On 20 November 2019 in Brussels (Belgium), the day before the 3rd IUC City-to-City Event, IUC cities from Europe and Japan came together for their Fifth Exchange Meeting.

The meeting provided the city-to-city pairings with the opportunity to present their work, including reflecting on their cooperation activities, the process of developing local action plans, and presenting cities' Urban Cooperation Action Plans (UCAPs). Presentations highlighted key outputs and expected results and benefits derived from IUC city-to-city cooperation.

In total, ten city pairings presented their work. Pairings have focused on a wide variety of themes including Smart Cities, clean technology and renewable energy, building and site regeneration, sustainable mobility, and more – all of which were discussed.

City presentations were complimented by welcome and keynote speeches from Rudolf Niessler, Principal Advisor for International Relations, DG-REGIO, European Commission; Akira Kono, Ambassador, Deputy Head of Mission of Japan to the European Union; Giorgia Rambelli, IUC Coordination Unit; and Sandra Marin, IUC Local Action Plan Task Force.

City pairing presentations were followed by a discussion, wrap-up and conclusion session, moderated by Prof. Hidefumi Imura, Project Coordinator, IUC-Japan. Professor Imura outlined what is to come for IUC-Japan in 2020. He expressed his satisfaction with the achievements of the IUC-Japan city pairings so far, confirming the high quality of exchanges and final concepts.

Although five of the EU-Japan city pairings – those who began cooperating in 2017 – will soon conclude their IUC cooperation, the cities are expected to continue collaborating of their own accord moving forward, making use of the networking tools and skills acquired through the IUC programme.

For more information, including links to all speakers' presentations, click here.

Header image provided by IUC-Japan.