The City of Austin, Texas and the Metropolitan City of Bologna are engaged in an 18-month city-to-city pairing. Through this collaboration, staff from both cities committed to increase access to expertise and share knowledge on climate change resilience, the circular economy and community engagement, actively involving local stakeholders.

Ostrobothnia (Finland) and Tierra del Fuego (Argentina) have used their similar profiles as a jumping off point to develop Smart Specialisation strategies, expand their international trade relationships, and support renewable energy.

Barcelona and New York City are using the IUC programme to explore measures to make housing in their cities more affordable. While the pairing has put a special focus on affordability, they are also looking at other housing related issues, such as protections afforded to tenants and methods to prevent unjust evictions.

The popular tourist destination of Bahía de Banderas (Mexico) joined the Global Covenant of Mayors in June 2019. The municipality’s new administration is rolling out a range of environmental and ecological initiatives, and sees the GCoM as a way to support these measures through advice and benchmarking.

Through their partnership, West Athens and Mérida are establishing a strategic approach to developing effective Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), as well as finding ways to better involve societal stakeholders in the implementation process.

Following an exploration of the two cities’ priorities, Parma and Fredericton are focusing their IUC cooperation on increasing female participation in local government leadership and creating a transferable public engagement model that actively addresses the issue of inclusiveness for marginalised groups.

Pavlos Melas and San Justo are concentrating their partnership on two thematic areas: sustainable use of land and waste management. Through doing so, they are gaining an appreciation of different approaches to economic, legislative and financing issues.

In May 2017, Mannheim was selected to participate in the EU-funded International Urban Cooperation programme. The German city was paired with Chongqing, one of the largest cities in the world and a highly influential and active partner. Within a very short timeframe, the first results can already be presented.

Frankfurt and Yokohama are focusing on a range of topics as part of their collaboration, each item broadly fitting under the umbrella of “smart cities”. Issues being addressed include energy management, low-carbon transportation, environmental education campaigns and urban-regional cooperation.

Rotterdam and Surat were officially paired as part of the IUC programme in 2017, but have been collaborating since 2015 within the 100 Resilient Cities network. Both cities have a resilience strategy in which resilient water management and climate resilience are a priority. The cities are focusing their IUC partnership on tackling issues related to water management, such as improving the quality of drinking water, mitigating water pollution from industrial and agricultural run-off, protecting against flooding, and effectively treating sewage.