries, with a positive, sustainable impact on the local economy, job market, and social equality. Moreover,

132

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

cities are keener to cooperate in the presence of balanced, clear positive externalities on both sides. III. Balance between protection and promotion It is not always easy to balance the protection of urban cultural heritage, in both its tangible and intangible components, and the goal of attracting tourists from across the world. Over-tourism has generated protests by residents in several touristic cities, as vast inflow of tourism might cause a number of challenges, ranging from local economy (raise of prices and rents), to the environment (more traffic and waste) and damage to fragile heritage. The World Tourism Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, formally recognizes the role of cities as leaders in promoting sustainable cultural tourism as a tool to implement the Agenda 2030, namely SDG 11 on sustainable cities and communities. To foster discussion and cooperation in this field, UNWTO organizes since 2012 the annual Global Summit on City Tourism, and promote multilevel cooperation between states, local governments, tourism operators, and research institutions.1 To address these issues, there is a need for the international tourism strategy to be co-constructed with the local population, stakeholders from the cultural and tourism sectors, and experts in heritage and environment studies. IV. Balance between past and present A challenge is represented by finding a balance between protecting and promoting ancient local heritage and doing the same with more contemporary expressions of culture, including innovation, diversity, and cross-fertilization of cultures. There is an inherent need for both goals to be coordinated in order for the municipality to plan and implement coherent local actions and to provide foreign and internal audiences with a rich, attractive cultural city brand. The spread of a participatory definition of what represents cultural heritage—a trend supported, as mentioned, by

1 Moreover, the UNWTO Award in Public Policy and Governance has been launched to celebrate practices able to match social and economic benefits with the promotion and protection of local cultural heritage (UNWTO 2020).

8

CULTURAL CITY DIPLOMACY

133

international organizations such as UNESCO and the EU—allows municipalities to update their inventorying and design policies taking into due consideration all components of urban culture. V. Financial constraints Sometimes perceived as a nonessential component of public spending, municipal cultural action, in both its local and international components, frequently suffers budgetary cuts in times of financial constraints. In terms of city diplomacy, this usually results in fewer new partnerships, while existing ones could become inactive. Cities in these situations should consider strengthening multi-stakeholder partnerships, seeking external financial and in-kind support, and cooperating with national public bodies (Ministries of Culture, Tourism, and Foreign Affairs, institutes for culture abroad, embassies and consulates), charities, and the private sector. VI. Cultural cooperation with cities lacking freedom of expression As mentioned in Chapter 1, dealing with cities in nondemocratic regimes can cause additional challenges to city diplomacy. This is particularly the case in the framework of cultural and creative cooperation with cities in countries imposing heavy censorship and legal constraints to freedom of expression. While cities could legitimately decide not to refrain from such international partnerships—namely in the hope that sustained cooperation could lead to opening and democratization—it is of paramount importance to make sure such cooperation is not perceived as an endorsement to nondemocratic regimes. To that purpose, it is useful to define a set of clear guidelines for all the actors involved in the partnership. This reveals to be particularly useful in the case of municipalities refraining from direct cultural cooperation but wishing to support the relationships between actors and stakeholders of the two cities’ cultural sectors, such as artists, galleries, NGOs, museums, and theaters (Eurocities 2017). Like other forms of city diplomacy, the external cultural action of cities demands a strategic approach to support its consistency and coherence with the whole municipal international action. The presence of a plurality

134

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

of public and private actors might entail unclear and redundant international exposure. This calls for closer coordination and strategic planning to maximize both the return on investment and the positive impact on the whole local community.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Cities’ Cultural Diplomacy Finally, in cities across the world, cultural and creative sectors have been harshly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdown and social distancing measures forced most performing artists to stop working, and cultural venues such as museums, galleries, theaters, and concert halls to close. Given the global nature of this impact, cities started to exchange views and best practices on how to deal with the immediate challenges, and those likely to emerge in the mid to long term. As mentioned in Chapter 5, the pandemic will dramatically reduce municipalities’ capacity to step in and financially support these sectors, as several cities have done in the first weeks of the outbreak (OECD 2020). For that reason, new modalities to allow for cultural and creative industries to be sustainable have been an object of debates within city networks such as the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, the Organization of World Heritage Cities, and Intercultural Cities. If a strategy is yet to be found, cities have been particularly cooperating on the transition cultural and creative sectors to the Internet, namely by creating municipal online platforms. An example is represented by Bogotá Creadora en Casa (Bogotá Creative at Home), a portal providing visibility to new and past creations by the city’s artists (and students), as well as to the cultural heritage of the city. The platform is integrated into a triangular cooperation with similar platforms by the cities of Barcelona and Buenos Aires, in the framework of the Ciudad(es) Cultura (Culture Cities) project. Box 8.2: UNESCO Creative Cities Network The UNESCO Creative Cities Network is a clear example of the cooperation potential between international organizations and cities. UNESCO created the network in 2004 to “strengthen cooperation with

8

CULTURAL CITY DIPLOMACY

135

and among cities that have recognized creativity as a strategic factor of sustainable development”. The network’s 246 members are divided into seven subnetworks: Crafts and Folk Arts, Media Arts, Film, Design, Gastronomy, Literature, and Music. Even if cities are entitled to join only one subnetwork and concentrate their activities on that specific sector, all members are invited to exchange and cooperate with each other. It is worth mentioning that a cities’ subnetwork not necessarily represent the main creative sector of the city in terms of revenue or employment, as demonstrated by Milan, a world’s capital in industrial and fashion design and a member of the literature subnetwork since 2017. Member cities systematically invite each other to their cultural initiatives, which provide the opportunity for city managers to meet and further expand cooperation. An example was the 2017 GolaGola Festival held in Parma, when chefs representing the hosting cities and six other cities from the Gastronomy subnetwork realized a series of cooking shows and a charity gala dinner. Cooperation fostered in this framework led the five participating European cities present to obtain a European grant to support knowledge about the food value chain for younger generations (“Youth in action for a creative and sustainable gastronomy” project, 2017, 2019). Finally, participation in this network provides cities with a much coveted brand of a world-class creative city, whose activities enjoy the visibility support by UNESCO and other member cities. Sources Bax (2016), European Commission (2019), and UNESCO (2020b)

References Bax, Denise, ed. 2016. Creative Cities for Sutainable Development. Paris: UNESCO. Campelo, Adriana, Robert Aitken, Maree Thyne, and Juergen Gnoth. 2014. ‘Sense of Place: The Importance for Destination Branding.’ Journal of Travel Research 53 (2): 154–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287513496474. Eurocities. 2017. ‘Cities’ External Cultural Relations: Trends and Actions.’ EUROCITY study. Brussels. http://nws.eurocities.eu/MediaShell/media/ EUROCITIES_study_on_culture_in_cities_external_relations_2017.pdf.

136

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

European Commission. 2019. ‘Erasmus + Project Card: Youth in Action for a Creative and Sustainable Gastronomy.’ Text. Erasmus + European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/ projects/eplus-project-details_en. Jackson, J. B. 1995. ‘A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time.’ Design Quarterly (164): 24–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/4091350. Landry, Charles, and Franco Bianchini. 1995. The Creative City. Vol. 12. London: Demos. Mane, Yaya. 2015. ‘Mémoire et Villes En Développement.’ Raisonnance, March. OECD. 2020. ‘Cities Policy Responses.’ OECD Policy Responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19). https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=126_126769-yen458 47kf&title=Coronavirus-COVID-19-Cities-Policy-Responses. PartHer. 2020. ‘Parther.’ PartHer Project. https://www.parther.eu/. Sow, Aliou. 2015. ‘Conflits Mémoriels et Renaissance Africaine.’ Raisonnance, March. UNESCO. 2020a. ‘Community-Based Inventorying of Intangible Heritage in Urban Areas.’ UNESCO Website. https://ich.unesco.org/en/project. ———. 2020b. ‘Creative Cities | Creative Cities Network.’ https://en.unesco. org/creative-cities/. UNWTO. 2020. ‘UNWTO Awards.’ https://www.unwto.org/UNWTOawards. Vainer, Carlos. 2014. Disseminating ‘Best Practice’? Routledge Handbooks Online. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203387832.ch6. Vuignier, Renaud. 2017. ‘La marque territoriale, outil de différenciation pour l’attractivité ? Étude empirique auprès de décideurs d’entreprise.’ Gestion et management public 6/1 (3): 59–75.

CHAPTER 9

City Diplomacy and Migration

Abstract Cities of both developing and developed countries represent the main destinations of international migration flows. While international migration features a high potential for both migrants and their new city of residence, it also generates a series of challenges, whose management falls mainly in the hands of mayors. As the chapter will highlight, city diplomacy offers tools to support this task, primarily in the framework of city networks and partnerships with international organizations. Nevertheless, political differences in addressing migration between cities and central governments have sometimes led to harsh political confrontations. Like in the case of environmental politics, international coalitions of mayors have formed to advocate for a more substantial role of cities in this component of global governance. The final part of the chapter will deal with the impact of COVID-19 on migration and social inclusion, and how cities have been cooperating to address it. Keywords City diplomacy · Migration · Diversity · Inclusion · Equality · Human rights · Empowerment · Xenophobia · Radicalization · Dialogue · COVID-19

© The Author(s) 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3_9

137

138

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

The Impact of International Migration on Cities Whether they have taken an active stance to managing it or not, many cities across the world have experienced a rise in international immigration, whose impact results in a complex, intricate, and ever-evolving network of formal and informal international connections. Across the world, cities represent the primary destination of today’s international migrants and refugees (UNHCR 2019a, 2020a; International Organization for Migration 2020). Potentially, migrants’ arrival in a city can represent a dramatic improvement in their quality of life, namely for enhanced economic opportunities and access to services (Habitat III 2015). Moreover, cultural diversity resulting from international migration has the potential to foster a climate of innovation and growth, in accordance with Richard Florida’s theory on the geography of creativity and its effects on the local economy (Florida 2003). Unfortunately, international migrants rarely have the opportunity to access the full potential of urbanization. More frequently, moving to a foreign city coincides with a series of additional challenges, and results in a rise of urban inequalities. As the United Nations have pointed out (Habitat III 2015), international migrants access mainly informal and precarious jobs and live in ethnicized neighborhoods (in many countries in the Global South located in peri-urban slums lacking basic services). Moreover, they are generally more exposed to climate change and tend to have more limited access to social and cultural facilities. Cities across the world are also places of discrimination and racism, thus worsening migrant isolation and lowering the chances of integration. Finally, such a situation tends to be harder for women, as they cumulate migrant and gender-related discriminations. As the closest institution to residents and the main provider of essential services, city governments are the best-suited entity to assess these inequalities and act to address them. Besides ensuring the respect of fundamental human rights, municipalities across the world have been implementing a series of actions to improve migrants’ quality of life by targeting the challenges they face due to their status. As a result, these municipalities set the ground for a more equal and sustainable society, while reducing risks related to violent extremism connected to both xenophobia and radicalization. Besides, discrimination is very rarely directed against one ethnic, religious, or linguistic group: “intolerant attitudes tend to cluster around multiple

9

CITY DIPLOMACY AND MIGRATION

139

types of ‘difference’” (UNFPA 2014, 66), which calls mayors to integrate migrant-targeted actions in the framework of a broader municipal strategy for equity and inclusion.

Migration as a Resource for City Diplomacy Generally, municipalities have three distinct departments adressing international migration: • The culture department, usually in charge of promoting and protecting cultural diversity; • Social services, in charge of integration and of providing aid and assistance to migrants in need; • The international relations office. The involvement of the latter, more recent compared to the first two, is mainly due to the mentioned similarities in migration’s impact on cities across the world. The spread of similar challenges and opportunities has led to the creation of international partnerships with other cities, international organizations, and NGOs, with the goal of improving the management of such a phenomenon—either through peer learning, capacity building, and introduction of pilot projects—as well as of launching (or joining) regional and global advocacy campaigns. In line with the participatory approach spread across the different dimensions of city diplomacy, the international relations department should connect with migrants and migrant associations. This will allow city diplomats to identify the existing impact of migration on the city’s formal and informal international connections. As mentioned in Chapter 3, migrant communities tend naturally to act as links with foreign cities and countries in different ways, from enabling economic and trade connections to enhancing cultural exchange and twofold hybridization. Through such dialogue and engagement of migrants, the international relations department has the possibility to achieve the following set of results: • Empowering migrants and migrants’ associations as actors of decentralized cooperation in their cities and countries of origin—see Chapter 3;

140

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

• Assessing possible involvement of foreign actors piloting migrant organizations for goals not compatible with those of the municipality. This includes the identification of diaspora diplomacy (Rana 2011)—namely that implemented by nondemocratic regimes—and connection with transnational criminal and radicalized groups); • Enhancing the culture and social services departments’ action in fostering cohesion and equity, in particular by empowering those groups and individuals possessing “transcultural agency”, i.e., “the rights and abilities to engage actively in the making of our urban spaces while finding and founding their own place in the changing society” (Hou 2013, 14).

Sanctuary Cities vs. Fortress Countries? If it is mainly to cities that migration is directed, and it is up to municipal governments to provide essential services to migrants and make sure they integrate into society, the control over borders and the legal status of the migrant are all regulated by national law, and managed by national bodies. Over the last decades, radically different approaches to migration between national and city governments have led to frictions, sometimes with the involvement of foreign and international actors. Namely, this opposition has taken the form of the sanctuary city movement, spread across the world. If the self-proclaimed statuses of “sanctuary cities” and “city of refuge” generally involve a proactive approach toward the protection of undocumented migration, its implementation varies widely from country to country as a consequence of different national legal frameworks. The practice is best known for its application in US cities, where it started spreading in the 1980s in order to benefit migrants lacking legal status. This led to sometimes harsh accusations between the federal government and mayors implementing sanctuary policies (Leffel 2018). As local authorities are not allowed to modify undocumented migrants’ legal status, the impact of sanctuary city policies is limited to improve their quality of life, such as by granting them access to social services and by refusing cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Contrary to what the terms “sanctuary” and “refuge” might suggest, local police cannot protect undocumented migrants from federal or state authorities. The confrontation between cities and national government on the migrant status has regained its momentum in the framework of the

9

CITY DIPLOMACY AND MIGRATION

141

Trump administration’s highly restrictive migration policies.1 A similar situation took place in Italy during the first Conte Cabinet2 (June 1, 2018 to September 5, 2019). In both cases, cities enacting pro-illegal migrant practices—regardless of the use or not of the term sanctuary cities, less frequent in Italy—benefited from the political support of cities and city networks around the world.3 More recently, immigration policies implemented in the so-called Visegrad Four countries (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) are among those contested by the “Pact of Free Cities” signed by the mayors of Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, and Bratislava, who, despite having diverse political backgrounds, decided to unite to defend values such as freedom, social justice, equality, and cultural diversity (Hopkins and Shotter 2019; Parmentier 2020). A major argument raised by welcoming cities across the world is that lack or migrants’ regularization leads to a series of dangers for the whole population, including not reporting criminals to police for fear of being deported and not going to the hospital when sick. For that reason, cities, such as New York and San Francisco, have issued municipal identification cards independent of legal status for local identification purposes (Bauder 2017; International Organization for Migration 2020). The outbreak of COVID-19 has led many municipalities across the world to adopt health and assistance strategies to all residents regardless of their status, reassuring migrant communities that everybody would have had access to medical attention, without any risk of being reported to national authorities (see below).

1 In March 2020, the Center for Immigration Studies listed 171 cities and counties, and 11 states having put in place laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other practices to prevent immigration enforcement by federal authorities (Center for Immigration Studies 2020). 2 In Italy, mayors from many cities, including Palermo, Florence, or Milan, refrained from applying some dispositions included in the Salvini decree, from the name of that then minister of the interior, nativist Matteo Salvini (League party). Particularly vocal was the opposition of Palermo’s mayor Leoluca Orlando, a professor of law who deemed the dispositions preventing asylum seekers from benefiting of municipal services as unconstitutional. Orlando signed himself the municipal papers granting these benefits. In July 2020, the Italian Constitutional Court formally declared these dispositions unconstitutional (Corte Costituzionale 2020). 3 ANVITA, the French “national association of welcoming cities and territories,” displays in its website, alongside the lists of its members, the map of Italian cities who opposed the Salvini decree (ANVITA 2020).

142

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

If intergovernmental organizations, understandably, tend to refrain from commenting on political clashes between local and national governments, they have repeatedly and openly praised the welcoming approach of cities providing services and support the migrants regardless of their migration status (Price 2014; UNHCR 2019b). Considering these frictions, it is not surprising that many national governments oppose local governments’ participation in international migration governance mechanisms. Albeit not formally a party to UN negotiations leading to the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM, 2018) and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR, 2018), mayors from across the world addressed recommendations and commitments to the co-facilitators of the texts. In the 2018 Marrakesh Declaration, adopted at the 5th Mayoral Forum on Human Mobility, Migration and Development on the eve of the GCM Conference, the participating cities recalled their contribution to the process as well as their “ambition that both Compacts bolster inclusive and coordinated multilevel governance and response for the benefits of migrants and refugees” (‘Marrakech Mayors Declaration’ 2018). To support and coordinate cities’ active participation in migration policy deliberations at the regional and international levels, the Declaration launched the Mayors’ Migration Council (see Box 9.2).

Partnerships with International Organizations At the level of multilateral city diplomacy, welcoming policies and intercultural dialogue find a series of fora, where cities can exchange best practices while branding themselves internationally as members. As topics of migration and inclusion have been for a long time at the center of international organizations’ actions, it is not surprising that municipalities are cooperating with them. The United Nations’ New Urban Agenda connects urban management to the respect of human rights of all residents, regardless of their legal status: “We commit ourselves to ensuring full respect for the human rights of refugees, internally displaced persons and migrants, regardless of their migration status, and support their host cities in the spirit of international cooperation, taking into account national circumstances and recognizing that, although the movement of large populations into towns and cities

9

CITY DIPLOMACY AND MIGRATION

143

poses a variety of challenges, it can also bring significant social, economic and cultural contributions to urban life” (United Nations 2016a). A key role in fostering international debate over cities’ international action on migration issues has been played by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Recognizing that “city and local government authorities have so far not had a prominent voice in the global debates on human mobility” (International Organization for Migration 2016), in October 2015 IOM convened the Conference on Migrants and Cities in the framework of its main global policy forum, the International Dialogue on Migration. The event represents a milestone in city diplomacy as the first precedent of a mayor policy dialogue with joint participation from cities and nations. In regional terms, the Council of Europe (CoE) launched in 2009 the Intercultural Cities program (ICC), consisting of a network of cities in CoE’s member states, and Morocco, Canada, the United States, Mexico, Australia, and Japan. This program stems from the CoE’s clear understanding that cities are in charge of the concrete application of national policies on human and cultural rights (D’Alessandro 2020). It features three main local goals, namely effective and efficient access to rights, the spread of constructive interactions between diverse communities, and advocacy on the positive impact of cultural diversity. ICC’s member cities have access to traditional city diplomacy tools—peer learning, capacity building workshops—as well as to a diagnostic mechanism, the ICC Index, consisting of a set of indicators assessing the level of local intercultural integration, allowing for comparisons with other cities. Furthermore, IIC experts assist member municipalities in the definition and update of their own intercultural strategies. The European Union has been supporting its cities’ migration policies through a series of funding mechanisms, including four Urbact peer-topeer exchange networks (Roumourless Cities, Arrival Cities, Managing migration and Integration at local LEvel—MILE, and Open Cities), and seven Urban Innovative Actions in Antwerp, Athens, Bologna, Coventry, Fuenlabrada, Utrecht, and Vienna. In 2015 the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Stability and Combating the Root Causes of Irregular Migration and the Displaced Persons in Africa (EUTF), together with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, launched the

144

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

Mediterranean City-to-City Migration (MC2CM) program, involving the cities of Amman, Beirut, Lisbon, Lyon, Madrid, Tangier, Tunis, Turin, and Vienna.4 With the overall goal of enhancing partnership between MENA and European cities on migrant integration, the first phase of the project (2015–2017) supported cities’ assessment of their local migrant situation, which served as a basis to the definition of local actions and common challenges among cities, on which concentrated the knowledge exchange activities between municipalities.5 The second phase of the program (2018–2021) is expanding the network to Algiers, Oran, Tripoli (Lybia), Sabha, Sousse, and Fès, and features the additional goal of strengthening reinforce and set up mechanisms of multilevel governance on migration through the involvement of regional and national actors (Mediterranean City-to-City Migration 2017; European Union 2020). The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) signed in December 2008 a Memorandum of Understanding with UCLG to promote intercultural dialogue in cities (UCLG 2008). More recently, it has signed an MoU with the City of La Courneuve (Greater Paris), featuring a population of 42,000—80% of which of foreign descent. Through this partnership, UNAOC supports La Courneuve’s intercultural strategy by means of a capacity building program for local youth, with the general goal of addressing stereotypes, fake news, and hate speech (UNAOC 2019). In March 2020 UNAOC collaborated with the City of Los Angeles and the LAMEDINA International Dialogue Institute in the organization of the first edition of the LA Dialogue on Creating Cities of Belonging, a knowledge-sharing meeting between Mayors and city representatives committing, through the LA Declaration, to going “beyond fostering tolerance among diverse communities” in order to “create a sense of belonging and sharing for our residents, whereby all individuals feel values, heard, and included and their rights are respected” (LA Dialogue on Creating Cities of Belonging 2020).

4 The program is implemented by a consortium led by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) in partnership with the UCLG and UN-Habitat, and with UNHCR as an associated partner. 5 MC2MC’s participant cities have identified the following list of common challenges: safeguarding social cohesion; ensuring access to basic services as well as to housing, education and employment for newcomers; addressing needs of specific target groups such as asylum seekers and refugees; and ensuring human rights of migrants are guaranteed (European Union 2020).

9

CITY DIPLOMACY AND MIGRATION

145

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has launched the Cities #WithRefugees initiative (part of the global #WithRefugees campaign) consisting of a statement of solidarity by which signatory cities and local authorities, restate their commitment in creating inclusive communities and promoting hope. In July 2020, 255 cities worldwide and of different sizes have signed the statement (UNHCR 2020b). UNHCR is also supporting the Refugee Food Festival, launched in 2016 by French NGO Food Sweet Food and taking place in June in 15 cities across Europe, the United States, and South Africa, in partnership with the local municipalities (Food Sweet Food 2020). Last but not least, UNESCO fosters inclusion and cooperation through its International Coalition of Inclusive and Sustainable Cities (ICCAR), launched in 2004 and composed of seven regional and national coalitions, each featuring a Ten-Point Plan of Action, whose signatory cities undertake to integrate into their municipal strategy. Cities themselves have been creating fora to discuss migration and enhance their capabilities to respond to the related challenges. Numerous discussions, peer learning activities, and pilot projects have been implemented in the framework of several global city networks, including UCLG, C40, and AIMF. Moreover, regional city networks have risen as key actors in coordinating a response to exceptional migrant inflows and through a common narrative among member cities. It is notably the case of Eurocities’ working group on migration and integration, producing a large amount of information and analysis material to support cities’ action while advocating the European Union and its states on the respect of migrants’ human rights and solidarity. Similarly, as several Latin American cities had to face a massive inflow of asylum seekers from Venezuela and Honduras, Mercociudades launched in December 2018 a program called “La diversidad que hay en ti” (“the diversity there is in you”). This media campaign invited member cities to facilitate social cohesion and fight xenophobia and racism by celebrating the positive impact of migration (Mercociudades 2018). In order to expand opportunities for cities to discuss and learn from each other on the topic of urban cohesion and inclusion, in 2015 the City of Montreal—a member of AIMF and Intercultural Cities, among other networks—launched the International Observatory of Mayors on Living Together. Through interactions between its 54 members from across the world and cooperation with universities, the initiative acts as

146

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

a peer learning and research platform focusing on intercultural policies at urban level (Coderre 2016). The Observatory is currently focusing on the impact of COVID-19 on minorities and social cohesion (July 2020). Box 9.1: Intercultural Place Branding Through Gastronomy: The Case of Malmö Across the world, many cities have been featuring an increasingly diverse food scene as restaurants, food kiosks, and markets offer food from migrant communities’ culinary traditions. A small group of cities has decided to brand themselves through such diversity, thus pursuing the goal of expanding their reputation as cosmopolitan and welcoming food destinations. Among them, the city of Malmö, Sweden, home to an uncommonly diverse population (186 nationalities), has been addressing food as a connector between communities, as a source of revenue for migrants, and as a tool for international attractivity. Today, Malmö is known to international gastronomic tourists for its Falafel World Championship, launched in 2018 to celebrate this MiddleEastern delicacy—and the diaspora who brought the recipe with them. This event is also part of the branding campaign presenting Malmö as “Sweden’s capital for vegetarians.” This intercultural branding has been endorsed by the private sector as well, as shown by Matkaravan (Food Caravan), a tourism company offering food tours in English and Swedish to discover Malmo’s culinary diversity. Moreover, Malmö’s intercultural strategy includes the support to two local initiatives implementing a food-based capacity building and integration approach: Yalla Trappan (Yalla Stairs), supporting female migrants’ employ through training in the food sector, and Botildenborg, a “Sustainable Innovation Center” using urban agriculture and food as a tool to create jobs in the green economy, with a focus on young people and newly arrived migrants. Malmö’s strategy has been shared with foreign cities mainly through the Délice Network, whose 32 cities from across the world cooperate to enhance economic development, city branding, and the wellbeing of their citizens through food and gastronomy. Sources City of Malmö (2010, 2018), Berg and Sevón (2014), Benoist (2020), and Tingstedt (2020)

9

CITY DIPLOMACY AND MIGRATION

147

COVID-19 and Evolution COVID-19 generated a series of additional challenges to city policies addressing migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers needs and issues. Nonetheless, as in other municipal action sectors, the pandemic has led to a series of emergency best practices widely shared among cities, which might turn into long-term measures. First of all, the need to share basic information on how to fight the spread of the disease lead many cities across the world (e.g., Leeds, Oslo, or San Francisco) to develop multilingual communication tools targeting the diverse foreign communities. This included establishing new partnerships with foreign-language local media makers such as the Pakistan Cultural Society’s radio in Botkyrka, Sweden. Moreover, cities put in place communication campaigns to counter xenophobia-motivated fake news, namely those targeting communities perceived as either the source or their primary vehicle of contagion (Intercultural Cities 2020). Cooperation with civil society organizations providing support to migrant communities has been strengthened in many cities. A number of them have created centralized information and knowledge exchange system connecting all charities and NGOs working on supporting the most fragile population, thus fostering synergies and efficacy (OECD 2020). Like it happened with the other dimensions of city diplomacy, existing networks and platforms dealing with migration quickly deployed mechanisms to support peer learning and mentoring. An extensive series of tools, including knowledge exchange webinars, video chats with experts, policy papers and lists of best practices, were therefore put in place by actors such as the Intercultural Cities, ICCAR, AIMF, and ASToN. It is worth mentioning that most of this knowledge sharing and production was made public, in order to allow nonmember cities to benefit from them. Box 9.2: The Mayors Migration Council Launched in Marrakech in December 2018, on the eve of the Conference on the Global Compact for Migration, the Mayors Migration Council (MMC) is a coordination mechanism on migration issues open to cities across the world. Its main aim consists in coordinating the demand of

148

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

mayors across the world to “have a seat” at the international policy table on migration. Its strategic guidance is provided by a Leadership Board composed of 10 mayors from across the world, and its secretariat is managed pro-bono by Rockefeller Philanthropy. The MMC is financially supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Open Society Foundation and cooperates with C40 in addressing urban challenges related to both migration and climate change. In July 2020, the MMC Leadership Board members launched a global advocacy campaign to celebrate migrants’ contribution in the fight to the COVID-19 pandemic and denounce that undocumented migrants have been excluded in many places across the world from relief and assistance due to their status. The campaign directly addresses national governments and international organizations, urging their action to ensure universal access to basic healthcare and economic relief regardless of migration status, to regularize immigrant essential workers, and to fight misinformation and xenophobia. These actions are presented by MMC as instrumental in paving the ground for a full recovery from the outbreak. The campaign shares a series of best practices by MMC member cities, showing their vision and leadership for an inclusive and sustainable recovery. Sources ‘Marrakech Mayors Declaration’ (2018) and Mayors Migration Council (2019, 2020)

References ANVITA. 2020. ‘Association Nationale des Villes et Territoires Accueillants.’ ANVITA. https://villes-territoires-accueillants.fr/. Bauder, Harald. 2017. ‘Local and Municipal Responses to Cross-Border Migration: Providing Services to Migrants Independent of Status—Harald Bauder | IOM Online Bookstore.’ https://publications.iom.int/books/local-andmunicipal-responses-cross-border-migration-providing-services-migrants-ind ependent. Benoist, Camille. 2020. Interview to Camille Benoist, Manager, Délice Network Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Berg, Per Olof, and Guje Sevón. 2014. ‘Food-Branding Places—A Sensory Perspective.’ Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 10 (4): 289–304. https:// doi.org/10.1057/pb.2014.29. Center for Immigration Studies. 2020. ‘Map: Sanctuary Cities, Counties, and States.’ CIS.Org., 23 March. https://cis.org/Map-Sanctuary-Cities-Cou nties-and-States.

9

CITY DIPLOMACY AND MIGRATION

149

City of Malmö. 2010. ‘Policy for Sustainable Development and Food.’ City of Malmö. City of Malmö. 2018. ‘Délice Network: City Application Form.’ City of Malmö. Coderre, Denis. 2016. ‘La Ville Inclusive.’ Raisonnance, September. Corte Costituzionale. 2020. Sentenza n. 186. Corte Costituzionale. D’Alessandro, Ivana. 2020. Interview to Ivana D’Alessandro, Head of the Intercultural Cities Unit, Council of Europe Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. European Union. 2020. ‘Mediterranean City-to-City Migration (MC2CM)— Phase II: Action Fiche.’ European Union. https://ec.europa.eu/trustfundfor africa/sites/euetfa/files/action_fiche_revised.docx.pdf. Florida, Richard. 2003. ‘Cities and the Creative Class.’ City & Community 2 (1): 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6040.00034. Food Sweet Food. 2020. ‘Refugee Food Festival’. Refugee Food Festival. July 2020. http://www.refugeefoodfestival.com/festival-annuel/. Habitat III. 2015. ‘Issue Paper on Inclusive Cities.’ Habitat III Issue Papers. New York. http://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/Habitat-IIIIssue-Paper-1_Inclusive-Cities-2.0.pdf. Hopkins, Valerie, and James Shotter. 2019. ‘Liberal Mayors from Visegrad Four Unite to Defy Own Governments.’ Financial Times, 16 December. https:// www.ft.com/content/e9128e40-1d72-11ea-97df-cc63de1d73f4. Hou, Jeffrey. 2013. Transcultural Cities: Border-Crossing and Placemaking. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203075777. Intercultural Cities. 2020. ‘COVID-19: Challenges and Opportunities for Intercultural Local Authorities.’ Council of Europe. https://rm.coe.int/covid-19challenges-and-opportunities-for-intercultural-local-authorit/16809e4d4d. International Organization for Migration. 2016. ‘Conference on Migrants and Cities’. 25. International Dialogue on Migration. Geneva. https://www.iom. int/sites/default/files/our_work/ICP/IDM/RB-25-CMC-Report_webfinal.pdf. ———. 2020. World Migration Report. Geneva: International Organization for Migration. https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/wmr_2020.pdf. LA Dialogue on Creating Cities of Belonging. 2020. ‘The LA Declaration.’ United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), 6 March. https://www. unaoc.org/2020/03/the-la-declaration/. Leffel, Benjamin. 2018. ‘Animus of the Underling: Theorizing City Diplomacy in a World Society.’ The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 13 (4): 502–22. https:// doi.org/10.1163/1871191X-13040025. ‘Marrakech Mayors Declaration.’ 2018. https://www.uclg.org/sites/default/ files/marrakech_mayors_declaration.pdf. Mayors Migration Council. 2019. ‘PRESS RELEASE: Mayors Migration Council: Cities’ Solutions Are States’ Successes.’ Mayors Migration Council

150

L. KIHLGREN GRANDI

(blog), 12 July. https://www.mayorsmigrationcouncil.org/news/mmc-julyleadership-board-meeting. Mayors Migration Council. 2020. ‘Mayors Migration Council.’ Mayors Migration Council, 30 July. https://www.mayorsmigrationcouncil.org. Mediterranean City-to-City Migration. 2017. ‘City Migration Profiles: Synthesis Report.’ Mediterranean City-to-City Migration. https://www.icmpd.org/fil eadmin/1_2018/MC2CM/MC2CM_Synthesis_Report_EN_Online.pdf. Mercociudades. 2018. La Diversidad Que Hay En Ti. https://mercociudades. org/la-diversidad-que-hay-en-ti/. OECD. 2020. ‘Cities Policy Responses.’ OECD Policy Responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19). https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=126_126769-yen458 47kf&title=Coronavirus-COVID-19-Cities-Policy-Responses. Parmentier, Florent. 2020. ‘Union Européenne: Contre-Populisme et “Pacte Des Villes Libres” Dans Les Pays Du Groupe de Visegrad.’ Diplomatie, July. Price, Marie. 2014. ‘Cities Welcoming Immigrants: Local Strategies to Attract and Retain Immigrants in U.S. Metropolitan Areas.’ IOM. Rana, Kishan S. 2011. 21st Century Diplomacy: A Practitioner’s Guide. Key Studies in Diplomacy. London and New York: Continuum. Tingstedt, Karin. 2020. Interview to Karin Tingstedt, Project Manager Events, Malmö Tourism Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. UCLG. 2008. The Hague Agenda on City Diplomacy. The Hague: UCLG. UNAOC. 2019. ‘UNAOC and La Courneuve Sign Unprecedented Partnership to Promote Multiculturalism and Interreligious Understanding | UNAOC’. United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) (blog). 14 December. https://www.unaoc.org/2019/12/unaoc-and-la-courneuve-sign-unprecede nted-partnership-to-promote-multiculturalism-and-interreligious-understan ding/. UNFPA. 2014. Framework of Actions for the Follow-up to the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development Beyond 2014. New York: United Nations. https://www.unfpa.org/sites/def ault/files/pub-pdf/ICPD_beyond2014_EN.pdf. UNHCR. 2019a. Forced Displacement in 2018: Global Trends. Copenhagen: UNHCR. https://www.unhcr.org/5d08d7ee7.pdf. UNHCR. 2019b. ‘UNHCR Welcomes Support of 175 Cities Worldwide for Refugees.’ UNHCR, 20 June. https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2019/ 6/5d0b69cd4/unhcr-welcomes-support-175-cities-worldwide-refugees.html. UNHCR. 2020a. Forced Displacement in 2019: Global Trends. Copenhagen: UNHCR. https://www.unhcr.org/5ee200e37.pdf. ———. 2020b. ‘Cities #WithRefugees’. WithRefugees. July 2020. https://www. unhcr.org/withrefugees/cities/. United Nations. 2016a. New Urban Agenda.

Afterword

In Spring 2020, as the author was finalizing the manuscript of this book, the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly spread across the planet. Such an event has revealed, as never before, the twofold centrality of municipalities. As the political institutions closest to citizens and the primary providers of public services, they represented the main interlocutor for the urban majority of the world’s population throughout the crisis. At the same time, the pandemic revealed that city diplomacy has grown stronger than many expected. Far from being affected by lockdowns and travel bans, its core values of cooperation and solidarity provided the baseline for emergency city-to-city relations. As highlighted in Chapters 3–9, cities have joined forces and built partnerships to face the common threat. The hiatus with the mutual accusations between states and the difficulty faced by international organizations in setting a cooperative way has rarely been more evident. Hence, COVID-19 raises a fundamental question about the evolution of city diplomacy. How have cities become the leading voice of multilateralism? The phenomenon is certainly not new, as the book highlights. City diplomacy’s emergence itself shows how truly cooperative horizontal partnership between foreign partners can be enhanced by a participatory drive harnessing local creativity, energy, and expectations. This approach is likely to perdure as a unique characteristic of city diplomacy. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3

151

152

AFTERWORD

In fact, it is the very nature of cities, as shaped by their legal and political boundaries, that allows them to build and advocate for such a cooperative, participatory approach. Deprived of any political mandate and coercive tools to impose their interests over foreign land, cities have been capitalizing on their proximity to the people to build international strategies integrating both their values and interests. If by jointly addressing transnational challenges such as climate change, migration, violent extremism, cities are “doing the right thing” on the international stage, this is primarily due to the capacity of mayors and city diplomats to knot these values and interests into impactful international partnerships, benefiting from the benevolent support of like-minded governments, international organizations, NGOs, and local actors. Nevertheless, cities and city networks are demanding with increasing insistence to finally have their “seat at the global table,” a stable inclusion of their voice in the main decision-making processes affecting urban life, so to shift from main actors in the implementation of global agendas to co-creators of the next ones. A position they consider to deserve—a claim this book certainly corroborates—but they are still not enjoying, despite the general praise for their transnational actions. City diplomacy’s primary added value to international relations lies precisely in its capacity to build transnational coherence between a multiplicity of local identities, assets, and specificities. In an international context marked by shared challenges and threats, cities’ multilateralism could indeed have a stabilizing impact, balancing the confrontational approach widely embraced by the world’s first two powers over the last months. Indubitably, international relations still mainly function as a private club, whose strict membership rules require a formal invitation to be issued. The delicate balance of international relations, coupled with the unprecedented challenges humanity is facing, call nations to build coherent, effective multilevel frameworks of governance, allowing cities to fully contribute to the design of a better future for all.

Bibliography

Acuto, Michele. 2013a. Global Cities, Governance and Diplomacy: The Urban Link. London: Routledge. ———. 2013b. ‘World Politics by Other Means? London, City Diplomacy and the Olympics.’ The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 8 (3–4): 287–311. https:// doi.org/10.1163/1871191X-12341255. Acuto, Michele, Hugo Decramer, Mika Morissette, Jack Doughty, and Yvonne Ying. 2017. ‘City Networks: New Frontiers for City Leaders.’ In UCL City Leadership Lab Report. London: University College London. Acuto, Michele, Mika Morissette, Dan Chan, and Benjamin Leffel. 2016. ‘“City Diplomacy” and Twinning: Lessons from the UK, China and Globally,’ January. AFP. 2020a. ‘Prague Mayor Condemns China, Unveils Taipei Partnership.’ France 24, 11 January. https://www.france24.com/en/20200111-praguemayor-condemns-china-unveils-taipei-partnership. ———. 2020b. ‘Shanghai Cuts Prague Ties After Mayor Announces Taipei Twinning.’ France 24, 14 January. https://www.france24.com/en/202 00114-shanghai-cuts-prague-ties-after-mayor-announces-taipei-twinning. AIMF. 2015. ‘Mémoire & Développement.’ In Raisonnance. Paris: AIMF. ———. 2016a. ‘Prevention Des Conflits et Gestion de La Diversité.’ In Raisonnance - Les Cahiers. Paris: AIMF. ———. 2016b. Statuts de l’ Association Internationale Des Maires et Responsables Des Capitales et, Métropoles Partiellement Ou Entièrement Francophones. https://aimf.asso.fr/IMG/pdf/statuts_reglement_interieu_ag_sept_2 016.pdf. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3

153

154

BIBLIOGRAPHY

———. 2020a. ‘Covid-19 - Agir Aujourd’hui et Préparer Demain.’ Association Internationale Des Maires Francophones, July. https://www.aimf.asso. fr/AIMF-COVID19.html. ———. 2020b. ‘#Covid-19: Le Plan d’appui de l’AIMF Aux Villes,’ July. https://www.aimf.asso.fr/Covid-19-le-plan-d-appui-de-l-AIMF-aux-vil les.html. Ajuntament de Barcelona. 2020. ‘Crida per a La Resposta a Una Emergència Determinada: Covid-19.’ https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/relacionsintern acionalsicooperacio/sites/default/files/info_detallada_crida_covid19_cat_def. pdf. Alvarez, Mariano. 2020. ‘Opinion—Paradiplomacy in Times of Pandemic: The Paths Ahead.’ E-International Relations (blog), 1 July. https://www.e-ir. info/2020/07/01/opinion-paradiplomacy-in-times-of-pandemic-the-pathsahead/. Alvarez Tinajero, Sandra Paola, and Giulia Sinatti. 2012. Migration for Development: A Bottom-Up Approach. Brussels: EC-UN Joint Migration and Development Initiative. http://www.migration4development.org/sites/m4d. emakina-eu.net/files/jmdi_august_2011_handbook_migration_for_develo pment_0.pdf. ANVITA. 2020. ‘Association Nationale des Villes et Territoires Accueillants.’ ANVITA. https://villes-territoires-accueillants.fr/. ARRICOD. 2018. ‘L’action Internationale Économique Des Collectivités Territoriales.’ ARRICOD. https://www.arricod.fr/wp-content/uploads/ ARRICOD-Laction-internationale-%C3%A9conomique.pdf. ASToN Network. 2020. COVID-19 Open Calls—A Summary. Paris: ASToN Network. https://aston-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/OpenCOVID-calls-summary.pdf. Baillet, Pierre. 2020. Interview to Pierre Baillet, Secretary Permanent of AIMF Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Telephone. Baléo, Marie. 2020. ‘Les gilets jaunes: simple révolte anti-métropolitaine ou symptôme d’une crise plus profonde?’ La Fabrique de la Cité, 10 March. https://www.lafabriquedelacite.com/publications/les-gilets-jaunes-simple-rev olte-anti-metropolitaine-ou-symptome-dune-crise-plus-profonde/. Bansard, Jennifer, Philipp Pattberg, and Oscar Widerberg. 2017. ‘Cities to the Rescue? Assessing the Performance of Transnational Municipal Networks in Global Climate Governance.’ International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 17 (2): 229–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784016-9318-9. Barnes, Julian E. 2020. ‘White House Official Says Huawei Has Secret Back Door to Extract Data.’ The New York Times, 11 February, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/us/politics/white-house-hua wei-back-door.html.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

155

Bauder, Harald. 2017. ‘Local and Municipal Responses to Cross-Border Migration: Providing Services to Migrants Independent of Status—Harald Bauder | IOM Online Bookstore.’ https://publications.iom.int/books/local-andmunicipal-responses-cross-border-migration-providing-services-migrants-ind ependent. Bax, Denise, ed. 2016. Creative Cities for Sutainable Development. Paris: UNESCO. Beech, Hannah. 2020. ‘Tracking the Coronavirus: How Crowded Asian Cities Tackled an Epidemic.’ The New York Times, 17 March, sec. World. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/asia/coronavirus-sin gapore-hong-kong-taiwan.html. Benner, Chris. 2014. Digital Dynamics. Routledge Handbooks Online. https:// doi.org/10.4324/9780203387832.ch21. Benoist, Camille. 2020. Interview to Camille Benoist, Manager, Délice Network Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Berg, Per Olof, and Guje Sevón. 2014. ‘Food-Branding Places—A Sensory Perspective.’ Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 10 (4): 289–304. https:// doi.org/10.1057/pb.2014.29. Bilsky, Edgardo, Andrea Ciambra, Mathieu Guérin, and Ludovic Terren, eds. 2017. GOLD IV: Co-Creating the Urban Future. Barcelona, Spain: UCLG. Brenner, Neil (1969–….) 2004. New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood / Neil Brenner. 1 vol. (xix, 351 p.) vols. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. C40. 2015. ‘C40 Clean Bus Declaration.’ C40. http://c40-production-ima ges.s3.amazonaws.com/other_uploads/images/884_C40_CITIES_CLEAN_ BUS_DECLARATION_OF_INTENT_FINAL_DEC1.original_EC2.original. original.pdf?1479915583. ———. 2019. Defining Carbon Neutrality for Cities & Managing Residual Emissions. London: C40. https://www.c40.org/researches/defining-carbonneutrality-for-cities-managing-residual-emissions. ———. 2020. ‘C40: Global Mayors Launch COVID-19 Economic Recovery Task Force.’ C40, 15 April. https://www.c40.org/press_releases/global-may ors-covid-19-recovery-task-force. Campbell, Tim. 2001. ‘Innovation and Risk-Taking: Urban Governance in Latin America.’ In Global City-Regions. Trends, Theory, Policy, edited by Allen J. Scott, 214–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Campelo, Adriana, Robert Aitken, Maree Thyne, and Juergen Gnoth. 2014. ‘Sense of Place: The Importance for Destination Branding.’ Journal of Travel Research 53 (2): 154–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287513496474. Carrington, Damian. 2020. ‘“Compelling” Evidence Air Pollution Worsens Coronavirus—Study.’ The Guardian, 13 July, sec. World news. https://www.

156

BIBLIOGRAPHY

theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/13/compelling-evidence-air-pollutionworsens-coronavirus-study. Center for Immigration Studies. 2020. ‘Map: Sanctuary Cities, Counties, and States.’ CIS.Org., 23 March. https://cis.org/Map-Sanctuary-Cities-Cou nties-and-States. CEVIPOF. 2019. ‘Baromètre de La Confiance Politique – Vague 10.’ CEVIPOF. https://www.sciencespo.fr/cevipof/sites/sciencespo.fr.cevipof/ files/CEVIPOF_confiance_vague10-1.pdf. Cities for Climate. 2015. ‘Paris City Hall Declaration.’ https://www.uclg.org/ sites/default/files/climate_summit_final_declaration.pdf. City of Copenhagen. 2020. Nordic Urban Living Labs. Copenhagen: Nordic Innovation. City of Malmö. 2010. ‘Policy for Sustainable Development and Food.’ City of Malmö. ———. 2018. ‘Délice Network: City Application Form.’ City of Malmö. Clark, Peter, ed. 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coderre, Denis. 2016. ‘La Ville Inclusive.’ Raisonnance, September. Committee of the Regions. 2020. ‘Atlas of Decentralised Cooperation.’ https:// lra4dev.cor.europa.eu/portal/en/atlas/Pages/Maps.aspx. Comune di Firenze. 2015. ‘Premio Giorgio La Pira.’ http://www.mayorsfor peace.org/english/history/2020_2011/data/PremioLaPira.pdf. ———. 2018. ‘Unity in diversity, il premio La Pira a Genova, Matera e Nuevo Cuscatlàn.’ Città di Firenze, 7 November. https://www.comune.fi.it/com unicati-stampa/unity-diversity-il-premio-la-pira-genova-matera-e-nuevo-cus catlan?language_content_entity=it. Comune di Milano. 2020. ‘Protocollo d’intesa Tra Milano, Genova e Torino per La Promozione Dei Rispettivi Territori.’ Press release, 30 April. https://www.comune.milano.it/-/turismo.-protocollo-d-intesa-tra-mil ano-genova-e-torino-per-la-promozione-dei-rispettivi-territori. Corte Costituzionale. 2020. Sentenza n. 186. Corte Costituzionale. Council of Europe. 1985. European Charter of Local Self-Government. ETS No. 122. https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/Displa yDCTMContent?documentId=090000168007a088. D’Alessandro, Ivana. 2020. Interview to Ivana D’Alessandro, Head of the Intercultural Cities Unit, Council of Europe Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. De Aenlle, Conrad. 2015. ‘World’s Fairs and Their Legacies.’ The New York Times, 1 May, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/arts/int ernational/worlds-fairs-and-their-legacies.html.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

157

Derudder, Ben, Hoyler Michael, Taylor Peter James, and Frank Witlox, eds. 2012. International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities. Elgar Original Reference. Cheltenham and Northhampton (MA): Edward Elgar. Dierwechter, Yonn. 2010. ‘Metropolitan Geographies of US Climate Action: Cities, Suburbs, and the Local Divide in Global Responsibilities.’ Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 12 (1): 59–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 15239081003625960. Dragone, Monica. 2020. Interview to Monica Dragone, officer at the City of Milan’s City to City Cooperation Unit Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Encuentro de Estudios Sobre Paradiplomacia e Internacionalización Territorial. 2020. Red de Expertos En Paradiplomacia e Internacionalización TerritorialREPIT. Córdoba, Argentina: Editorial CEIC. http://repit.site/ebook/#/les sons/zSAGx0sjEeHEZ-v9xslN-C3KVGL8pWqh. Eurocities. 2017. ‘Cities’ External Cultural Relations: Trends and Actions.’ EUROCITY study. Brussels. http://nws.eurocities.eu/MediaShell/media/ EUROCITIES_study_on_culture_in_cities_external_relations_2017.pdf. ———. 2020. ‘European Cities Respond to the Coronavirus Crisis: Frankfurt—Solidarity with Twin City Milan.’ Live Updates COVID-19, 9 June. https://covidnews.eurocities.eu/2020/06/09/frankfurt-solidaritywith-twin-city-milan/. European Commission. 2008. ‘Local Authorities: Actors for Development.’ European Union. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri= COM:2008:0626:FIN:EN:PDF. ———. 2015. ‘Participação e Oportunidades de Desenvolvimento Local: Actividades Culturais, Criativas e Direitos Ambientais.’ European Union. https:// webgate.ec.europa.eu/europeaid/online-services/index.cfm?ADSSChck=159 5341577535&do=publi.welcome&orderby=upd&nbPubliList=15&aofr=150 577&searchtype=RS&orderbyad=Desc&userlanguage=en. ———. 2019. ‘Erasmus + Project Card: Youth in Action for a Creative and Sustainable Gastronomy.’ Text. Erasmus + - European Commission. https:// ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/projects/eplus-project-details_en. European Regional Development Fund. 2020. ‘What Is Urban Innovative Actions?’ What Is Urban Innovative Actions? https://uia-initiative.eu/en/ about-us/what-urban-innovative-actions. European Union. 2016. Pact of Amsterdam—Urban Agenda for the EU. https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/system/files/ged/pact-of-amsterdam_ en.pdf. ———. 2020. ‘Mediterranean City-to-City Migration (MC2CM)—Phase II: Action Fiche.’ European Union. https://ec.europa.eu/trustfundforafrica/ sites/euetfa/files/action_fiche_revised.docx.pdf.

158

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Favereau, Eric, and Thibaut Sardier. 2019. ‘Edgar Morin et Alain Touraine, une humanité de pensée.’ Libération.fr, 3 February. https://www.liberation. fr/debats/2019/02/03/edgar-morin-et-alain-touraine-une-humanite-de-pen see_1707195. Federal Republic of Germany, and French Republic. 2019. Franco-German Treaty of Aachen. https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/ger many/france-and-germany/franco-german-treaty-of-aachen/. Florida, Richard. 2003. ‘Cities and the Creative Class.’ City & Community 2 (1): 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6040.00034. ———. 2017. ‘When Cities Are More Economically Powerful Than Nations.’ Bloomberg CityLab, 16 March. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ 2017-03-16/top-metros-have-more-economic-power-than-most-nations. Florida, Richard, Tim Gulden, and Charlotta Mellander. 2008. ‘The Rise of the Mega-Region.’ Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 1 (3): 459–76. https:// doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsn018. Food Sweet Food. 2020. ‘Refugee Food Festival’. Refugee Food Festival. July 2020. http://www.refugeefoodfestival.com/festival-annuel/. G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance. 2020. ‘About the Alliance.’ G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance. https://globalsmartcitiesalliance.org/about/. Gallet, Bertrand. 2012. ‘Diplomatie Des Villes: Le Combat Pour La Légitimité.’ In La Diplomatie Des Autorités Locales et Régionales, Un Outil Au Service Du Dialogue et de La Paix, edited by Patrick Debut. INSET. Galtung, Johan. 2000. ‘Local Authorities as Peace Factors/Actors/ Workers.’ Journal of World-Systems Research 6 (3): 860–72. https://doi.org/10.5195/ jwsr.2000.207. Garcia, Elise. 2017. ‘Les Collectivités Territoriales Dans La Coopération Française: Origines, Spécificités et Perspectives.’ Pour Mémoire. La Révue Des Ministères de La Transition Écologique et Solidaire et de La Cohésion Des Territoire, Fall. Global Covenant of Mayors. 2019. ‘Climate Emergency: Unlocking the Urban Opportunity Together.’ 2019 Impact Report. Global Covenant of Mayors. ———. 2020. ‘Over 10,000 Cities Worldwide Call on All Governments for a Global Green Recovery.’ Global Covenant of Mayors (blog), 3 June. https://www.globalcovenantofmayors.org/press/statement-global-cov enant-of-mayors-mayoral-board-on-covid-19-green-recovery/. Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments. 2019. Outcome Document or the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments—Durban Formal Session, 15 November 2019. Durban: Global Taskforce of Local And Regional Governments. https://www.global-taskforce.org/sites/default/files/201911/WALRG%20Outcome%20Document%20Durban%2015%20November% 202019_0.pdf.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

159

Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. 2020. Voceros de Buenos Aires Por El Mundo. Buenos Aires: Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. https://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/sites/gcaba/files/brief_voceros_de_b uenos_aires.pdf. Gottmann, Jean. 1957. ‘Megalopolis or the Urbanization of the Northeastern Seaboard.’ Economic Geography 33 (3): 189–200. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 142307. Habitat III. 2015. ‘Issue Paper on Inclusive Cities.’ Habitat III Issue Papers. New York. http://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/Habitat-IIIIssue-Paper-1_Inclusive-Cities-2.0.pdf. Halliday, Jess, Laura Platenkamp, and Yota Nicolarea. 2019. A Menu of Actions to Shape Urban Food Environments for Improved Nutrition. GAIN, MUFPP and RUAF. Handley, Susan. 2006. ‘Take Your Partners—The Local Authority Handbook on International Partnerships.’ 10. LGIB International Reports. Local Government International Bureau. Hemert, Chris van. 2008. ‘A Study in City Diplomacy / the Municipal Alliance for Peace in the Middle East.’ In City Diplomacy, edited by Arne Musch, Chris van der Valk, Alexandra Sizoo, and Kian Tajbakhsh, 47–73. The Hague: VNG International. Hollands, Robert G. 2008. ‘Will the Real Smart City Please Stand Up?’ City 12 (3): 303–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604810802479126. Hopkins, Valerie, and James Shotter. 2019. ‘Liberal Mayors from Visegrad Four Unite to Defy Own Governments.’ Financial Times, 16 December. https:// www.ft.com/content/e9128e40-1d72-11ea-97df-cc63de1d73f4. Hou, Jeffrey. 2013. Transcultural Cities: Border-Crossing and Placemaking. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203075777. Ilgen, S., F. Sengers, and J.A. Wardekker. 2019. ‘City-To-City Learning for Urban Resilience: The Case of Water Squares in Rotterdam and Mexico City.’ Water (Basel) 11 (5): 983. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11050983. Intercultural Cities. 2020. ‘COVID-19: Challenges and Opportunities for Intercultural Local Authorities.’ Council of Europe. https://rm.coe.int/covid-19challenges-and-opportunities-for-intercultural-local-authorit/16809e4d4d. International Organization for Migration. 2016. ‘Conference on Migrants and Cities’. 25. International Dialogue on Migration. Geneva. https://www.iom. int/sites/default/files/our_work/ICP/IDM/RB-25-CMC-Report_webfinal.pdf. ———. 2020. World Migration Report. Geneva: International Organization for Migration. https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/wmr_2020.pdf. ITU-T. 2014. ‘Smart Sustainable Cities: An Analysis of Definitions.’ https:// www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/ssc/Pages/default.aspx.

160

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jackson, J. B. 1995. ‘A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time.’ Design Quarterly (164): 24–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/4091350. Joint Migration and Development Initiative. 2013. Mapping Local Authorities’ Practices in the Area of Migration and Development: A Territorial Approach to Local Initiatives and Needs. Brussels: EC-UN Joint Migration and Development Initiative. http://www.migration4development.org/sites/ m4d.emakina-eu.net/files/revised_condensed_mapping_report_1.pdf. Kaliati, Andrew, Paskaliah Kachieng’a, and Indra de Lanerolle. 2017. ‘What Data Do We Want? Understanding Demands for Open Data among Civil Society Organisations in South Africa.’ Keiner, Marco, and Arley Kim. 2007. ‘Transnational City Networks for Sustainability.’ European Planning Studies 15 (10): 1369–95. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09654310701550843. Kern, Kristine, and Harriet Bulkeley. 2009. ‘Cities, Europeanization and Multilevel Governance: Governing Climate Change through Transnational Municipal Networks*.’ JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 47 (2): 309–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2009.00806.x. Kihlgren Grandi, Lorenzo. 2020. Le Nouveau Rôle International Des Villes (et Pourquoi Il Faut l’encourager). Paris, France: Terra Nova. http://tnova. fr/notes/le-nouveau-role-international-des-villes-et-pourquoi-il-faut-l-encour ager. Kihlgren Grandi, Lorenzo, and Cecilia Emma Sottilotta. 2020. ‘Cities vs. COVID-19.’ In Urban Flag. Paris: Urban Flag. https://soundcloud.com/ urbanflag/cities-vs-covid-19. Klem, Martijn. 2008. ‘Local Governments Building Peace in Eastern Croatia.’ In City Diplomacy: The Role of Local Government in Conflict Prevention, PeaceBuilding, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, edited by A. Musch, A. Sizoo, Chris van der Valk, and Kian Tajbakhsh, 141–63. http://edepot.wur.nl/2595. Klem, Martijn, and Georg Frerks. 2008. ‘How Local Governments Contribute to Peace-Building.’ In City Diplomacy, edited by Arne Musch, Chris van der Valk, Alexandra Sizoo, and Kian Tajbakhsh, 47–73. The Hague: VNG International. Knip, Peter. 2017. ‘Reflections on the History of the UCLG Peace Prize.’ In The UCLG Peace Prize 2016: Local Government Initiatives for Peace, edited by Daan Stelder and Tim Poelman, 13–16. Barcelona: United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). https://peaceprize.uclg.org/wp-content/upl oads/2019/02/UCLG-Peace-Prize-2016-Local-Government-Initiatives-forPeace-1.pdf. Kotras, Sophie. 2012. ‘La Coopération Décentralisée Selon Angers.’ In La Diplomatie Des Autorités Locales et Régionales, Un Outil Au Service Du Dialogue et de La Paix, edited by Patrick Debut. Angers: INSET.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

161

LA Dialogue on Creating Cities of Belonging. 2020. ‘The LA Declaration.’ United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), 6 March. https://www. unaoc.org/2020/03/the-la-declaration/. La Ferla, Silvia, and Gianfranco Commodaro. 2020. Interview to Silvia La Ferla and Gianfranco Commodaro, City of Milan’s International Relations Department Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. La Pira, Giorgio. 2015. Le città non vogliono morire / The Cities Do Not Want to Die. Edited by Marco Pietro Giovannoni and Pietro Domenico Giovannoni. I libri della Badia Studi e testi, 21/7. Firenze: Edizioni Polistampa. Landry, Charles, and Franco Bianchini. 1995. The Creative City. Vol. 12. London: Demos. Lazar, Simina. 2020. Interview to Simina Lazar, ASToN Network Coordinator Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Ledoux, Vincent. 2019. ‘Ouvrir Nos Territoires à La Priorité Africaine de La France.’ Rapport au premier ministre et au ministre de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères. Leffel, Benjamin. 2018. ‘Animus of the Underling: Theorizing City Diplomacy in a World Society.’ The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 13 (4): 502–22. https:// doi.org/10.1163/1871191X-13040025. Lundqvist, Lennart J., and Chris Von Borgstede. 2008. ‘Whose Responsibility? Swedish Local Decision Makers and the Scale of Climate Change Abatement.’ Urban Affairs Review 43 (3): 299–324. https://doi.org/10.1177/107808 7407304689. Macron, Emmanuel, Michael Bloomberg, and Anne Hidalgo. 2017. ‘Point presse à l’issue de l’entretien avec Michael BLOOMBERG, Envoyé Spécial des Nations-Unies pour les Villes et le Changement Climatique et Anne HIDALGO, Marie de Paris.’ Présidence de la République Française. https:// www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2017/06/02/point-presse-a-l-issue-de-lentretien-avec-michael-bloomberg-envoye-special-des-nations-unies-pour-lesvilles-et-le-changement-climatique-et-anne-hidalgo-marie-de-paris-2. Mane, Yaya. 2015. ‘Mémoire et Villes En Développement.’ Raisonnance, March. Mansuri, Ghazala, and Vijayendra Rao. 2012. Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? Herndon, VA: World Bank Publications. http://ebookc entral.proquest.com/lib/sciences-po/detail.action?docID=1076074. ‘Marrakech Mayors Declaration.’ 2018. https://www.uclg.org/sites/default/ files/marrakech_mayors_declaration.pdf. ‘Mayors Climate Protection Center.’ 2020. United States Conference of Mayors. https://www.usmayors.org/mayors-climate-protection-center/. Mayors for Peace. 2006. Mayors for Peace Newsletter No. 24. Mayors for Peace. http://www.mayorsforpeace.org/english/statement/newsletter/24.pdf. Mayors Migration Council. 2019. ‘PRESS RELEASE: Mayors Migration Council: Cities’ Solutions Are States’ Successes.’ Mayors Migration Council

162

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(blog), 12 July. https://www.mayorsmigrationcouncil.org/news/mmc-julyleadership-board-meeting. ———. 2020. ‘Mayors Migration Council.’ Mayors Migration Council, 30 July. https://www.mayorsmigrationcouncil.org. Mediterranean City-to-City Migration. 2017. ‘City Migration Profiles: Synthesis Report.’ Mediterranean City-to-City Migration. https://www.icmpd.org/fil eadmin/1_2018/MC2CM/MC2CM_Synthesis_Report_EN_Online.pdf. Mendes, Marcos Vinícius Isaias, and Ariane Roder Figueira. 2017. ‘Paradiplomacy and the International Competitiveness of Cities: The Case of Rio de Janeiro.’ Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 60 (1). https://doi.org/ 10.1590/0034-7329201700103. Mercociudades. 2016. Informe de La Presidencia y La Secretaría Técnica Permanente de Mercociudades - Período 2015–2016. Montevideo: Mercociudades. ———. 2018. La Diversidad Que Hay En Ti. https://mercociudades.org/la-div ersidad-que-hay-en-ti/. Mestre, Christophe. 2020. ‘Le développement territorial, facteur de paix, de stabilité et de développement?’ CIEDEL (blog), 3 March. https://www. ciedel.org/ressources-2/le-developpement-territorial-facteur-de-paix-de-stabil ite-et-de-developpement-article/. Metropolitan District of Quito, Government of Mexico City, European-Latin American Cooperation Alliance Among Cities (AL-LAs), Global Taskforce of Local And Regional Governments, and United Cities and Local Governments, eds. 2016. ‘A Seat at the Global Table: Local Governments as DecisionMakers in World Affairs.’ https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/files/a_s eat_at_the_global_table.pdf. Minicucci, Marco, and Alessandro Carlini. 2020. Interview to Marco Minicucci e Alessandro Carlini, Milano & PartnersMicrosoft Teams. Monroe, Trevor. 2017. Big Data and Thriving Cities: Innovations in Analytics to Build Sustainable, Resilient, Equitable and Livable Urban Spaces. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/ 10986/26299. Mushasha, Sufian. 2020. Interview to Sufian Mushasha, Assistant Special Representative, UNDP Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Skype. Myers, Garth. 2018. ‘The Africa Problem of Global Urban Theory: Reconceptualising Planetary Urbanisation.’ International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de dévelopement (10) (October): 231–53. https://doi.org/10.4000/poldev.2739. Naïr, Sami. 1997. Rapport de Bilan et d’orientation Sur La Politique de Codéveloppement Liée Aux Flux Migratoires. Paris: Ministère des Affaires Etrangères. https://www.vie-publique.fr/sites/default/files/rap port/pdf/984000139.pdf.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

163

NYCEDC. 2016. ‘New York City And Milan Launch Business Exchange To Connect Local Companies To International Opportunities And Markets.’ New York City Economic Development Corporation, 16 May. https://edc. nyc/press-release/new-york-city-and-milan-launch-business-exchange-con nect-local-companies-internation. OECD. 2005. Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264098084-en. ———. 2008. Accra Agenda for Action. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi. org/10.1787/9789264098107-en. ———. 2019. OECD Regional Outlook 2019: Leveraging Megatrends for Cities and Rural Areas. Paris: OECD Publishing. ———. 2020. ‘Cities Policy Responses.’ OECD Policy Responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19). https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=126_126769-yen458 47kf&title=Coronavirus-COVID-19-Cities-Policy-Responses. OECD/UCLG. 2019. ‘2019 Report World Observatory on Subnational Government Finance and Investment: Key Findings.’ OECD. http://www. sng-wofi.org/reports/Key_Findings_2019.pdf. Parmentier, Florent. 2020. ‘Union Européenne: Contre-Populisme et “Pacte Des Villes Libres” Dans Les Pays Du Groupe de Visegrad.’ Diplomatie, July. PartHer. 2020. ‘Parther.’ PartHer Project. https://www.parther.eu/. Pasta, Stefano. 2015. ‘Il sindaco di Kobane e la comandante curda Nessrin: “Stiamo respingendo l’Is”.’ la Repubblica, 26 June, sec. solidarieta. https://www.repubblica.it/solidarieta/emergenza/2015/06/26/news/il_ sindaco_di_kobane_e_la_comandante_curda_nessrin_stiamo_respingendo_ l_is_-117785569/. Philippe, Édouard. 2019. ‘Lettre de Mission à M. Vincent Ledoux, Député Du Nord,’ 25 February. Pinault, Emmanuelle. 2020. Interview to Emmanuelle Pinault, C40’s Head of City Diplomacy—Political Engagement Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Skype. Pluijm, Rogier van der, and Jan Melissen. 2007. City Diplomacy: The Expanding Role of Cities in International Politics. Clingendael Diplomacy Papers, No. 10. Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’, The Hague. Popov, Aleksandar. 2010. ‘Triangle of Cooperation: Tuzla, Osijek, and Novi Sad.’ In Managing Multiethnic Cities in South Eastern Europe: Case-Based Solutions for Practitioners, edited by Meghan Simpson, Radomir Šovljanski, and Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative. Budapest: Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative: Open Society Institute. Price, Marie. 2014. ‘Cities Welcoming Immigrants: Local Strategies to Attract and Retain Immigrants in U.S. Metropolitan Areas.’ IOM.

164

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Prieur-Richard, Anne-Hélène, Brenna Walsh, M. M. Colbert, Minal Pathak, Sarah Connors, Xuemei Bai, and Aliyu Salisu Barau. 2018. Global Research and Action Agenda on Cities and Climate Change Science. Edmonton, Canada: World Climate Research Programme. https://www.wcrp-climate. org/WCRP-publications/2019/GRAA-Cities-and-Climate-Change-ScienceFull.pdf. Rana, Kishan S. 2011. 21st Century Diplomacy: A Practitioner’s Guide. Key Studies in Diplomacy. London and New York: Continuum. Roberts, Kale. 2020. ‘History of ICLEI: 30 Years of Sustainability Action.’ ICLEI USA (blog), 16 January. https://icleiusa.org/iclei-at-30/. Rodas, Mauricio. 2020. Interview to Mauricio Rodas Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Rodrigues, Gilberto Marcos Antonio, and Thiago Mattioli. 2017. ‘Paradiplomacy, Security Policies and City Networks: The Case of the Mercocities Citizen Security Thematic Unit.’ Contexto Internacional 39 (3): 569–87. https://doi.org/10.1590/s0102-8529.2017390300006. Rolnik, Raquel. 2008. Report of the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing as a Component of the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living, and on the Right to Non-Discrimination in This Context. UN. http://digitallibrary.un. org/record/636996. Sala, Giuseppe, Ahmed Aboutaleb, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, LaToya Cantrell, Sally Capp, Jenny Durkan, Wong Kam-sing, et al. 2020. C40 Mayors Agenda for a Green and Just Recovery. London: C40. http://www.c40knowledgehub.org/ recoveryagenda. Sanger, David E. 2020. ‘Trump Will Withdraw From Open Skies Arms Control Treaty.’ The New York Times, 21 May, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/ 2020/05/21/us/politics/trump-open-skies-treaty-arms-control.html. Sanger, David E., and William J. Broad. 2020. ‘A New Superpower Competition Between Beijing and Washington: China’s Nuclear Buildup.’ The New York Times, 30 June, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/us/pol itics/trump-russia-china-nuclear.html. Sassen, Saskia. 1991. The Global City. Princeton University Press. https://doi. org/10.2307/j.ctt2jc93q. ———. 2012. Cities in a World Economy, 4th ed. Sage Publications. ———. 2017. ‘Global Cities: Places for Researching the Translocal.’ In The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century City, edited by Suzanne Hall and Ricky Burdett, 143–58. London: Sage. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sci ences-po/detail.action?docID=5107309. Schwab, Klaus. 2015. ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution,’ 12 December. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-12-12/fourth-industrial-rev olution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

165

Sembene, Mamadou. 2016. Étude Évaluation de La Coopération Décentralisee Montreuil Yélimané. Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso: Association de Coopération et de Développement des Initiatives Locales. Sharing Cities. 2016. ‘Sharing Cities Programme—Management Plan.’ Ref. Ares(2016)7104222. Brussels: European Union. https://ec.europa.eu/res earch/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5a f18d117&appId=PPGMS. Shibata, Yoshio. 2012. ‘Diplomatie Des Villes et Désarmement Nucléaire.’ In La Diplomatie Des Autorités Locales et Régionales, Un Outil Au Service Du Dialogue et de La Paix, edited by Patrick Debut. Angers: INSET. Sizoo, Alexandra, and Arne Musch. 2008. ‘Introduction.’ In City Diplomacy: The Role of Local Government in Conflict Prevention, Peace- Building, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, edited by A. Musch, A. Sizoo, Chris van der Valk, and Kian Tajbakhsh, 7–25. Snow, Nancy. 2020. ‘Rethinking Public Diplomacy in the 2020s.’ In Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, edited by Nancy Snow and Nicholas John Cull, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge. Sow, Aliou. 2015. ‘Conflits Mémoriels et Renaissance Africaine.’ Raisonnance, March. Sparacino, Patrizianna. 2020. Interview to Patrizianna Sparacino-Thiellay, Head of the International Relations Department, City of Paris Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. ‘Speech at the University of Ouagadougou.’ 2017. https://www.elysee.fr/emm anuel-macron/2017/11/28/emmanuel-macrons-speech-at-the-university-ofouagadougou.en. Spiegelberg Stelzer, Kim. 2020. Interview to Kim Spiegelberg Stelzer, Smart City Senior Advisor, City of Copenhagen Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Städtebund die Hanse. 2020. ‘The Hanseatic League.’ https://www.hanse. org/en/. Stelder, Daan, and Tim Poelman, eds. 2017. The UCLG Peace Prize 2016: Local Government Initiatives for Peace. Barcelona: United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). https://peaceprize.uclg.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/ 02/UCLG-Peace-Prize-2016-Local-Government-Initiatives-for-Peace-1.pdf. Stren, Richard, and Abigail Friendly. 2019. ‘Toronto and São Paulo: Cities and International Diplomacy.’ Urban Affairs Review 55 (2): 375–404. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1078087417722862. Struminger, Brenda. 2018. ‘Los Embajadores de Larreta: Así Funciona La Red de Voceros Porteños En Las Principales Ciudades Del Mundo - LA NACION.’ La Nación, 28 February. https://www.lanacion.com.ar/politica/ los-embajadores-de-larreta-asi-funciona-la-red-de-voceros-portenos-en-las-pri ncipales-ciudades-del-mundo-nid2105688.

166

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Taddei Elmi, Giancarlo. 2016. ‘Un Osservatorio informatico sulle azioni internazionali delle Città per la pace e lo sviluppo.’ Informatica e diritto XXV (2): 207–19. Take, Ingo. 2017. ‘The Hanseatic League as an Early Example of CrossBorder Governance?’ Journal of European Integration History 23 (1): 71–96. https://doi.org/10.5771/0947-9511-2017-1-71. Taylor, Peter J. 2012. ‘Historical World City Networks.’ In International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities, edited by Derudder Ben, Hoyler Michael, Taylor Peter James, and Frank Witlox. Elgar Original Reference. Cheltenham and Northhampton (MA): Edward Elgar. Taylor, Peter J., Michael Hoyler, and Dennis Smith. 2012. ‘Cities in the Making of World Hegemonies.’ In International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities, edited by Derudder Ben, Hoyler Michael, Taylor Peter James, and Frank Witlox. Elgar Original Reference. Cheltenham and Northhampton (MA): Edward Elgar. Teles, Filipe. 2016. Local Governance and Inter-Municipal Cooperation / Filipe Teles,…. 1 vol. (IX-107 pages) vols. Palgrave Pivot. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. The America’s Pledge Initiative on Climate Change. 2019. Accelerating America’s Pledge. New York: Bloomberg Philanthropies. https://assets.bbhub.io/ dotorg/sites/28/2019/12/Accelerating-Americas-Pledge.pdf. The Busan Partnership for Effective Development Co-Operation. 2011. Busan, Korea. Tingstedt, Karin. 2020. Interview to Karin Tingstedt, Project Manager Events, Malmö Tourism Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Zoom. Town Twinning as a Means of International Co-Operation. 1971. Townsend, Anthony M. 2013. Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. 1st ed. New York and London: W. W. Norton. U20 Mayors. 2018. Urban 20 Joint Statement. Buenos Aires: U20. ———. 2019. 2019 Urban 20 Tokyo Mayors Summit Communiqué. Tokyo: U20. UCCI. 2018. Estatutos de la Unión de Ciudades Capitales Iberoamericanas. https://ciudadesiberoamericanas.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ Estatutos-2018.-XVIII-Asamblea-General-SJO-1.pdf. ———. 2020. ‘Iberoamérica refuerza su lucha contra el coronavirus,’ March. https://ciudadesiberoamericanas.org/iberoamerica-refuerza-su-luchacontra-el-coronavirus/. UCLG. 2008. The Hague Agenda on City Diplomacy. The Hague: UCLG. ———. 2013a. ‘100 Years: Testimonies.’ https://www.uclg.org/sites/default/ files/libro%20centenario-web%20(1).pdf. ———. 2013b. Development Cooperation and City Diplomacy Committee— Report 2012 and Work Plan 2013. Barcelona: United Cities and Local

BIBLIOGRAPHY

167

Governments (UCLG). https://www.uclg.org/sites/default/files/DCCD_C. 7_ENG_Report%202012%20Workplan%202013.pdf. UNAOC. 2019. ‘UNAOC and La Courneuve Sign Unprecedented Partnership to Promote Multiculturalism and Interreligious Understanding | UNAOC’. United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) (blog). 14 December. https://www.unaoc.org/2019/12/unaoc-and-la-courneuve-sign-unprecede nted-partnership-to-promote-multiculturalism-and-interreligious-understan ding/. UNHCR. 2020a. Forced Displacement in 2019: Global Trends. Copenhagen: UNHCR. https://www.unhcr.org/5ee200e37.pdf. ———. 2020b. ‘Cities #WithRefugees’. WithRefugees. July 2020. https://www. unhcr.org/withrefugees/cities/. UNESCO. 2020a. ‘Community-Based Inventorying of Intangible Heritage in Urban Areas.’ UNESCO Website. https://ich.unesco.org/en/project. ———. 2020b. ‘Creative Cities | Creative Cities Network.’ https://en.unesco. org/creative-cities/. UNFPA. 2014. Framework of Actions for the Follow-up to the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development Beyond 2014. New York: United Nations. https://www.unfpa.org/sites/def ault/files/pub-pdf/ICPD_beyond2014_EN.pdf. UN-Habitat. 2016. Urbanization and Development: Emerging Futures. World Cities Report 2016. UN-Habitat, Nairobi, Kenya. UNHCR. 2019a. Forced Displacement in 2018: Global Trends. Copenhagen: UNHCR. https://www.unhcr.org/5d08d7ee7.pdf. ———. 2019b. ‘UNHCR Welcomes Support of 175 Cities Worldwide for Refugees.’ UNHCR, 20 June. https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2019/ 6/5d0b69cd4/unhcr-welcomes-support-175-cities-worldwide-refugees.html. ———. 2020. Forced Displacement in 2019: Global Trends. Copenhagen: UNHCR. https://www.unhcr.org/5ee200e37.pdf. Union for the Mediterranean. 2017. Union for the Mediterranean Urban Agenda. Vol. 13/17 EN. https://ufmsecretariat.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2017/05/EN-FINAL-SUD-Ministerial-declaration.pdf. United Cities and Local Governments. 2013. The Power of I-Cities | Learning UCLG. Barcelona: UCLG. https://www.learning.uclg.org/file/ power-i-cities. ———. 2014. Building the New Urban Agenda for Intermediary Cities. Barcelona: UCLG. https://www.uclg.org/sites/default/files/intermediary_ cities._construyendo_nueva_agencia_urbana._eng.pdf. United Nations. 2016a. New Urban Agenda. ———. 2016b. ‘HABITAT III: “Take Strong Ownership” of Vital New Agenda to Create Cities of the Future, Ban Urges World’s Mayors.’ UN

168

BIBLIOGRAPHY

News, 16 October. https://news.un.org/en/story/2016/10/542922-hab itat-iii-take-strong-ownership-vital-new-agenda-create-cities-future-ban. ———. 2019. ‘Peace in Our Cities Campaign: SDG16 Action Pledge.’ United Nations Partnerships for SDGs Platform. https://sustainabledevelopment.un. org/partnership/?p=33394. ———. 2020. ‘COVID-19: UN Chief Calls for Global Ceasefire to Focus on “the True Fight of Our Lives”.’ UN News, 23 March. https://news.un.org/ en/story/2020/03/1059972. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and Population Division. 2019. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision. New York: United Nations. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 2015. ‘Paris Agreement.’ United Nations. https://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/con vention/application/pdf/english_paris_agreement.pdf. UNOSSC. 2020. ‘South-South and Triangular Cooperation among MaritimeContinental Silk Road Cities for Sustainable Development Project.’ http:// southsouthcities.org/. Untersinger, Martin. 2020. ‘Confinement: plus d’un million de Franciliens ont quitté la région parisienne en une semaine.’ Le Monde, 26 March. https:// www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2020/03/26/confinement-plus-d-un-mil lion-de-franciliens-ont-quitte-la-region-parisienne-en-une-semaine_6034568_ 4408996.html. UNWTO. 2020. ‘UNWTO Awards.’ https://www.unwto.org/UNWTOawards. USC Center on Public Diplomacy. 2020. ‘Q&A with CPD: Ron Nirenberg | USC Center on Public Diplomacy.’ USC Center on Public Diplomacy, 19 May. https://www.uscpublicdiplomacy.org/story/qa-cpd-ron-nirenberg. Vainer, Carlos. 2014. Disseminating ‘Best Practice’? Routledge Handbooks Online. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203387832.ch6. Ville de Montreuil. 2020. ‘Coopération Avec Le Cercle de Yélimané (Mali).’ https://www.montreuil.fr/solidarites/solidarite-internationale-et-cooper ation/cooperation-decentralisee/cooperation-avec-le-cercle-de-yelimane-mali. Vuignier, Renaud. 2017. ‘La marque territoriale, outil de différenciation pour l’attractivité? Étude empirique auprès de décideurs d’entreprise.’ Gestion et management public 6/1 (3): 59–75. Whittle, Natalie. 2020. ‘Welcome to the 15-Minute City.’ Financial Times, 17 July. https://www.ft.com/content/c1a53744-90d5-4560-9e3f-17ce06 aba69a. Woertz, Eckart, ed. 2016. Olympics and Cities: Opportunities, Ambitions and Failures. Barcelona, Spain: CIDOB. http://www.cidob.org/en/publicati ons/publication_series/monographs/monographs/olympics_and_cities_opp ortunities_ambitions_and_failures.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

169

World Bank Group. 2015. Competitive Cities for Jobs and Growth: What, Who, and How. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank. org/handle/10986/23227. World Economic Forum. 2019. ‘Unprecedented Global Alliance for Smart City Technology Launched to Counter Growing Tensions.’ World Economic Forum, 10 October. https://www.weforum.org/press/2019/10/unprecede nted-global-alliance-for-smart-city-technology-launched-to-counter-growingtensions/. Xinhua. 2020. ‘Ethiopia Receives Chinese Donation of 520,000 Masks, Medical Supplies.’ Xinhua, 2 June. http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/africa/202006/02/c_139108819.htm. Zamparella, Miriam. 2020. Interview to Miriam Zamparella, Adviser, International Relations and Cooperation Department, City of Florence Interview by Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi. Skype.

Index

A Aachen, 12, 126 Abidjan, 40 Abu Dhabi, 124 Accra Agenda for Action, 56 Acuto, Michele, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 40, 48, 113, 115 African Capital of Culture, 127 African cities, 16, 18, 40, 46, 48, 56, 58, 59, 61, 64, 70, 73, 91, 101, 103, 106, 125, 130, 145 African Union, 16, 58, 101 Agenda 2030, 15, 27, 132 AL-LAs, 48, 61 America’s Pledge, 116 Arms race, 40 Asian cities, 41, 48, 103, 125 Association Internationale des Maires Francophones (AIMF), 14, 61–63, 76, 92, 104, 126, 145, 147 Association of Multiethnic Cities , 74

Association of Palestinian Local Authorities (APLA), 78 ASToN, 92, 103, 106, 107, 147 Asylum seekers, 26, 141, 145 Athens, 91, 124, 143 Atlas of Decentralized Cooperation, 58 Auckland, 124 Awareness raising, 72, 74

B Barcelona, 19, 44, 61, 71, 78, 91, 105, 134 Beijing, 32, 91 Benchmarking, 99 Big data, 99, 100, 102–105 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 14, 62 Bloomberg, Michael, 116, 119 Bloomberg Philanthropies, 14, 115, 116 Bogotá, 124, 134

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy, Cities and the Global Politics of the Environment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60717-3

171

172

INDEX

Bratislava, 26, 141 Bristol, 39 British municipalities, 39 Budapest, 26, 91, 141 Buenos Aires, 7, 31, 32, 92, 112, 134 Burkina Faso, 40 Busan Partnership for Effective Development Co-Operation, 56

C Campbell, Tim, 25 Canada, 48, 85, 100, 117 Canterbury, 126 Capp, Sally, 112 Centre for Municipal Research and Advice (CMRA), 103 Cercle de Yélimané, 64 C40, 13, 14, 17, 61, 92, 104, 112, 114–116, 119, 145, 148 China, 12, 38, 46, 70, 77, 88, 100 Chinese cities, 46, 57 Cités Unies France, 13 Cittaslow, 14, 62 City as government, 4, 7, 8, 19, 24, 26, 71 as territory, 4 City branding, 8, 17, 25, 27, 71, 89, 101, 102, 124–126, 142, 146 City council, 4, 11, 25, 27 City diplomat, 2, 7, 101, 118, 139 CityNet, 14, 41, 87, 92, 103 City network, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 12–17, 20, 21, 23, 29, 38–41, 43, 46–48, 55, 58, 61, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 87, 92, 93, 104, 113–116, 118, 120, 126, 134, 141, 145, 152 City proper, 4 City rankings, 6, 85–87

Climate change, 2, 3, 9, 10, 12, 13, 20, 25, 40, 99, 112–115, 117, 118, 138, 148 Climate Mayors, 116 Climate Protection Agreement, 116 Co-development, 63 Cold War, 15 Colombia, 79 Conflict situation, 9, 45, 49, 70–76, 79, 80 Cooperation agreement, 1 Corruption, 60 Council of Europe, 16, 46 Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), 40 Coventry, 39 COVID-19, 2, 3, 10, 12, 18, 20, 24, 28, 32, 44, 60–63, 80, 88, 91–93, 104, 107, 119, 134, 141, 146–148 Creativity, 3, 28, 130, 135, 138 Cultural events, 12, 18 Cultural heritage, 91, 124, 125, 128–130, 132, 134

D Dakar, 112, 124 Decentralization, 4, 8, 48, 59, 62, 76, 77 Délice Network, 146 Development cooperation, 3, 27, 28, 49, 54, 56, 60, 71, 86 Diaspora, 31, 32, 64, 129, 140, 146 Diaspora diplomacy, 31, 140 Dierwechter, Yonn, 5, 6 Digital technologies, 62, 98–100, 102, 105, 106 Disarmament, 42, 73 Dubai, 32 Düsseldorf, 39

INDEX

E Economic development, 5, 11, 84, 86–91, 100–102, 126, 128, 130, 146 Economic recovery, 61, 92 Economic resources, 24 El Wardini, Soham, 112 Emergency aid, 27 England, 11 Eurocities, 13, 14, 41, 61, 92, 103, 128, 131, 133, 145 Europe, 6, 7, 38–40, 48, 58, 70, 130, 145 European Capital of Culture (ECC), 62, 127 European Commission, 49, 54, 57, 117, 119, 135 European Green Capital, 117 European Green Leaf Award, 117 European Union (EU), 14, 16, 41, 43, 47, 49, 54, 57, 58, 62, 101, 103, 117, 119, 125, 133, 145 Expo Milan 2015, 5 F FIFA World Cup, 18, 19, 91 Florence, 70, 72, 77, 124, 126, 131, 141 Fourth industrial revolution, 98 France, 5, 6, 11, 13, 25, 40, 46, 61–64, 70, 73, 86, 89 Francophone Africa, 46 Freedom of expression, 133 French cities, 31, 46, 54, 64 French Development Agency (AFD), 16, 106 Friendship agreement, 11, 29 G Galtung, Johan, 75 Garcetti, Eric, 25, 115

173

Genius loci, 125 German cities, 40 German municipalities, 39 Ghent, 39 Global Cities Index, 85 Global city, 5–7, 12, 13, 18, 21, 28, 39, 85, 87, 104, 112, 126, 145 Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM), 118 Global economy, 3, 5, 85 Global events, 18, 19 Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC), 85 Global North, 16, 49, 61, 88, 106, 130 Global Power City Index, 85 Global South, 16, 49, 61, 85, 138 Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments, 15, 114, 117 Gottmann, Jean, 4 Green transition, 10 G20, 43, 44, 47, 92, 93 H Habitat I, 117 Habitat II, 117 Habitat III, 15, 86, 98, 117, 138 The Hague, 71, 74 Hague Agenda on City Diplomacy, 71, 74 Hannover, 39 Hanseatic League, 38 Hidalgo, Anne, 25, 92, 112, 116 Hong Kong, 104, 125 Human resources, 24 Human rights, 71 I ICLEI, 13, 104, 112, 114, 116, 119

174

INDEX

India, 100 Innovation, 3, 10, 14, 16, 20, 23, 74, 87, 98, 104–106, 132, 138 Intercultural Cities, 134, 145, 147 International Associations of Cities and Ports, 14, 92 International Coalition of Inclusive and Sustainable Cities (ICCAR), 43, 145, 147 International Dialogue on Migration, 43, 143 International events, 8, 11, 17–20, 23, 25, 27–29, 31, 87, 90, 91, 105, 112, 124, 127, 129 International law, 22, 41, 43, 45, 76 International Organization for Migration (IOM), 143 International organizations, 2–4, 7, 8, 13–15, 22, 23, 28, 41–44, 47, 56, 60, 72, 74, 78, 99–101, 113, 117, 133, 134, 139, 142, 148 International relations office, 13, 28, 32, 44, 45, 87, 128, 139 International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 98 International Union of Local Authorities (IULA), 14, 39, 40 Iraq, 72, 73 ISESCO, 117 Islamic Green City Excellence Award, 117 Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 73, 77, 78 Istanbul, 117, 124 Italian Coordination of Local Authorities for Peace and Human Rights, 71 Italy, 5, 62, 141 Ivory Coast, 73 J Japan, 104 Jerusalem, 78

Johannesburg, 125

K Kauswagan, 73 Khan, Sadiq, 112 Kiel, 39 Kihlgren Grandi, Lorenzo, 5, 6, 16, 46, 59, 62 Koike, Yukiko, 112 Kyoto Protocol, 116

L LA Dialogue on Creating Cities of Belonging, 144 Lagos, 106, 124 La Pira, Giorgio, 72, 77 Latin American cities, 14, 41, 49, 103 Legal framework, 22, 45, 104 Livingstone, Ken, 114 Local politics, 76 Lockdown, 104 London, 19, 32, 85, 90, 112 London & Partners, 90 Los Angeles, 25, 28, 91, 115, 144

M Macron, Emmanuel, 12, 116 Malmö, 146 Marseille, 40 Mayor(s), 4, 11, 13, 15, 20, 23–27, 39, 41, 42, 45, 59, 62, 70–73, 77, 78, 88, 92, 102, 112, 115–119, 139–143, 148 Mayors for Peace, 71, 72 Mayors Migration Council, 147, 148 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), 11, 144 Mercociudades, 14, 41, 58, 87, 103, 104, 145 Mercosur, 16, 58

INDEX

Merkel, Angela, 12 Metropolis, 4, 5, 14, 41, 61, 85 Mexico, 6, 32, 100, 113 Mexico City, 6 Milan, 5, 14, 19, 25, 41, 49, 57, 61, 78, 90–92, 135, 141 Milan Urban Food Policy Pact , 14, 57 Mohács, 73 Montreal, 28, 112, 124, 127, 145 Montreuil, 64 Moreno, Carlos, 105 Mozambique, 56 Multilateralism, 15 Multilevel cooperation, 19, 42, 79, 102, 119, 120, 127, 144 Multilevel governance, 115, 118, 132, 142 Municipal Alliance for Peace in the Middle East (MAP), 78

N Nairobi, 106, 117 Naïr, Sami, 63 Netherlands, 13, 48, 71, 85, 103 Network for Municipal Peace Policy, 71 New Urban Agenda, 15, 27, 43, 98, 117, 142 New York, 7, 32, 84, 90, 112, 119, 141 New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), 90 NGOs, 3, 9, 22, 23, 28, 44, 54–58, 60, 61, 75, 78, 113, 116, 133, 139, 145, 147 Non-democratic regimes, 24, 30, 40, 41, 133, 140 Nordic Smart City Network, 105 Novi Sad, 74

175

O Observatory of Mayors on Living Together, 145 OECD, 8, 56, 92, 104, 117, 134, 147 Officers without Borders, 55 Olympics, 18, 19, 91 Organization of World Heritage Cities (OWHC), 92, 134 Orlando, Leoluca, 25, 141 Osijek, 74 Ouagadougou, 40, 46 P Pact of Free Cities, 26, 141 Palermo, 25, 141 Paris, 7, 18, 25, 27, 28, 42, 44, 56, 61, 62, 64, 85, 90–92, 103, 104, 112, 113, 115, 116, 144 Paris&Co, 90 Paris Agreement, 27, 42, 115, 116, 119 Paris Declaration in Aid, 56 Part-Her, 125 Participatory approach, 29, 42, 44, 124, 129, 139 Peace-building, 72–74 Peace-makers, 72, 73 Peace-making, 73, 75 Peace of Westphalia, 39 Plante, Valérie, 112 Prague, 26, 141 Privacy, 98 Private sector, 22, 28, 29, 45, 75, 89, 104, 124, 133, 146 Provinces, 8 Public diplomacy, 42, 46, 129 Public engagement, 24, 30 Q Quelimane, 56, 57

176

INDEX

Quito, 15, 98, 117 R Reconciliation, 3, 9, 39, 40, 70, 72, 73, 75, 78 Refugees, 70 Regional integration, 9 Regions, 4, 5, 8, 13, 48, 63, 77, 89, 92 Reims, 126 Religious groups, 71, 75 Resilience, 80, 91, 99, 104, 113 Rio de Janeiro, 18, 19, 90, 113 Rockefeller Foundation, 14 Rodríguez Larreta, Horacio, 92, 112 Rolnik, Raquel, 86 Rome, 7, 32, 78, 91, 93 Rotterdam, 41, 113 Rwandese Association of Local Government Authorities (RALGA), 76 S Sala, Giuseppe, 25, 61, 92 Sanctuary cities, 140, 141 Sapporo, 124 Sassen, Saskia, 5, 13, 85, 101 Seattle, 19, 116 Security, 75 Senegal, 40 Sharing Cities , 103 Shenzhen, 124 Sidney, 32 Signorie, 38, 131 Singapore, 88, 104 Sister Cities International, 40 Smart Africa Manifesto, 101 Smart city, 19, 98, 102–105 Smart sustainable city, 98 Social distancing, 60, 92, 134 Soft power, 42, 129

Solidarity, 9, 40, 54, 59, 61, 62, 71, 77, 84, 87, 145 South African Local Government Association, 103 South-South cooperation, 7, 16, 49, 57, 58, 106 Soviet Union, 77 Spain, 4, 85, 100 Strong Cities Network (SCN), 79 Sub-municipal governance, 7 Sustainable Cities And Human Settlements Awards, 118 Sustainable development, 10, 23, 47, 55, 62, 79, 98, 101, 104, 135 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 55 SWOT analysis, 22, 87 Sydney, 19 Syria, 72, 73 T Tactic urbanism, 120 Taylor, Peter, 38 Technology, 62, 87, 98 Teles, Felipe, 2, 89, 112, 113 Tokyo, 32, 84, 92, 112 Transcultural agency, 140 Triangular cooperation, 16, 57, 58, 134 Tuzla, 74 Twinning agreement, 11, 12, 29, 39, 40, 45, 64, 70, 74, 86 U UNDP, 41, 78 UNESCO, 4, 43, 47, 124, 125, 133–135, 145 Creative Cities Network (UCCN), 43, 47, 126, 134 UN-Habitat, 41, 47, 79, 104, 112, 117

INDEX

Unión de Ciudades Capitales Iberoamericanas/ Union of Ibero-American Capital Cities (UCCI), 14, 48, 62, 63, 126, 127 Union of Baltic Cities, 14 Union of Local Authorities in Israel (ULAI), 78 Union of Portuguese-Language Capital Cities (UCCLA), 14, 48, 126 United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), 4, 5, 8, 13, 14, 39, 40, 58, 70, 71, 73, 74, 78, 79, 92, 117, 119, 144, 145 United Nations (UN), 8, 15, 40–42, 47, 55, 58, 79, 80, 86, 98, 104, 112–117, 119, 132, 138, 142, 144, 145 United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), 144 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 138, 142, 145 United States (US), 5, 6, 40, 70–72, 100, 115, 116, 140 United Towns Organization (UTO), 14, 40, 77 UNWTO, 132 Urbact, 16, 87, 101, 103

177

Urban 20, 43, 44, 92, 93 Urban entrepreneurialism, 88, 89 Urban inequalities, 10, 60, 74, 77, 102, 138 Urban Innovative Actions (UIA), 101 Urbanization, 2, 8, 9, 56, 113, 138 V Vancouver, 117 VNG International, 76, 78, 79, 103 W Warsaw, 26, 141 We Are Still In declaration, 116 WeGO, 104 World Assembly of Cities and Local Authorities (WACLA), 15, 43, 114, 117 World Bank, 47, 84, 88 World Cities Culture Forum, 126 World Conference on City Diplomacy, 71 World Design Capital, 127 World Expo, 19 World Health Organization, 47 World War II, 29, 39, 70, 77 Y Yamoussoukro, 73