🌱Adapting to climate change means retaining every drop of rain.
Following the Radó Dezső Plan, Budapest is leading the way to become a true "Sponge City"—using rain gardens, living soil, and urban meadows to absorb 280M m³ of precipitation annually. https://t.co/YzkVrp8JJH
It's always an honour to speak about the work and experiences to the always bright and intelligent students of the #Budapest#City#Diplomacy#Academy. I'm especially thrilled by the active participation and excellent questions and remarks of these young professional!
Benedek Jávor (Budapest): There are 6 main issues: "centralisation and lack of multi-level governance; lack of meaningful partnership; lack of financing channels; lack of EU funds; political discrimination in the allocation of EU funds," and the decommitment of EU funds.
The #ESPON#URDICO conference ended with high-level panel. The participants were Jan Olbrycht (former MEP, URDICO), Gabriella Gerzsényi (MEP, EPP), Kieran McCarthy (CoR), André Sobczak (@EUROCITIES ) Raffaele Parlangeli (PCM, Italy), and Benedek Jávor (Budapest)
André Sobczak (Eurocities): To meet the needs of citizens and SMEs, central governments and regional authorities are not enough. There is also a need for local authorities, as they are the most trusted institutions and those closest to citizens.
György Nagyházi (Budapest): "The Hungarian government managed to hijack European funds to serve its own political economy, which is a very dysfunctional political economy aiming for political power generation."
Second panel on "Evidence and policy recommendations". The discussion focuses on lessons learned from cities participating in the ESPON URDICO research. #prague#budapest#rotterdam
Olga Müller (Budapest): Budapest makes up "almost 40% of Hungary's GDP", yet there is no true "functional urban area cooperation", and Budapest has never had a role as a "managing or intermediate authority".
First Keynote “The Urban Dimension of Cohesion Policy".
Iván Tosics (Metropolitan Research Institute): "URDICO proves that cities can become reliable partner in programming and implementation of Cohesion Policy"
Pia Laurila (European Commission - DG Regional and Urban Policy) discussed how the European Commission is taking action for European cities, and the Commission's long-term urban plans.
Gergely Karcsony, Mayor of Budapest: For a #populist regime, the decrease in #public#trust is good news: they want the population to fear, they want to create #issues from which they can then #save them.