Urban Europeanisation through cohesion policy

In a globalised scenario, cities have become strategic territories, not only in terms of generating economic and cultural wealth, but also social exclusion and environmental impact. As a consequence, during the 1990s, the European Union launched a European urban development policy. This policy has been described as being «implicit» in nature due to the EU’s lack of formal powers in this field, but the mainstreaming of the urban dimension in cohesion policy has favoured its turn into «explicit». The issues of urban governance and urban Europeanisation are approached through an analysis of this pro-cess, which illustrates that cities have become new central political actors in the context of European governance, and also that urban public action has evolved towards new modes of governance.

Key words: EU, city, urban policy, urban governance, sustainable development

The full text articles of this issue are available only in Spanish language