A regional exchange meeting for IUC-Japan cities was planned to take place at the end of May 2020, and had to be postponed due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting would have been the sixth one to convene IUC-Japan cities, following meetings previously  held in Brussels and Tokyo alternatively, twice a year since autumn 2017.

Back-to-back with the meeting, three EU cities, Bratislava (Slovakia), Grenoble-Alpes Metropole or GAM (France), and Umeå (Sweden) planned to send delegates to their Japanese partner cities of Tokorozawa, Toyota and Kamakura, respectively. These meetings were to finalise the pairings' Urban Cooperation Action Plans (UCAPs) and to meet local Japanese stakeholders with which to disseminate and implement their planned activities.

Two additional EU cities, Marseille (France) and Turku (Finland), planned to visit their Japanese colleagues of Kobe and Nagano & Obuse this spring. Their trips, which were scheduled to focus on discussions and site visits related to port and maritime industry development and circular economy (including the use of biomass) have been postponed.

Although all of these events have had to be postponed, the pairings had intensive online meetings to discuss action plans. Bratislava and Tokorozawa worked on the development of urban-based green infrastructure, both to improve urban amenities and to mitigate the impacts of climate change such as flood, heat waves and heat islands. GAM and Toyota spoke about the deployment of new, clean energy sources, such as hydrogen, citizen awareness-raising to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and networking of regional innovation initiatives and incubation facilities. Umeå and Kamakura are cooperating for mutual learning about stakeholder participation tools and social inclusion to promote circular economy and sustainable food consumption. As a tangible goal of cooperation, each of the pairings is identifying a pilot project, which is deliverable and viable given methodologies and financial sources.

IUC cities are also examining how to incorporate new approaches, ideas and methods learned through coping with COVID-19 into their ongoing projects. For example, urban planning techniques that increase green space and encourage the use of bicycles are being used to facilitate physical distancing. However, these techniques can also be incorporated for long-term urban sustainability across, Japan, Europe, and beyond.

Header image taken in Tokorazawa, and provided courtesy of the City of Bratislava.