Metropolitan Research Institute

Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest

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Interreg project MECOG-CE kicks off in Brno

On 30–31 May 2023, representatives of European metropolitan areas, universities and associations met in Brno for the official launch of the MECOG-CE project (Strengthening Metropolitan Cooperation and Management in Central Europe). The project is funded via the Interreg Central Europe programme, and Brno is the first Czech city to be its leading partner.

The purpose of the MECOG-CE project is to strengthen metropolitan cooperation and management in Central Europe. It is divided into three phases. The first phase will focus on benchmarking, mapping the current situation of territorial and strategic planning in Europe. The second phase will identify the best tools and methods to strengthen metropolitan cooperation and management, and the final phase will involve the practical implementation of these tools and methods by the participating cities and metropolitan areas. The project will help raise awareness of metropolitan issues among European and national-level institutions, reflecting the crucial importance of the metropolitan dimension. The project will run until the spring of 2026.

The role of MRI in the project is to act as a knowledge partner, a quality reviewer for the materials developed in the project and raise awareness on the topic of metropolitan cooperation and governance and encourage many other cities to launch the process. Beside that, MRI will be involved in creating policy documents and disseminating these results to the European level via its membership in a range of important European networks.

 

 

The UPLIFT project ended in June

The UPLIFT project, which was led by the Metropolitan Research Institute, has just finished in June 2023. 

We are proud of our international team who did an exciting scientific work in the field of social inequalities among urban young people, and an excellent job in experimenting with a new policy making method, the so called Reflexive Policy Making process.

In the UPLIFT project, we have elaborated interesting research on a European scale, understanding inequalities. If you are interested in data on social inequalities focusing on youth, read the Atlas of inequalities and browse data in our interactive atlas.

In 16 European cities, based on extensive desk research and interviews with local experts and decision makers, we have analyzed the nature of economic processes and policies tackling social inequalities especially among young people in the field of education, employment and housing. The results are thoroughly described in 16 urban reports, which you can download here: https://uplift-youth.eu/local-reports/. A comprehensive study, that compares and concludes the main messages of the Urban Reports can be downloaded here: https://uplift-youth.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/D2.4_Synthesis_Report-of-the-16-urban-reports.pdf 

In 8 European cities out of the 16, we focused our attention on understanding the mechanisms behind the decisions of vulnerable young people who are stuck in some way in a disadvantaged situation regarding their education, employment or housing. For this in each of the 8 locations we conducted 20 interviews with young people between the age of 15 and 29 and 20 interviews with people who were young and vulnerable during the Great Financial Crisis. The results are written in forms of 8 Case Study Reports. In addition to this we have elaborated 8 bilingual (in English and in local language) Policy Briefs, which contain the main recommendations for Reflexive Policy Making based on the research results of the Case Study Reports. 

In 4 European cities: Amsterdam, Barakaldo, Sfantu Gheorghe and Tallinn our partners have experimented with a new policy making technique called Reflexive Policy Making, which in short meant to facilitate a collaborative work between the vulnerable young people in a form of a Youth Board and institutional stakeholders on a specific policy field, to come up with concrete recommendations for changing or creating local initiatives or policies. Their work is concluded with a thorough general guidance in a Guidebook and a Policy Brief

If you are interested in learning briefly about our work, watch this short and free video course and find your way to implement Reflexive Policy Making in your field. 

If you are interested more about UPLIFT’s work please find our main outputs on our website: https://uplift-youth.eu/ and find us on social media channels: facebook, instagram, linkedin and twitter.

We held a Training on Reflexive Policy Making in Pécs

On the 17th May 2023 we held a training in Pécs on the experiences of Reflexive Policy Making processes of the shortly closing UPLIFT project for local stakeholders including representatives of a housing activist group, school, field of homelessness, urban management and the university with whom we have discussed what possibilities there are in Pécs to implement a Reflexive Policy Making process in Pécs.

In the training we presented our main results of our research based on several expert interviews and on 40 interviews we made with local young people to understand the motivations behind their life choices regarding their housing, education and employment pathways. The results of this research is available in this Case study report. Then we introduced the experiences we gained in Reflexive Policy Making in Amsterdam, Barakaldo, Sfantu Gheorghe and Tallinn. Our colleagues from Sfantu Gheorghe in a video call presented their experiences with the process they have conducted with local vocational school students in the field of education in Sfantu Gheorghe. In the end of the training, we discussed the current challenges and possibilities for implementing a Reflexive Policy Making process in Pécs.

The main conclusion of the discussion with the participants of the training was that even though the numerous added values of such a long-term participatory process is recognized, the actor who would take a leading role in taking all the financial and political risks and would set the framework for that. This is thanks to the heterogeneity of the interests of the great variety of local actors and the conflicts between these actors who fight and compete for scarce resources in the constantly changing policy environment instead of enhancing fruitful cooperations.

József Hegedüs’s publication in the Housing Finance International is availble

József Hegedüs has published a paper in Housing Finance International comparing the housing finance crisis of 1989 and 2008 and its policy response. The causes and management of the two very different crises provide a wealth of information on the nature of the transition from a socialist housing system to a market-based housing system. The interesting difference is that in the first case the risk was borne by the state, which forced the borrowing population to share the gains from inflation, but did so with very modest support for the low-income population. In the second case, the risk was borne by the borrowers and the state essentially forced the banks to bear part of the losses of the families. However, the loan bailout was very unfair, as it favoured the top 20 per cent of income earners but did little to support the wider middle class. Both schemes included an element to help the most needy families, but this only reached a small proportion of those in need.

Read the paper here.

MRI completed a case study report on life strategies of vulnerable young people in Pécs

The research focused on identifying the so-called “conversion factors” that lead to path-dependent choices of young people who struggle from poor housing conditions, low level of education or precariat working conditions.

In the framework of the research, MRI conducted interviews in Pécs with policy implementers, experts, and programme facilitators and 40 vulnerable young people (20 of whom are currently 15-29 years old, while 20 were at this age at the time of the financial crisis).

In the analytical phase, first the local structural and policy context was described: what are the theoretical opportunities of young people, that are provided by the local education and housing system and the labour market. Then individual, family based and institutional factors were identified, that divert young people to live with the local opportunities and to live a life, which they value. The main findings of the research process were:

  • With regard to housing, we concluded that social housing functions as a trap. Rather than providing a transitory solution, it is hard to enter and to leave. There is a big gap between the rent level of public housing and private rental, which few public tenants can afford, but even if they would have sufficient household income, they prefer staying in the sector, which is possible due to the non-transparent operation of the public housing stock.
  • In education, we found that public schools and supporting institutions are practically not able to counteract the lack of family support (including the positive attitude towards educational achievements) and can only support those ones who are already supported by their family. Even if there are innovative and relatively flexible educational solutions (e.g. Tanodas, Gandhi secondary school, “small 500” school that implements the Dobbantó and Orientation programmes) these can be successfully applied in case young people have proper information on them and supportive families to cooperate with the institutions. Thus, counteracting difficulties in education e.g. failing, missing out, getting pregnant before graduation, is rather remaining a challenge.
  • In employment, we analysed the reasons behind the high rate of inactivity of women having children and found that besides the low adaptation of the labour market to provide flexible solutions, paternalistic family structures (where men are wage earners no matter how low that wage is) also contribute to inactivity.
  • In addition, we investigated the perceptions on discrimination of Roma people in the labour market and found that education level is the most decisive factor that is able to reduce discriminatory behaviour against Roma youngsters.

After identifying the main factors behind the individuals’ path-dependent life choices, MRI formulated recommendations to improve the implementation of policies even under the current rigid and unfavourable legal and financial framework. These suggestions are focusing on 1) creating cooperations and more efficient information flow among the actors to provide comprehensive services and transparency towards clients, 2) creating transitory solutions and 3) implementing early interventions to prevent accumulations of difficulties.

The case study is available here: https://uplift-youth.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Pecs-case-study-report.pdf

More on this research including the case of other seven European cities can be found at https://uplift-youth.eu/research-policy/

Blogpost from Iván Tosics’s website: How to Make Cities Better Places for People? – an URBACT Guidebook on innovations in urban mobility and public space development

The article was originally published at Iván Tosics’s website: https://tosics.eu/en/hogyan-lehet-jobba-tenni-a-varosokat-az-emberek-szamara/

Are you a local politician, decision-maker, or a city practitioner? Or a citizen who is interested in making your city a better place for people and shift from car dependency to sustainable urban mobility? The Walk’n’Roll Cities initiative of the URBACT Knowledge Hub has just published a practical and concise guidebook presenting innovations in urban mobility and public space development.

One of the key challenges many cities across Europe face is the physical separation of the different components of everyday life, leading to significant mobility demand. This demand is met to a large extent by car use: people drive cars in order to shorten the time needed for moving between different parts of the city – to work or to use various services. However, car-oriented local mobility has a wide range of adverse consequences, many of which negatively affect the quality of life already in the short run.

While most cities understand the problem, its likely consequences and are committed to implement a shift towards more sustainable urban mobility and public space use, this is easier said than done. That’s why 28 European cities of different sizes from 16 countries have come together to face today’s mobility challenges. Partners of the RiConnect, Space4People and Thriving Streets URBACT Action Planning Networks decided to establish a long term cooperation and created Walk’n’Roll Cities – a platform to exchange ideas, inspirations and learn from each other.

Together, these cities explored visions and interventions that could contribute to massive reduction of car use in our cities. And, thanks to the Knowledge Hub initiative of the URBACT programme, an online publication has also been created that presents these visions and interventions.

As someone who has been actively involved in the development of this publication, I am proud to inform you that the online Guidebook is now available for download on the URBACT website. It is an accessible, practical and concise resource for local politicians, decision-makers, professionals, city practitioners and citizens, who are interested in urban mobility and committed to make their city a better place for people.

Go ahead, download the document, take a ride with us and make the most of your journey!

Click here to access the dedicated URBACT Knowledge Hub Walk’n’Roll Cities page.
Or go ahead and download the publication.

Iván Tosics participated in the “Kyiv Investment Forum” in Brussels

Iván Tosics participated in the “Kyiv Investment Forum” held in Brussels on 28 November 2022. One of the side events of the KIF was the “Kyiv Agglomeration Sustainable Rebuilding” meeting, organized by Eurocities. Mayors of settlements around Kyiv participated in the meeting in online form, due to the seriousness of the situation in their area. In the framework of the Ukrainian decentralization reform, the ‘Kyiv agglomeration’ territorial unit has been created with roughly 3.9 million inhabitants. 18 settlements from the 1.8-million oblast around Kyiv (consisting of 69 settlements) belong to the agglomeration, together with the capital city of 3 million people. The topic of the meeting was the operation of this agglomeration association and its possible further development, taking into account the planning related to the reconstruction of the region and the adaptation of the expected international assistance to local needs. During the meeting many European examples were mentioned, with special regard on the ways how the operation of metropolitan areas can be made more efficient.

Cover photo was taken by Peter Austin.

Session on the role of economic strength of cities in creating social (in)equality in the urban young population – UPLIFT project Synthesis Report results

The UPLIFT project is organising an on-line session on the 22 of November between 3-4.30 PM (CET) to share the results of a comparative research investigating how the economic strengths of cities and local policies influence social inequalities in urban young population. The research is based on two different methods: first a quantitative analysis was implemented from the dataset of the European Quality of Life Survey, and second, 16 urban areas of UPLIFT were analysed from the perspective of their labour market structure and local welfare systems based on desk research and interviews. While the quantitative analysis found slight connections between certain economic and welfare parameters, the qualitative analysis calls attention to those factors that may divert economic development to go hand in hand with social cohesion.

The session will be based on two short presentations on the research findings by Ábel Csathó from TÁRKI and Éva Gerőházi from Metropolitan Research Institute, and feedback will be provided by Yuri Kazepov, Professor at Department of Sociology, University of Vienna and Ruggero Cefalo, Post Doc Researcher at the Department of Sociology, University of Vienna.

We would be happy to discuss with you our scientific results, on which you may find more details in chapter 6 of the Synthesis Report, and you can dive into each individual urban case by looking at the urban reports.

In case you intend to participate in the on-line event, please fill in the registration form in order that we can inform you on the details of admission.

MRI organising storytelling workshops with local young people and local experts on housing, employment and education in Pécs

On 22 and 23 June 2022 MRI organised storytelling workshops in Pécs within the frame of our UPLIFT project, with the participation of local young people and local experts and practitioners. After having done the qualitative research phase of the project, including 40 interviews with local young people and several interviews with local experts on housing, education and employment, these workshops intended to share the stories we have heard and put together to challenge some of our early conclusions before finalizing the local case study report on Pécs. 

We organized three separate group discussions: 1) with some of the young people with whom we have made the interviews, 2) with local experts and practitioners in the field of education (school director, expert on programmes for young people with learning difficulties, experts from Tanodas and social institutes) and 3) with local experts and practitioners on housing (homelessness service providers, social institutes).

We have invited some of our young interviewees for a group discussion about some of the main points that were drawn from all the interviews with young people. Our discussions were based on pre-defined questions letting the participants build their own narrative which we are able to compare with our concluding observations on their possibilities and actual capabilities in the field of education, employment and housing. This method helped us find common pathways that seemed to be more likely based on common socio-economic situations.

  • In housing: The conversation affirmed that there are seemingly unbridgeable gaps between the public rental sector and the private rental market, and between the private rental market and the owner-occupied market.
  • In employment: The statement said by many experts that ‘all who want to have a job can have it in Pécs’ was proved to be rather overgeneralizing, hiding main barriers of accessing a desired labour market position: like being Roma, having a child or children. Moreover social capital and informal mechanisms seem to be crucial in discovering different opportunities in the labour market, which, even if determined by status, constitutes a more effective labour market asset than institutionalised opportunities such as those provided by the Employment Office.
  • In education: The discussion on educational possibilities and experiences reinforced the picture that the segregated nature of the institutional system in Pécs results in a strong path dependency of school choices (e.g. from elementary to secondary), and the limitations of institutions such as Tanodas that are complementing the school system, e.g. in regard to age groups.

The methodology was somewhat different in the meeting with local experts and practitioners in the field of education, where three focal points were defined: the capacity of the local education system to create opportunities, cooperation between schools, and early school leaving in late adolescence. The conclusion of the meeting was that most of the problems root in the ‘resource space’, the current national educational system that strengthens school segregation and creates competing institutions instead of collaborating ones. Education was considered as a part of a social system in which social disadvantages should be treated from birth. It was also emphasised that teacher education must be reformed concentrating more on pedagogical skills and the freedom of educational methodologies. Finally our assumption was strengthened that there are practically no services for young people above 14-16 years – in case they do not have a child. It seems to be a lost age group, in that aspect.

In the workshop with local housing experts and practitioners we have discussed the following statement, which we have found to be describing the essence of housing problems in Pécs: ‘The main problem is the deep gap between the different housing positions. If there is no possibility to move from one position to another, then perverse behaviours occur to stay safe in the current position.’ Local experts have reassured that the municipal stock is rather rigid: it is unlikely to exit if one got access to a municipal flat; both the system seems not motivating for leaving the municipal sector and both the local market rental sector seems to be unwelcoming especially with people from the Roma community and families with children, while entering to the public rental sector is very limited and impenetrable as eligibility criteria is rather unclear and again informality seems to be playing an important role. 

These main points will be further analysed in the upcoming Case Study Report on Pécs.

Urban Reports on Pécs (HU), Łódź (PL), and Bratislava (SK) written by our colleagues are now available together with 10 others from different urban regions of Europe

The UPLIFT project, which is coordinated by Metropolitan Research Institute in the framework of EU Horizon programme, has reached a milestone by completing 13 reports on different urban areas of Europe. The goal of the reports was to understand the educational, housing, employment and social possibilities of vulnerable young people (aged 15-29) in these locations, taking into account the nature of the local economical dynamics and the national and local welfare systems.

Metropolitan Research Institute in cooperation with local experts have written three of these ‘urban reports’ on  Łódź (Poland), Bratislava (Slovakia) and Pécs (Hungary).

We found that even though the cities share a common historical, political and economic heritage, there are substantial differences in their social inequality outcomes and policy performances both in employment, housing, and education. While Hungary and Slovakia seemed to suffer from the consequences of the financial crisis, Poland was less affected. The recovery period seemed to be successful in all three locations also with regard to the currently ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

There is a rather conspicuous difference between Pécs, Łódź and Bratislava. While Bratislava (being a capital) city and also the region itself is among the most economically developed regions in Europe, that provides a wide variety of jobs for both low and highly skilled employees, Łódź and Pécs sharing a post-industrial heritage; both are suffering from the difficulties of importing foreign investments to boost the local economy and improve the variety of jobs. This difference also reflected in demographic trends: while there is a substantial influx of mainly high skilled employees from other regions to Bratislava, Łódź and Pécs experiences outmigration of high-skilled workers. In Łódź, influx of low-educated immigrants, mainly from Ukraine, even before the war period, also significantly shapes the economic situation of the city. Despite the differences, the unemployment rate is low in all three locations, even among young people, but the rate of people, who are active in the labour market is different: many are inactive and not even seeking for a job in Łódź and Pécs functional urban areas.

Inhabitants face very different housing difficulties in the three locations. Poland and also Łódź faces a lack of housing supply which manifests into worse overcrowding numbers while in Bratislava due to the prosperous economic position and henceforth the already mentioned influx of people from other regions of Slovakia keeps the local housing market under a huge pressure which is reflected in increasing housing prices and rents. The affordability of both buying and renting a flat in Pécs blending into the national and European tendencies of the housing crisis. Due to path-dependency, home ownership is still the most common and most desired tenure type in all three countries and cities, while despite the different timing and dynamics of the privatization of public stock, the availability of social housing is quite different in the three locations. While in Bratislava the social stock is resudialized (around 1%), it reaches 5,5% in Pécs and nearly 12% in Łódź. The common feature however is the run-down physical state of municipal buildings that result in high rate of unusable flats.

The Polish education system seems to be the most efficient among the three examined countries and cities. In Bratislava and Pécs (in Slovakia and Hungary), the outcomes are among the worst in Europe with regard to compensating the inherited social difficulties of pupils. All three educational system seems to be highly centralized although they seem to differ in regard of freedom of local authorities and schools. While in Łódź and Bratislava the local system seems to have more delegated competences set by law, in Pécs local authorities are completely left out from education. Another similarity that vocational education has been reported as a school type that has a negative perception among especially highly educated parents and seemingly reforms have already tried to tackle with this e.g., with the implementation of the dual education and scholarship programmes.

Concluding the comparison, it can be seen, that there are many consequences of local and national economic and social welfare conditions to the life chances of young people, which we will further examine in case of Pécs, in the next research phase, to understand not only the policy setup but also the perception and the perspective of vulnerable young people through 40 individual interviews.

Please find the all the urban reports in the UPLIF website: https://uplift-youth.eu/insights-reporting/official-deliverables

URBACT Action Planning Networks RiConnect, Space4People and Thriving Streets are launching a city policy learning platform on the topics of mobility and public space – organized by Iván Tosics

URBACT Action Planning Networks RiConnect, Space4People and Thriving Streets are launching a city policy learning platform on the topics of mobility and public space. A first webinar bringing together all city partners and a wider group of interested stakeholders will be organised on Monday 29 November, 10.00 – 14.00 CET. It will showcase examples of innovative mobility and public space practices and allow time for discussions and networking. Moderator: Iván Tosics URBACT Thematic Programme Expert

To register, please click here: link

For more regular updates and exchanges with the networks, join the (link is external)Walk’n’Roll Cities LinkedIn group.