Building Transatlantic Networks from the City Up
Three years of transatlantic exchange, two trips, ten cities, and four conferences: New Urban Progress was a transatlantic dialogue on how urban areas can be more innovative, democratic, and sustainable. By exchanging best practices and collaborating on bold solutions, young urban leaders from Germany and the United States worked on how to deliver social and economic progress while renewing the transatlantic partnership at the city level.
Learn more about the project by watching New Urban Progress: The Documentary, below.
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A Blueprint for Progress – The NOVA Cities Index
Some of the project’s main recommendations were compiled and summarized in the NOVA Cities Index, a blueprint for urban progress. Read the paper and watch the pitch, below!
The NOVA Cities Index
The NOVA Cities Index is a tool and framework for cities to live up to their promise of progress. The index’s criteria were chosen based on conversations with urban leaders during trips to Germany and the United States as well as extensive work within the New Urban Progress fellowship. The action paper outlines why these criteria matter and what policies cities must deliver on in order to build urban environments that flourish for all.
Putting the Index to the Test
To test the usefulness of the NOVA Cities Index, two of the co-authors, New Urban Progress Fellows Richard Lawrence Jr. and Maria Willett pitched the index live at the 2022 Progressive Governance Summit. Mayor Rosenberg from Wausau, Wisconsin and District Councilwoman Julie Richier from Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin together gave candid comments from both small-town and densely-populated perspectives. Watch the video below to see the pitch, response, and broader conversations on urban progress in Germany and the United States!
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Podcast Series: Empowering Cities
In a transatlantic forum, the New Urban Progress fellowship discussed solutions and approaches to today’s most pressing issues. The Empowering Cities podcast focuses on a selection of some of these discussions, ranging from financing the climate transformation, if there is a blueprint for progress, and why transatlantic exchanges matter.
Empirical Work: Engaging with Best Practices in Germany and the United States
The New Urban Progress fellows travelled across Germany and the United States on two 10-day trips. On their journeys, they met with urban leaders and exchanged best practices on how cities can deliver progress. These exchanges led to the documentary and the index described above.
Pictures from the delegation trips
Berlin, Leipzig, Wuppertal and Essen
In October 2021, the New Urban Progress fellows travelled to Berlin, Leipzig, and the Ruhr Valley to learn how these urban spaces in Germany are defining the future of the city. From the international department at the City of Berlin, to Fridays for Future organizers, to the Mayors of Leipzig and Wuppertal as well as the Berlin State Secretary for Housing, the New Urban Progress fellows engaged with a wide range of actors working on progressive urban and transatlantic policies. Read more about the whole trip in Germany here.
Chicago, Denver, and Austin
Six months later, the fellows reunited in the United States and visited Chicago, Denver, and Austin, where they continued to learn from experts at the local, governmental, institutional, and community levels about how they approach everything from eroding trust in democracy to the climate crisis from different urban standpoints. Click here for an in-depth recap of the trip in the United States.
New Urban Progress was a joint project between Das Progressive Zentrum and the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft in Germany and the Progressive Policy Institute in the United States. It was supported by the Transatlantic Program of the Federal Republic of Germany and funded by the European Recovery Program (ERP) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi).
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Empowering Cities: Building Urban and Transatlantic Infrastructure
Empowering Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Progress
Empowering Cities: Forging a Transatlantic Dialogue
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