Brussels, 22/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 22 June, EU housing and urban development ministers met in Toledo to discuss integrated urban regeneration, one of the Spanish Presidency's priorities. They proposed a common definition for all European countries and the European institutions, especially the Committee of the Regions (CoR), which must be “the indicator, the parameter, for gauging the healthy growth of a city,” said Spanish Housing Minister Beatriz Corredor. The discussions were expected to result in the adoption of the Toledo Declaration. Before the informal ministerial meeting as such, the Spanish Presidency organised a working session with Regional Policy Commissioner Johannes Hahn to discuss the political implications of urban development policies in terms of compliance with European growth objectives contained in the EU 2020 strategy.
Also attending the meeting in Toledo on Tuesday was Mercedes Bresso, the president of the Committee of the Regions. In her speech, Bresso said that future EU regional funding must do more to tackle the pockets of poverty which exist even in our richest cities. “Future EU cohesion policy should pay more attention to economic disparities within regions, not just between them. Urban areas are engines of economic growth but they can also hide severe problems of social and income inequality. Therefore, policy interventions should focus on pockets of deprivation which can also be found in rather wealthy urban areas”, she commented. She also highlighted that this was a direct consequence of the EU's new “rulebook”, the Lisbon Treaty, which had introduced “territorial cohesion” as one of the Union's official objectives. “The new territorial cohesion objective must involve all levels of government. More particularly, urban policies are testing grounds for good multilevel governance,” she stated, underlining the positive effect that cohesion policy can have on urban development. “Cohesion policy has definitely a key role to play. In the future, the urban dimension must be a more substantial part of strategic regional programming, but must not lead to a fragmentation of cohesion policy. Urban policies must promote better energy efficiency, social cohesion and improved quality of urban development and innovation projects,” she said.
Bresso presented the opinion drafted by Spyridon Spyridon (EPP, Greece) on the role of urban regeneration in urban development. The opinion also warns that even though Europe is already highly urbanised, the trend towards increased population density is expected to continue in some zones. As cities expand they could potentially destroy some resources and cause soil and water quality to deteriorate. Integrated urban regeneration programmes have the potential to stop or even reverse this trend by containing urban growth and regenerating the urban environment. Bresso said, too, that when making strategic choices for the forthcoming 2014-2020 programming period, the EU should recognise the strategic importance of urban regeneration and ensure that the urban dimension is given more priority in all its policies.
“We want to decide on how cities should expand to avoid extensive land waste, excessive consumption of water and of the land itself, which is a limited natural resource. So we want to reach agreement on consolidating the European city model. What we are proposing as the topic on Tuesday is not a theoretical issue - it has a practical application,” Corredor said before the Toledo meetings, adding, “What we want is to show European ministers and citizens that it is possible to give a fresh image to residential construction and urbanisation. That is why we have two projects: the first for sustainable, efficient and modern construction, the second being the Decathlon Europe solar project with 17 real houses where families could already live, powered solely by solar energy and forming a sort of solar village. Sustainable construction and sustainable urban development are definitely possible. That is a fact”. (G.B./transl.rt)