The “National Platform for Urban Policy » (CIPU) enables cooperation between national, regional/intermunicipal and local level and initiates the debate around urban planning and development in Luxembourg. In addition to that, it raises awareness in the international context and informs about ongoing urban spatial planning trends and relevant topics in Luxembourg.

Aim

CIPU works on two levels: the European and the national level. While increasing awareness about spatial planning in Luxembourg in the international context, the platform simultaneously supports the cooperation between the local and the national level in Luxembourg. The central objective of CIPU has always been to provide a platform for exchange between the various urban policies and a multitude of municipal, national and European actors and enable cooperation – an objective which remains valid today. However, the practical topics have evolved across the years. The convention applies a focused and cooperative approach for its implementation.

Partnership

CIPU is based on an agreement between the Luxembourg Ministry of Energy and Spatial Planning, the Ministry of Housing and Ministry of Home Affairs as well as the cities of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Differdange and Dudelange. These partners constitute the core network of the CIPU. It is managed and organised by the CIPU which is run by Zeyen+Baumann in cooperation with Spatial Foresight. Depending on the subject, the platform’s activities are implemented in close cooperation with external partners, e.g. the Klima-Agence.

Genesis

CIPU was developed in 2010 to support the integration of the recommendations for urban development from the European level in Luxembourgish spatial planning policy. In Luxembourg, the debate on spatial development since the beginning of the 2000s has been marked by the adoption of the second Master Programme for Spatial Planning (PDAT) in 2003, the Integrated Transport and Territorial Development Concept (IVL) in 2004 and the revision of the laws on urban (2004) and spatial planning (2013, 2018). CIPU initially aimed at transposing the objectives from the “Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities” from 2007 at the national level while involving Luxembourgish municipalities in the implementation of a national urban policy, and – at the same time – considering the objectives of the PDAT which has a guiding function for national and local authorities.

During 2017-2021, a thematic focus was set for each year: In 2017/2018 the activities were focused on affordable housing. The year 2019 revolved around the topic of major urban development projects, the years 2020/2021 focused on both climate change adaptation in urban development and the revitalisation of inner cities. Furthermore, in the course of 2021, CIPU addressed the changing framework conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and work was carried out under the overarching title « City in Transition ». In addition to workshops and events, which were dedicated to concrete issues and enabled a direct exchange between the participants, the results of the discussions were processed in numerous publications for Luxembourgish and European planners. These were produced in close cooperation with the partners involved in the CIPU and the actors participating in the workshops. The CIPU documentation is thus a significant output that actively contributes to informing and developing the expertise of Luxembourgish planners. In order to finalise this phase of CIPU and to provide space for other important topics in the future, the « Journée de la Politique Urbaine » was organised with Luxembourgish planners and experts in January 2022. In a world café-like setting, the future perspectives for a “City in Transition” were elaborated as a summarizing statement of the CIPU 2020/2021.

Outlook

The main topics and activities for the next two years are described in an ambitious programme. It was developed in close cooperation with all involved partners by means of in-depth discussions about relevant topics. This action programme will cover the following topics:

• multifunctional urban areas
• energy concepts for large-scale urban projects
• climate resilience and climate change impact in urban development
• building cooperatives and alternative models for housing and working

Activities for 2023 were launched in May with the online lecture series (colloque) consisting of four presentations on energy concepts in the district “Roud Lëns”, the projects “NeiSchmelz” and “Wunne mat der Wooltz” as well as the energetic renovation of existing buildings in Differdange and a low-emission district in Strasbourg. Further steps in the implementation include interactive thematic workshops, an excursion and a concluding conference on the second thematic focus of multifunctional urban areas. For external communication, and awareness-raising, CIPU will inform about ongoing activities, publications and provide a collection of funding opportunities for municipalities on its website and social media. Furthermore, this blog will inform continuously about ongoing urban planning and development trends and projects in Luxembourg – so stay tuned during the next months.

Contact

Cellule nationale d’Information pour la Politique Urbaine (CIPU): cipu@zeyenbaumann.lu

References

CIPU website (German and French): https://site.cipu.lu/

CIPU blog (English): https://blog.cipu.lu/blog/

Conclusions of CIPU 2020/2021 (German): https://site.cipu.lu/images/2022-03_publications2022/CIPU_Conclusions%202020-2021_2022-03-30.pdf

How to enable sustainable urban commercial development in inner cities? How to cope with commercial concurrence between city centres and greenfield shopping centres? How to deal with commercial vacancies? What instruments and tools are there that decision-makers can use?

On Friday, 17. September 2021, CIPU organised an excursion to two Luxembourg cities to address these questions. During an afternoon, around 30 planners and experts from various cities and municipalities across the country learned about the approaches, among others of Differdange, the third biggest city of Luxembourg with 26.000 inhabitants.

The second half of the excursion led to Differdange

Differdange is a city built around a steel mill, featuring several centres that are geographically disconnected. The city has doubled in population during the past 15 years. This made it necessary to upscale urban services and to re-design the city centre. Much of the inner-city offer is still influenced by the consumer habits of steel workers: in footfall of the steel mills, restaurants, cafés, and bars dominate the urban environment, only few shops have been established in the inner city. With the steel mill slowly loosing importance for the urban economic activities, a transition of the urban commercial offer is taking place.

To support the re-orientation of the urban offer and to link the geographically disconnected centres, a new district has been developed. At the intersection of two major roads on a former landfill of an adjacent steel mill, the new district ‘Plateau Funiculaire’ links the different districts by providing different amenities and new functions.

The new district has been built around a large shopping centre, that has been strategically placed opposite of the still-running steel mill, at a transport axis through the city. With the development, the place presents the new centre of attraction in Differdange, offering shops, offices, and apartments for new and old inhabitants.

The transition of the urban commercial offer has led to an increasing number of commercial vacancies during the last 20 years. Despite the cities’ smaller size, the challenges Differdange faces are of similar nature to those of Esch-sur-Alzette (see Blog post on the first half of the CIPU Excursion). Both cities suffer from a decreasing inner city attractiveness due to high numbers of vacancies.  

Instead of initiating a proprietary instrument, the municipality of Differdange has purchased two shop surfaces in the city centre and leases them to shop owners or new entrepreneurs. In doing so, the city does not rely on pre-definded procedures and rulings. Instead, it asks interested shop owners and entrepreneurs to develop applications, in which business ideas and shop concepts are described. The dossier is submitted to a selection committee. This committee consists of one representative of all political parties (also those that are not involved in municipal government), and of three citizens. A mix in gender, occupation and length of residency is respected.

The number of applications the municipality received exceeds the number of available shop surfaces. The two best concepts have been chosen, leading to two new shops being created in the municipality. One of them complements the urban commercial landscape with products for babies to young parents and the other sells gifts and goodies. The second shop was found by a Syrian refugee, who has been welcomed in Differdange during 2020. The shops benefit from marketing support of the public city channels.

More commercial surfaces of different kind (shops, bars, restaurants, etc.) will become available in near future. With the experiences collected, the municipality wants to continue efforts to revitalise the city-centre. For this, more commercial surfaces will be purchased in future and more specialised concepts matching concrete citizen requirements will be realised. This will help to address the issue of commercial vacancies with a versatile and pro-active instrument.

For more information, visit www.diffmix.lu, which is the citizen involvement platform of the municipality (available in English, French and German) and the municipal website of the city of Differdange: www.differdange.lu

For more information or for comments, please contact the author of this article: sebastian.hans@spatialforesight.eu

How to enable sustainable urban commercial development in inner cities? How to cope with commercial concurrence between city centres and greenfield shopping centres? How to deal with commercial vacancies? What instruments and tools are there that decision-makers can use?

On Friday, 17. September 2021, CIPU organised an excursion to two Luxembourg cities to address these questions. During an afternoon, around 30 planners and experts from various cities and municipalities across the country learned about the approaches, of among other the city of Esch-sur-Alzette, the second biggest city of Luxembourg with 35,000 inhabitants.

The first half of the excursion led to Esch-sur-Alzette

In Esch-sur-Alzette, ‘CLAIRE’ is a municipal initiative with the objective to combat commercial vacancies in the city. The city, which has been a historic commercial centre of the Grand Duchy, features the highest level of commercial surfaces per capita in the country. Consequentially, the inner-city commercial surfaces are highly sensitive to newly occurring trends such as greenfield shopping centres and online shopping.

Esch-sur-Alzette, also known for its steel industry, has experienced several steel crises during the past century. As consequence, many family-owned businesses have closed because of declining turnover as result of the decreasing purchasing power. Additionally, a former steel mill called ‘Belval’, just adjacent to the city centre has been transformed into a new urban district. A large shopping mall offers many of the amenities the city centre can’t and increases the pressure on the inner-city shops even further.

In 2018, a citizen survey has identified commercial vacancies as a priority topic. Since then, municipal decision-makers became active and developed together with a consultancy the project ‘CLAIRE’, which employs 2.5 full time equivalents.

‘CLAIRE’ helps the municipality to act as middle man between property owners and businesses. It brings shops and stores together through the negotiating power of the municipality and allows to bridge and negotiate different interests. This way the city effectively reduces the commercial vacancies. It offers proven solutions in the form of long-term leaseholds but can also make short-term uses possible; an interim use concepts provides surfaces to shops in the form of pop-up spaces or as showcases for publicity. With reducing commercial vacancies, the inner city has become more attractive, according to surveyed citizens.

An important part of ‘CLAIRE’ are pop-up surfaces. In the framework of this short-term use concept, shop owners can rent a flexible size of commercial surfaces for short periods of time. This helps shop owners to test the general demand and new products with marginal financial and organisational commitment. The pop-up surfaces are known to residents and shoppers from outside and have well-integrated into the ever-diversifying commercial offer in Esch-sur-Alzette of today.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and booming online commerce, ‘CLAIRE’ has shown results: in 2021, only 14% of the shop surfaces in Esch-sur-Alzette were vacant. The reduction of commercial vacancies has led to a better perception of the city centre and consequentially to a better image of the city as place to live and place to visit.

Still not all challenges can be solved. So for deadlocks regarding rent expectations of property owners, which sometimes exceed what businesses can pay for. However, rent for commercial surfaces can in most cases be successfully mediated through political support from the council of aldermen.

A more detailed description of the concept in English is provided in a CIPU project sheet, that you may find here: https://site.cipu.lu/images/2019_10_Factsheets/_Claire_final.pdf  

The project has also a website, that you can access here (German and French language): https://claire.esch.lu/

For more information or for comments, please contact the author of this article: sebastian.hans@spatialforesight.eu

Conventions are contractual agreements that foster cooperation between municipalities and the State in Luxembourg. Conventions can cover a multitude of topics in the field of spatial planning and urban development.

Rationale for action

In Luxemburg, the national level sets the general political objectives and orientations of spatial planning and development. To a large extent, the competence for urban planning and development lies with the municipalities. An intermediate level between the state and the municipalities is missing; there is no regional level requiring neighbouring municipalities to coordinate their spatial planning procedures or future development options. Yet cooperation and coordination among all levels of government (vertical dimension) and with relevant actors at the same level (horizontal level) is necessary to achieve the objectives of a sustainable spatial development.

Objective

Conventions promote inter-municipal and multilevel cooperation to foster sustainable regional development, promote integrated planning and address specific development issues. In this context, conventions facilitate the vertical cooperation between the State and municipalities with the aim of implementing the objectives established in territorial strategies, such as the Master Programme for Spatial Planning (PDAT), the Integrated Transport and Spatial Planning Concept (IVL) and the Global Strategy for Sustainable Mobility (MoDu 2.0).

Time frame

The first convention of territorial cooperation was created on an ad-hoc basis in 2005. Since then, five more conventions have been signed. The process was formalised in 2013 with the Law of 30 July 2013 on Spatial Planning, which defined the procedure for concluding conventions with territorially contiguous municipalities. In the new Law of 17 April 2018 on Spatial Planning, conventions are defined as a proprietary instrument for the implementation of the objectives of spatial planning.

Key players

Municipalities and national authorities (in particular the Department of Spatial Planning and Development in the Ministry of Energy and Spatial Planning). Membership is voluntary and there are no explicit statistical, geographical or morphological criteria for joining. With the new Law of 17 April 2018 on Spatial Planning, municipalities do not need to be territorially contiguous anymore. The membership of a municipality is solely based on functional criteria: all municipalities in a convention area have a shared understanding of common challenges and opportunities.

Implementation steps and processes

A convention represents a contractual agreement between municipalities and the State. In accordance with the Law of 17 April 2018 on Spatial Planning, the initiative to establish a convention can come from either the interested municipalities or the Minister responsible for Spatial Planning. Following the approval by the Council of Government, the Minister can sign a convention with these municipalities. The actors draft the text of the convention in which the mission and objectives, the joint projects, the organisational structure, the procedural setup, and the budgetary provisions are defined. A convention area is managed by a so-called ‘Political Committee’ that is composed of two elected representatives per municipality (usually the mayor and an alderman/alderwoman) and the Minister responsible for Spatial Planning. This Political Committee defines the political priorities of the convention and approves the annual work programme. The discussions and decisions at the political level are generally prepared by a ‘Technical Board’ that is composed of the municipal officers responsible for urban planning and policy experts from the Department of Spatial Planning and Development and, depending on the subject, other ministries. The day-to-day business and the follow-up of projects is, in some cases, managed by a Coordination Unit. Convention areas are not recognised as an official territorial unit and there is no formal delegation of competences to the Coordination Units.

Required resources

Conventions of territorial cooperation establish an organisational structure and a financial framework for the duration of the agreement. The allocated budget may vary depending on the willingness of partners to contribute and on the resources required to resolve a specific issue. The Department of Spatial Planning and Development financially contributes to the budget of each convention area, with the rest of the budget coming from the municipalities.

Results

Conventions are an instrument allowing to bridge decision-making levels. Conventions are often a first step to initiate territorial cooperation to work on an identified issue and lead to more institutionalised forms, such as municipal syndicates. Therefore, as of 2021, there’s only one active convention remaining:

• CIPU is a convention between the Ministry of Energy and Spatial Planning, the Ministry of Housing and the municipalities of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Dudelange and as of 2022, the municipality of Differdange. The convention acts as a platform for exchange on urban policies for the partners and other municipal, national and European actors. The first convention was established in 2010 and the second one became effective in 2016 and will be extended in 2022.

The following conventions have lead to more institutionalised forms of cooperation:

• the Nordstad convention has set the political basis for developing the Nordstad, a new urban region in the North. Members include the municipalities of Bettendorf, Colmar-Berg, Diekirch, Erpeldange-sur-Sûre, Ettelbrück, Schieren and the Ministry of Energy and Spatial Planning. In 2006, the first convention was signed, which was active until 2014. The second period of the convention covers the period from 2014 until 2019. In 2019, the convention led to the foundation of the inter-municipal Nordstad syndicate, organising the municipal services of the future Northern agglomeration.
• the objective of the PRO-SUD convention was to promote the development of the South region, which is composed of eleven municipalities in the southern part of the country. The first convention for an integrated territorial development was signed in 2015 and expired in 2020, leading to the foundation of the PRO-SUD syndicate.

More conventions existed but did not lead to fixed forms of cooperation:

• DICI was a convention that addressed inter-municipal spatial planning and development in the South-West region around Luxembourg-City. Members included the municipalities of Luxembourg, Bertrange, Hesperange, Leudelange, Strassen and the Ministry of Energy and Spatial Planning. The first convention was signed in 2005 and the second one in 2010, the latter of which ran until the end of 2018. The convention was not extended after 13 years of inter-municipal cooperation.
• Air Regioun was a convention between the State and municipalities East of Luxembourg City. Its objective was to weaken the expected territorial development pressure of a fastly growing Luxembourg City and to coordinate economic development in the region. It was active from 2008 to 2013.
• Convention Uelzechtdall between the State and the five municipalities north of Luxembourg City Lintgen, Lorentzweiler, Mersch, Steinsel and Walferdange was a convention active between 2007 and 2017. Its aim was to coordinate territorial development by streamlining municipal land-use plans.

Experiences, success factors, risks

The main factor in the conclusion of conventions is the political willingness to cooperate. Moreover, continued political commitment is necessary to sustain the cooperation and to implement projects. As the basis for political commitment, a shared understanding of common challenges and opportunities at the political level is required.

An important incentive for the municipalities to participate is the enhanced cooperation with the State as well as the implementation of joint projects. In terms of regional planning, the municipalities do not delegate planning competences to the Coordination Unit. Nonetheless, there is coordinated planning and development in some fields. This degree of coordination varies from one convention area to another with different coordination mechanisms and procedures. This leads to a differentiated pattern of results. All conventions have non-binding spatial development concepts. The Nordstad convention area, for instance, has a so-called Masterplan.

This form of cooperation fosters communication and builds trust among partners. In most cases, State and municipal actors use conventions to structure coordination mechanisms.

Conclusions

Due to their flexibility, conventions can be used to tackle problems in a unique way. The implication of national authorities helps to ensure funding where the municipal contribution is not sufficient, but the State can also act as a moderator or mediator. The national authorities are actively supporting the establishment of conventions. It is also important to provide the Coordination Unit, charged with the management of day-to-day business, with enough competences to successfully implement and carry out projects. Political willingness and commitment are necessary to sustain the cooperation and to implement projects.

Contacts

Ms Myriam Bentz, Ministry of Energy and Spatial Planning: Myriam.Bentz@mat.etat.lu