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The ESPON URDICO project led by MRI was completed in January 2026 after one year of intensive work. The project analysed and compared the implementation of the urban dimension of the EU Cohesion Policy in eight selected stakeholder cities in the 2014-2020 and 2021-2027 programming period The final results are available on the project’s website: https://www.espon.eu/projects/urdico-urban-dimension-cohesion-policy-and-other-eu-programmes

The results include the final report of the project which presents the main results in a concise way, and its various annexes which give more insight into the work completed. The annexes include a report on the data collection and quantitative analysis; a policy brief; detailed policy recommendations; separate case study reports about the eight analysed cities: Budapest, Florence, Ghent, Prague, Rotterdam, Strasbourg, Valencia and Warsaw; the comparative case study report; and summary factsheets for the eight cities.

We’re proud to share that the Metropolitan Research Institute contributed several chapters to the newly released European Compendium of Housing Policies, produced as part of the ESPON research project “HOUSE4ALL: Access to affordable and quality housing for all people.”

A big thank you to Zsuzsanna Földi, József Hegedüs, Kata Kepes, Bence Örkény, Eszter Somogyi, and Nóra Teller for their valuable contributions to this important publication!

The Compendium provides a comprehensive and comparative overview of how housing policies are delivered across Europe, providing a rich resource for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners working to make housing more inclusive and accessible.

You can learn more about the project and explore the Compendium here:

https://www.espon.eu/sites/default/files/2025-10/european-compendium-of-housing-policies.pdf

The opening ceremony of the third class of the Urban Governance Academy, launched in 2023, took place on October 4, 2025, in the ceremonial hall of Budapest Municipality. As part of the event, the graduation ceremony for the second-year students was also held, attended by Mayor Gergely Karácsony and Iván Tosics, the professional director of the UGA. The photo shows the newly starting third class.

One of the biggest public events of the EU is the EWRC, which is organized every year in October in Brussels, usually attracting 5-6000 people from all over the EU countries, regions and cities. 

This year one of the sections of EWRC was titled “Unlocking the Power of EU Funds for Cities”. As opening of the session Kata Tüttő, President of the Committee of the Regions was talking, emphasizing the importance of the Cohesion Policy, which is now threatened by the simplification ideas of the Commission. The keynote presentation of the event was given by Iván Tosics about the results of the ESPON URDICO project, which is led by Metropolitan Research Institute, in cortium with Politecnico Torino and University of Valencia. The keynote was followed by contributions of Mathias De Clercq, President of EUROCITIES and Mayor of Ghent, Rafał Trzaskowski, Mayor of Warsaw (on video) and Hugo Sobral, Deputy Director-General of DG REGIO.

During the ENHR conference Iván Tosics was the moderator of PLENARY 2 on Urban climate change and increasing housing vulnerability, the speakers of which were Jennifer Duyne-Barenstein – Wohnforum, ETH and Gerald Mills – University College Dublin.

At the ENHR conference Iván was co-leading the Workshop Sessions of the Governing metropolis – land and housing Working Group. 

Finally, Iván was the organizer of the usual ENHR Slide Show Competiton, which attracted 19 teams: at least 90 people followed the event, which is an all time record in the 35 years history of slide competitions (by the way, the first Slide Competition was organized in 1990 in Paris).

May green policies lead to housing inequalities? This major question is investigated by the Horizon Europe ReHousIn project through the examples of 27 European cities among them large metropoles, but also middle sized and rural towns. After its first year the ReHousIn project is organizing its first Policy Labs in nine countries, among them in Budapest. The event, that took place on the 1st of April gathered Hungarian actors working on housing and green policies (energy efficient retrofitting, nature-based solutions and densification of urban areas). Through the presentations of the researchers at Metropolitan Research Institute the negative externalities of green investments, strongly experienced in Western European cities like green gentrification and renoviction, were showcased. The workshop in Hungary called the attention to several specificities of the Central European Region. The participants expressed their major concern that the weakness of green policies in Hungary seem to be more harmful to the socially excluded inhabitants than the possible negative effect of their implementation. It was also highly emphasized that due to the super ownership structure of the Hungarian housing stock social movements are much less quick and responsive than in European cities with high rate of rental units, which slows down gentrification and renoviction. On the other hand, Hungarian municipalities lack the tools to influence strongly the potential negative housing impacts of green investments, as they own less than 2.5% of the housing stock, and due to general centralization trends, they also have less and less financial resources and are crowded out from many fields of public policies.

MRI is the leader of a consortium (with Politecnico Torino and University of Valencia) implementing the ESPON URDICO project. This one year project aims to analyse and compare the implementation of the Urban Dimension of Cohesion Policy in a diverse group of cities and urban areas. Data and qualitative analyses will explore (for the periods 2014-2020 and 2021 onwards) the different approaches to sustainable urban development in the cities/urban areas of Budapest, Florence, Ghent, Prague, Rotterdam, Strasbourg, Valencia, and Warsaw. Local experts and Eurocities are part of the working team, which is supported also by other organizations, like France Urbaine, Deutscher Städtetag, the Italian ANCI, the Dutch VNG, EUI and JRC, which act as observers. The Kick Off meeting was held in Budapest on 28 January.

For more information: https://www.espon.eu/projects/urdico-urban-dimension-cohesion-policy-and-other-eu-programmes

On the 17 of March Metropolitan Research Institute organised workshop dealing with the planning dilemmas of the Social Climate Plan in Hungary in the framework of the ComActivate project. The representative of the Ministry of Energy presented on the framework conditions and the current state of planning. The plenary was followed by three parallel thematic sessions.

The goal of the Social Climate Plan is to mitigate the price impact of the Emission Trading System (2) on buildings and transportation. One year before the introduction of ETS2 (1 of January 2026 according to plans) the member states should implement measures that decrease energy poverty in the building sector but primarily not by income support (however, it is also allowed), but by structural interventions into the renovation of the building stock.

The European Commission has developed methodological guidance on the creation of the national Social Climate Plans, but these guidelines could not properly take into account the differences between the member states. The Hungarian housing stock is much more owner occupied and socially more mixed also spatially and within the same buildings than the ones in Western Europe. Under these circumstances, it is much more difficult to support exclusively the energy poor.

The participants at the workshop aimed to find solutions on how to identify the energy poor in the privately owned family house, multi-family buildings and municipally owned housing segments, and besides that how it can be ensured that the non-energy poor leverage their funds as well.

We have reached the first milestone in the SOLACE CEE project! Over the past few months, several important events have taken place: in October 2024, we held the kickoff meeting in Košice, and then in December, the innovation team met in Budapest. Our working group has completed several important tasks in the past few months:

• We prepared the Monitoring and Evaluation Plan, which included developing surveys and interviews for the involved clients and professionals.

• We organized separate online meetings for project partners to ensure that the data collection elements matched the individual needs of the organizations.

• Due to the different target groups, we needed to create specialized surveys: separate questionnaires were developed for individuals and households.

• Our team actively participates in the work of the Innovation and Communication teams as well.

Details can be found at the link below: https://mri.hu/en/solace-cee/