Cities and the ‘soft side’ of Europeanization: The role of Urban Networks

In this chapter we investigate the extent to which the phenomenon known as Europeanization has had an impact in the European urban sphere, particularly with reference to ‘urban policy’. In the urban domain the EU has few, if any, legal competences that can operate as a means to directly foster Europeanization. However, over the last twenty years the European Commission has developed, deployed and supported a significant number of small-scale programmes/initiatives and ‘soft instruments’ that may contribute to the development of Europeanization. In addition to these cities themselves’ have engaged in ‘self-organisation’ at the European level through the creation of pan- European organisations that seek to influence the EU and to share knowledge and experiences among cities. Our basic aim is to address these through the experiences of urban networks and assess their contribution to the Europeanization process in terms of their contribution to the development of a common ‘European frame’ for identifying, defining, understanding and acting vis-à-vis urban issues. The chapter is organized as follow. First of all we provide a brief discussion of Europeanization and its relations/impacts on the urban dimension/policy across the EU. In the next section we then discuss the development and role of urban networks before finally drawing the threads together and reflecting on the arguments on Europeanization developed earlier in the chapter.