New Urban Progress in the United States and Germany

New Urban Progress has entered its exploration stage. By embarking on a transatlantic exchange on metro innovations dealing with the future of work, democracy, and well-being, we want to explore how German and U.S. cities are preparing themselves to be metropolitan areas of the future. We want to first define the challenges facing cities and urban areas in three thematic fields – inclusive growth and innovation, networked governance, social mobility – and then identify policy approaches and citizen initiatives aiming to overcome these.

To do so, we are inviting researchers, activists, members of local governments and other stakeholders involved in metropolitan affairs from Germany and the U.S. to help us sketch country-oriented landscapes of the most common and urgent challenges that cities and metro areas face, as well as the approaches applied in each country to tackle them. Understanding the context of urban policies and the current innovations will lay the groundwork for further project activities. The outcomes from Germany and the U.S. will be compared and complemented by desk research and literature reviews to find a common framework to launch a hands-on, future-oriented transatlantic dialogue on an urban agenda.