City leaders gather in Amsterdam to share ideas and promote innovation

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More than 40 mayors attended the Bloomberg CityLab 2022 summit in Amsterdam this year, after the annual event was again held in person for the first time since the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic.

Altogether more than 500 city leaders, experts, innovators and artists from around the world attended the world’s preeminent cities summit, attending sessions addressing a wide range of challenges cities are facing today, from climate and infrastructure to technology, migration, mental health and more.

The summit opened with a montage of key crises facing cities in the near future – war, pandemic and environmental changes – with the message that cities must become the sites of resilience and problem solving in rising up to these challenges.

In her opening address as the summit’s host, Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema referenced the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the rise of anti-democracy movements in the world, and presented a picture of urban governments as a critical force for restoring trust in social institutions. “It’s time that cities take back initiative as global actors,” said Halsema.

The summit was organised by the Aspen Institute and Bloomberg Philanthropies, a charity founded by businessman and former Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg, who also attended the event and kicked off the first day alongside Halsema.

In his opening remarks, Bloomberg stressed the importance of municipal administrations sharing their ideas, even across borders. “That’s the mayor’s job – to open their eyes to what’s out there,” said Bloomberg. “Mayors can make a difference in the world!”

As a former mayor himself, Bloomberg recognised the importance of urban governments as a key level at which most of the citizens’ daily needs and problems need to be addressed, one of the reasons why Bloomberg Philanthropies actively supports efforts to make city governments more efficient and innovative as one of its five key issue areas.

During the CityLab conference, Amsterdam Mayor Halsema also opened a session in building public trust in the digital era, an important challenge many cities struggle to meet. “I propose to join forces as cities, and cooperate with our citizens, and tech companies who share our values, to create a new public digital space that promotes digital sovereignty,” said Halsema. “We need a digital city for the twenty-first century!”

Part of the summit focused on the ongoing war in Ukraine, with Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi and Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk attending the conference via video-link, and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko giving a pre-recorded address. 

British architect Norman Foster, who designed London’s “Gherkin” tower and Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, stressed that planning for post-war reconstruction of Ukrainian cities should start now. Foster met with Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov in Geneva earlier this year, and presented the Ukrainian official with a “Kharkiv manifesto”, announcing his ambition to recruit a team of architects, planners and engineers to develop a new city masterplan.

“The Mayor of Kharkiv reminded me about the Reichstag, an instance of something that would have the imprint of conflicts past,” said Foster, who was also behind restoring the seat of the German parliament in Berlin in 1995. While the building was renovated and modernised, it also preserved elements of the building’s more than century-long history, such as graffiti left over by the Russian soldiers who captured the city at the end of World War II. “There should perhaps be the equivalent in Kharkiv,” said Foster.

Mayors from Poland, Latvia and Lithuania also discussed the challenges cities face while having a war “next door” to them. Cities in Poland and the Baltic were faced with a huge influx of refugees after the war started – a unique challenge for local governments. According to Gdańsk Mayor Aleksandra Dulkiewicz, almost 10% of the children now enrolled in the city’s schools are Ukrainian refugees. Mayor of Riga Mārtiņš Staķis faced a similar challenge, as 16,000 refugees arrived during the early days of the war.

“Our government wasn’t ready for this situation,” said Staķis, as the Latvian capital was forced to quickly establish a pair of reception centres, before coordination with the national authorities improved. “We have learned a lot,” he added.

As part of the summit, Bloomberg Philanthropies CEO Patricia E. Harris announced the 19 European cities which will be receiving grants of up to 25,000 dollars as part of the charity’s Asphalt Art Initiative.

The Initiative aims to respond to the growing number of cities around the world embracing art as an effective and low-cost strategy to activate their streets. The Initiative focuses on the so-called asphalt art – visual interventions on intersections and crosswalks, pedestrian spaces and vertical infrastructure. Its goal is to increase street safety and to reinvigorate public spaces, making them more attractive to communal activities and socialising.

In 2023, the Initiative will fund new and revitalised pedestrian spaces in Brussels, Zagreb, Brno, Helsinki, Reykjavik, Florence, Prato, Rome, Ferizaj, Cluj-Napoca and Madrid. Five cities will receive funds for pedestrian safety enhancements: Tirana, Gdynia, Bratislava, Kosice and León. Finally, three cities will receive grants for intersection and crosswalk murals: Varna, Athens and Istanbul.

The two-day summit in Amsterdam was co-organised by the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to realisation of a free, just and equitable society, and its participation in the project represents a recognition of the important role of cities in achieving that goal.

In his address at the summit, Aspen Institute President and CEO Dan Porterfield stressed the importance of such gatherings, where city leaders have opportunities to learn from each other. “Each of us comes here with a vision of something that’s needed, something better, something shared,” said Porterfield. “We imagine the future we want for our beloved communities, and then we build them here at CityLab, along with the will, and skill, and the know-how to bring those dreams to life.”

(Photo credit: Bloomberg CityLab 2022, Bloomberg Philanthropies)