Newsletter for OECD Regional Development Policy giving an overview of projects from January-June 2015.

Local policymakers have a critical role to play in developing more resilient and inclusive economies. This event will explore topics ranging from empowering communities through local leadership to new approaches to local economic growth and catalysing growth through people by better harnessing skills and increasing productivity.

The work will seek to identify good practices for employer engagement in the areas of both developing and utilising skills, including setting up innovative workplace learning methods, designing effective employer partnerships with the employment and training system as well as financing mechanisms for employer-led training, including how best to reach SMEs.

The recent droughts in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo states have exposed the need to shift from crisis management to effective risk governance of the country’s water resources, according to a new OECD report.

7th annual expert meeting of the initiative on Employment and Skills Strategies in Southeast Asia (ESSSA) and GIZ/ RECOTVET Policy Dialogue - 7-8 October, 2015 - Sokha Angkor Resort, Siem Reap, Cambodia

Improvements in health, access to basic services and housing have contributed most to raising standards of living of Mexicans over the past 15 years but further advances are needed to bring well-being indicators closer to the average of OECD countries, according to a new report.

The FAO, OECD and UNCDF launched a joint multi-year initiative to assess Food Security and Nutrition (FSN) policies from a territorial perspective. This joint initiative will assess, scale up, and pilot innovative policy approaches and governance mechanisms to improve food security and nutrition in rural areas, in both emerging and developing countries.

The seminar was organised by IPRASE, provincial institute for research and educational experimentation, instrumental body of the Autonomous Province of Trento, the Autonomous Province of Trento and the OECD LEED Trento Centre. The seminar represented a first public reflection on the Trentino Multilingualism Plan within a national and international comparison framework, in view of future prospects.

We are looking for national and sub-national policies and initiatives for social enterprise creation and development. The focus will be placed on initiatives funded by the European Social Fund, by other EU funds and programmes, by Member States and sub-national authorities and NOT on examples of successful social enterprises.

The OECD and the Italian government are stepping up cooperation to ensure effective implementation of local development strategies to boost jobs, encourage entrepreneurship and increase social inclusion. An agreement, to be signed in Rome on 1 December 2015, will renew the mandate of the OECD Trento Centre for Local Development and establish a satellite office in Venice.

The webinars enabled serious discussion on the concept of ‘local economic resilience’ in an informal setting that facilitates interaction and questions. The format featured presentations from policy experts and a roundtable discussion with the audience.

The Regional Development Policy Division was honoured to have been selected by the Regional Studies Association (RSA) to receive the Institutional Ambassador Award 2015 on 18 November. The award is in recognition of the high calibre of reports and measurement tools produced by the Regional Development Policy Committee and its supporting Working Parties.

The project will identify the policy levers and instruments that can be helpful in the design of strategies to accompany the transition to older local labour markets, and identify how national policy frameworks can best support these transformations.

The webinars will enable serious discussion on the concept of ‘local economic resilience’ in an informal setting that facilitates interaction and questions. The format will feature presentations from policy experts and a roundtable discussion with the audience.

The World of Public Employment Services provides systematic and comparative information to help understand the development of PES around the world as well as the challenges and opportunities they face today. This book is the most comprehensive analysis undertaken to date of the current situation and development of PESs, covering 73 organizations on all continents.

The tourism industry in OECD countries continues to grow strongly despite economic weakness in advanced economies, and outperformed tourism globally in 2014. However, active, innovative and integrated policies are needed to ensure that tourism remains a competitive and sustainable sector, says OECD.

Mayors from cities across the United States, Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America gathered in New York to launch a global campaign to address rising inequalities and foster inclusive growth in their cities, in their countries and worldwide.

The new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include a significant number of interconnected objectives related to agriculture and food.

Japan must make revitalising growth its number one priority with reforms to boost productivity and encourage more women and older people into jobs to compensate for its rapidly shrinking labour force, according to the OECD.

This year the Forum will focus on creativity, jobs and local development. We will examine how localities can support culture and creative industries as a source of knowledge and job creation and how the creative industry can act as a powerful driving force areas such as tourism, urban regeneration, and social inclusion.

Not so long ago, “globalisation” was a favourite paradigm in international business. It was a trend that began in the late 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s, when corporate takeovers were the order of the day and multinational companies fixated on maximising short-term profits and boosting share prices. One approach was “global sourcing”, also called outsourcing or offshoring.

The world cannot resolve today’s development challenges with purely national approaches. We need to complement them with local approaches, too. We live in an era of enormous transformations, in which our traditional political structures and forms of democratic participation must adapt. That means casting a bigger focus than ever on the important role of local power and communities.

The OECD LEED Programme launches this "Call for Initiatives" to extract what local authorities and other actors know works, what the new scenario is demanding and how equipped they are to respond. We are interested in learning from the experiences of EU member countries, the wider OECD area as well as other countries.

11th edition of Trento Festival of Economics: the arena where economists, political and institutional stakeholders, researchers and journalists from all over the world, will exchange views and investigate the topic “Where growth takes place”.

This study will analyse how selected local areas/industry clusters identify the specific skills needed to support green growth and how related skills policies and practices can be made more effective in supporting their provision and accelerating transition to a low-carbon economy.

This event to be held on 21 June 2016 in Lisbon, Portugal, will discuss the preliminary findings of the OECD project "Resilient Cities" and share cities' experience on enhancing resilience.

This document presents draft principles for leveraging local benefits from global sporting events. These draft principles have been prepared as part of a project on optimising the local benefits from hosting the EURO 2016. They build upon previous work on Local Development Benefits from Staging Global Events.

This year London’s population overtook its historical high of 8.6 million reached at the outset of the Second World War, bucking the trend of many European and North American cities, which have experienced only slight, or even negative, growth.

How Africa urbanises will be critical to the continent’s future growth and development, says the African Economic Outlook 2016 released today at the African Development Bank Group’s 51st Annual Meetings.

The OECD has been selected to co-lead one of the ten policy units contributing Habitat III taking place in Quito, Ecuador from 17-20 October 2016.

The purpose of the seminar is to provide the practical information about how to implement SIBs in Poland using international experiences. The seminar is addressed to the potential applicants interested in the implementation of SIB within the call for proposals planned to be launched by the Ministry of Economic Development.

A three-year programme of co-operation between the European Commission and LEED on self-employment and entrepreneurship in Europe.

Income inequality is worsening within many countries, and regional disparities in housing, safety and air quality inside countries are also growing wider in many cases, according to a new OECD report.

This study provides an empirical analysis of the effects of environmental zoning on urban development. It focuses on the case of Natural Regional Parks (NRPs) in France. Of the environmental zoning instruments used in France, NRPs extend over the widest physical area. Three potential side-effects of NRPs on urban development in the regulated area are investigated.

Imagine you have an important decision to make. Do you carefully consider the long-term implications of each possible option or do you act impulsively? Would you approach the decision-making process differently if the consequences stretched out to 30 or even 50 years?

The 2016 Forum will discuss the opportunities and challenges of the urbanisation process in Africa, looking into how to address informality in urban areas, the role of cities as drivers of economic transformation, and innovative ways to provide adequate and predictable financing for local governments and municipalities.

The global challenges of poverty eradication, environmental sustainability, climate change, and sustainable and secure energy are all intimately linked to cities, which are simultaneously places where these global problems emerge and solutions can be found. Blog by Ricardo Herranz, Nommon Solutions and Technologies, Madrid.

Governments should rethink city housing, transport and other urban systems to ensure that fast-growing cities do not become inequality traps, according to a new OECD report showing that a majority of cities have higher levels of inequality than the national average.

The OECD Governance and Territorial Development Directorate has worked closely with United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) on urban development issues. This webpage highlights the complex governance challenges that cities present and offers guidance on how they may be overcome.

A snapshot of current and future challenges in urban development and how they are impacting on human development, well-being, and public governance systems worldwide.

Are you a city-dweller, concerned about the challenges of urbanisation, resilience and inclusiveness? Cities and urban areas represent unrivalled concentrations of people, economic growth, commercial networks, and innovation – and have the potential to make a significant contribution to the transition towards a low-carbon world.

This year's Green Growth and Sustainable Development Forum (GGSD Forum) focuses on the theme “Urban green growth, spatial planning and land-use”. Land use and spatial planning policies have implications for both the environment and the economy. Overall, consideration will be given to the potential for regional, rural and urban policy to contribute to green growth.

The OECD, the City of Paris and the Ford Foundation will host its second meeting in the fight against rising inequality in cities. The event will include sessions open to the public, drawing Mayors, business leaders, experts and policy makers, in addition to thematic workshops where our Champion Mayor will take to the stage to discuss subjects from affordable housing to integrating migrants and refugees.

Mayors and local leaders from around the world launched today a plan of action to help tackle inequality, boost job creation and harness economic development.

The Sahel and West Africa Week has become a key event for the region’s development stakeholders, fostering informal exchange, networking and partnership building. The 2016 edition of the Week takes place in Abuja, Nigeria.

On January 26th and 27th the Ministry of Regional Development of Ukraine and the OECD organised a seminar in Kiyv focusing on recent decentralisation and territorial reforms in Ukraine and in OECD countries.

Seminar on Innovations and challenges in the management of a regional policy held in Bratislava, Slovak Republic, 22 February 2017

This seminar was held in held in Lviv on 22 June 2017.

The Second International Conference on National Urban Policy was held in Paris France on 15-16 May 2017. The conference was a joint initiative of the OECD, UN Habitat and Cities Alliance.

The city of Newcastle is fast emerging as a smart, liveable and sustainable city.