Urban Diplomacy

Urban Diplomacy identifies municipalities as key players in the formulation and implementation of foreign policy. Similar to Science Diplomacy, it provides an emerging opportunity to foster international cooperation. In times of turmoil, it can help to keep communications channels open and by doing so, create new spaces for discussion and cooperation.

Urban diplomacy is also an important component in solving global challenges. The approval of the UN Urban Agenda and the European Urban Agenda in 2016 had already revealed the growing importance of cities all around the world. Since then, urban diplomacy has established itself as a practice of utmost importance to tackle the challenging issues of the future.

Cities and municipalities are now seen as key innovators in global transformation processes, operating very successfully on the national and international levels. However, urban diplomacy remains largely an improvised practice. There is a clear lack of multilateral coordination.

Thus, this thematic group is conceived as a mutual learning and synergies platform devoted to three objectives:

1) KNOWING HOW: capacity building/training, fostering exchange of expertises and experiences of actors at various levels;

2) KNOWING WHOM: increasing multilateral collaborations through networking events and conferences;

3) KNOWING WHAT: identifying best practices, synergies and developing future solutions together. Besides policy papers and analyses we will set up an agile up to date knowledge management system to ensure the information exchange.

Friederike Mathey: friederike.mathey@iqib.de
Roman Noetzel: roman.noetzel@iqib.de
IQIB

Olivier Rohde: oliver.rohde@dlr.de
DLR-PT