Leeds Working internationally to bring together scientific research and urban policy

Tony Cooke, from Leeds City Council attended the City Science Initiative seminar in Milan

In September a small team from Leeds City Council and the University of Leeds travelled to Milan to talk with European colleagues and give a presentation at a conference on how cities, universities and research institutions can work together to improve the places we live.

The event was part of the City Science Initiative, launched by the city of Amsterdam in 2019. This is a transnational platform that has brought together pioneering cities, universities, and research institutions across Europe.

Tony Cooke, Chief Officer Health Partnerships in Leeds City Council and at the Leeds Academic Health Partnership, and Professor Louise Waite, Head of the Leeds University Institute for Societal Futures shared examples of best practice that have been designed and delivered in Leeds over the last two years at the conference, which was held at Milano Politecnico.

The event was attended by a wide range of international partners including delegates from Turin and Milan in Italy, Amsterdam in the Netherlands as well as colleagues from London Councils and a number of representatives from Eurocities, the major network of European cities.

Tony says "The event went really well and everyone learned a lot about the ongoing importance of sharing best practice but also the common challenges faced in the current European and international socio-political environment."

Elena Grandi, the Deputy Mayor of Milan talked about the challenge of developing evidence-based science and community focused research when academia and work on poverty, sustainability and inequality is being questioned by resurgent populist politics and conspiracy-based thinking. Likewise, Thijs Van Schijndel from the Amsterdam City Science Office noted how important it was to continue to work across Europe on common interests and bear in mind the importance of using evidence to drive strategic policy in the cities of Europe. Amsterdam talked about how they had united academics and the Council by developing an independent City Science Office. This included a team of people working to research, understand and improve outcomes across the city and meet the challenges posed by modern city life.

This led to the Leeds presentation and panel discussion. Tony and Louise described a number of successful initiatives in Leeds. They outlined how Leeds University and the Council had developed ‘Areas of Research Interest’ that sought to bring researchers together with the Council and NHS to design new ways of implementing innovative projects focused on environmental sustainability, economic development and health and wellbeing. In particular they focused on projects that improved the Council approach to food and nutrition and promoted community use of derelict land.

They also noted how deeply partnership working was rooted in Leeds, with a long list of successful collaborations including the development of the Leeds Academic Health Partnership which also includes NHS and third sector colleagues as well as Leeds Beckett and Leeds Trinity universities and the renewed focus of the Areas of Research Interest project on neighbourhood health and green growth.

The Leeds team had some excellent feedback during and after the conference and many international colleagues commented that their knowledge of Leeds had now gone beyond football, goth music and heavy industry and the 1970s with them rightly now seeing Leeds as a hotbed of research, innovation and creative thinking rooted in our great partnership working. So in conclusion the event really did reveal just how important it is to collaborate with European colleagues and continue to build and market ‘Global Leeds’.

Eurocities is the largest network of European cities. It counts over 200 large cities among its membership, representing more than 150 million people across 38 countries, from within and outside the European Union, to exchange, learn, and collaborate on shared challenges.

The The City Science Initiative is supported by Eurocities, and aims to strengthen the ways in which science and research can help address the urban challenges and to develop a structured approach to evidence-informed policy-making at cities' level.