Learning Cities 2030

We begin this ambiguous New Year on an upbeat note: Chris Brooks demurs at the prevailing doom and gloom with which we farewelled 2020, noting causes for collective pride. Yet there is also a blunt closing challenge: in his rural village ‘flat-earthers’ display ‘thoughtless thinking and a failure to identify and examine the facts’. ‘Surely this is a major educational failure. What should we do?’ Brooks asks.

The OECD staff devoted to regional, urban and local development present a series of papers and indexes concerning local financing, SMEs, culture, entrepreneurship and regional development, classic PASCAL themes. Proves to show what teamwork can achieve using electronic communications only.

Mike Osborne, Director of PASCAL, introduced the meeting and explained that post-Covid, it was recognised that there was a need to re-energise the PASCAL Learning Cities Networks (LCN), and this was the first meeting for the “Reimagining Inclusive Economic Futures” (RIEF”) network. The PASCAL International Observatory works closely with the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities (GNLC) and has recently been running a series of joint webinars with UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning. PASCAL assists cities in developing their applications to join the GNLC and has a focus on the ways in which universities can support the development of Learning Cities. Mike invited all attendees to introduce themselves and to explain a little about the city, university, network or organisation they were representing.