Living Cities: The new commute

A conversation on what makes a livable city.
By AITOR HERNÁNDEZ-MORALES
With GIOVANNA COI
Send tips here | Tweet @aitorehm | View in your browser
Happy Thursday, city lovers!
And happy EU Mobility Week, that made-up campaign that comes once a year and leads local leaders to pull half-baked stunts on public transport. This year the prize for most absurd commemoration goes to Madrid Mayor José Luis Almeida, who spent a few minutes on Monday riding on a city bus with a Gospel choir in tow. Was he trying to tell riders that they’d better pray for better public transport?
Naturally, we’re keen to get in on the fun, so this week we’ve launched a special report on commuting that we’ll preview throughout this newsletter.
Further down: Meet Dan Jørgensen, the EU’s first-ever Housing Commissioner.
LET’S GO DUTCH: Every day in the Netherlands, hundreds of thousands of people get up, ride their bikes to their nearest train station, hop on a train and then take a bus or tram to their workplace — only to do the same trip in reverse when it comes time to go home at the end of the day. That multimodal, cross-country commute is often cited as an example to emulate across Europe because it favors movement between urban clusters without the use of gas-guzzling cars. But can this structure be exported as easily as a wheel of Gouda cheese?
A very modern phenomenon: Tibor Rongen, a researcher at the University of Groningen, told my colleague Gio that the Dutch multimodal commuting model only goes as far back as the 1960s, when municipalities were urged to develop within their municipal boundaries and not sprawl out into the countryside. “As a result, cities were densified,” he explained. “And that also justified the investment in public transport hubs and allowed them to thrive.” The long-term impact of the policy has resulted in the Netherlands as we know it today: High-density and often pedestrianized urban centers, pristine countryside, and an efficient transport network that reduces reliance on automobiles.
Constant scale-up: The dramatic growth of technologically oriented cities like Utrecht, which saw its population increase by more than 50 percent between 2000 and 2021, means that municipal administrations need to work hard to ensure transport options keep up with demand. Lot van Hooijdonk, Utrecht’s deputy major for mobility, said the city’s 10-year mobility plan has largely eschewed individual automotive mobility and instead focused on projects that favor active mobility. The Central Station, for example, has infrastructure to integrate bus, tram and rail services, as well as a three-story underground bicycle parking lot whose 12,500 spaces make it the largest such facility in the world.
But can this work elsewhere? The University of Groningen’s Rongen said that the Dutch model only works in conjunction with other policies. “If you implement mobility hubs and you don’t have, say, a good parking policy or low-emission zone in your city, there might be adverse effects that you hadn’t foreseen,” he said, adding that it was also important to look at the social impact that the parking lots around the multimodal hubs have on the communities that host them.
Read Gio’s full report here.
BRAVO: A global study of 10,000 cities published by the journal Nature Cities this week finds that mid-sized European cities like Zurich, Milan, Copenhagen and Dublin are among the most successful in implementing the 15-minute city model: Essential services are located within a 15 minute radius of the homes of 95 percent of residents. When looking at large, global metropolises, Paris and Berlin topped the list, with 90 percent of residents finding key services within walking distance from their homes.
THE BATTLE OF BRUSSELS (AIRPORT): The residents of towns neighboring Brussels Airport are crying foul over what they see as excessive noise pollution and the Flemish government’s uneven approach to the problem. While banning noisy nighttime flights into Antwerp, authorities aren’t inclined to limit the number of planes that fly into Brussels or the hours at which they take off or land. Irate locals say the indifference to their plight may be linked to the fact that they largely speak French, not Dutch; Tommaso has more here.
ELECTRIC PILGRIMAGE: As part of our New Commute special report, we sent my colleague Jordyn on a thrilling trip across the bloc in an electric car — and she documented her efforts to to charge it along the way. Read about her 3,800-kilometer odyssey here.
BEFORE AND AFTER: You wouldn’t play beer pong on an Etruscan sarcophagus or use a Guttenberg Bible as a doorstop, but we seem to be okay with using some of our most culturally and architecturally significant city squares as parking lots. Brussels’ eclectic Grand Sablon, Vienna’s imperial Heldenplatz and the Vatican’s Cortile del Belvedere are just a few of the European plazas that are currently used as depositories for metal boxes. In a new photo essay, however, I track how other great public spaces have been rescued from this ignoble end; see it here.
QUELLE SURPRISE! Shocking no one, Paris this week announced that its “temporary” pedestrianization of the Pont d’Iéna, from which cars were banned during this summer’s Olympics, is now permanent. The demotorization of the bridge, which links the Eiffel Tower to the Trocadéro and is popular with tourists, is seen as another step in Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s dream of pedestrianizing the area around the French capital’s most emblematic monument.
DATA CHECK: New Belgian government data shows that more than half the people who live in the Brussels region do not own an automobile. The statistics raise questions about local politicians’ determination to limit the scope of the region’s low-emissions zone and favor private car use — a major factor in the capital’s air pollution problems.
SOUNDS OF THE CITY: Leyla and Paul are back with our semi-regular arts and culture section with another musical treat. Inspired by EU Mobility Week, in this edition our resident DJs explore the wild world of urban buses, trams, trains and other such wonders.
I like to move it (move it): “There’s no shortage of songs dedicated to urban transit — as long as you can use it for moving from one spot to the next, people have been making music about it,” Leyla tells us. “So this week we’re sonically traversing any and all aspects of city transit: the highs and lows of morning commutes, the bonding experience of being crammed together in a moving tin can, laments for that exact moment you realize you’ve missed the bus, and — inevitably — all the time spent waiting.”
HERE COMES THE HOUSING COMMISSIONER: After months of speculation, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen revealed Denmark’s Dan Jørgensen as her pick to be the bloc’s first-ever Commissioner for Energy and Housing. The announcement is a big deal: Talk of having a member of the College tasked with taking on the housing had been circulating for ages, but support for the idea surged last year as protests over soaring rent and home prices broke out across Europe.
Checklist: Von der Leyen has entrusted Jørgensen with a pretty big mission. The Dane has to deliver the EU’s first-ever European Strategy for Housing Construction, which will focus on reducing costs and reinforcing green standards for new homes, and also come up with a plan to deal with the impact of tourist flats. Reflecting the long-standing request of the bloc’s housing associations, he’s also been asked to oversee a revision of State Aid rules to facilitate public investment in social housing, and to work with the European Investment Bank to create the first EU-wide investment platform for affordable and sustainable housing.
Power play: While it might at first seem odd to give Jørgensen — Denmark’s climate minister since 2019 — a portfolio that combines energy and housing, the choice arguably makes sense. One of the main missions with which the Dane has been entrusted is to bring down power prices for households across the bloc. That challenge inevitably involves addressing the roughly 75 percent of the bloc’s building stock that is energy inefficient and empowering the renovations needed to make untold numbers of existing buildings fit for habitation. Jørgensen will be well-positioned to use existing EU legislation like the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive to push for smart retrofits and new, climate-friendly housing across the bloc.
The Fitto factor:  Jørgensen isn’t the only Commission candidate to be explicitly tasked with handling urban affairs. In her mission letter to Italy’s Raffaele Fitto, nominated to be Executive Vice-President for Cohesion and Reforms, von der Leyen tasks him with putting forward “an ambitious policy agenda for cities” that looks at issues like housing, climate, mobility and social inclusion. Fitto is told to double the amount of Cohesion cash earmarked for affordable housing projects, and to use that signature policy to give “all citizens … the right to stay in the place they call home” with investments in public services, education and digital connectivity. Those measures could have a huge impact on the bloc’s smaller cities, whose residents are often drawn to larger metropoles or capitals where government and business interests are often concentrated. In addition, the commissioner-designate is told to contribute to the ongoing New European Bauhaus scheme, and to give greater visibility to the EU’s projects by meeting with local leaders around the bloc. Get ready mayors: Fitto is coming to town…
Meanwhile, in Strasbourg: For the first time ever, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola has tasked three of her vice-presidents — the S&D’s Javi López, ECR’s Antonella Sberna and The Left’s Younous Omarjee — to serve as institutional contacts with local and regional authorities. “This is a strong signal and the evidence of the growing relevance of cities and regions as interlocutors,” López told my colleague Max. “It also reflects the important impact of the EU legislation … from mobility to the implementation of the green and digital transitions, on the agenda of cities and regions.”
We’re back with our weekly cities-related trivia challenge! Annika Müller de Vries of Frankfurt am Main was the quickest reader to identify the Sellafield nuclear complex as the site of the first level 5 nuclear accident to take place in Europe.
In 1957 a fire broke out within one of the Sellafield nuclear reactors and burned for three days, releasing radioactive fallout that spread across the U.K. and the rest of Europe. At the time of the incident, no one was evacuated from the surrounding area — not even from Whitehaven, a city of more than 20,000 inhabitants just 10 miles from the site.
This week’s challenge: Summer is gone, but thoughts of ice cream linger on. A century and a half ago, a pair of innovative inventors came up with an affordable way to infuse the cold treat with flavor by developing a the world’s first synthetic vanilla extract. Can you identify the city where this development took place? The first reader to do so — preferably without using a search engine — gets a shout-out in next week’s newsletter.
— Architect John Sell, who spent his life championing the protection of historic buildings and spaces, has passed away; the Guardian has published a beautiful obituary written by his son.
— Cities risk becoming unlivable under a global warming of 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels because the impacts of climate change will be felt tenfold, new data analysis out today by the World Resources Institute’s Ross Center for Sustainable Cities shows.
— More than 50 drivers for the German capital’s subway network claimed to be out sick with Covid this week, generating huge delays throughout the capital’s public transport network; the sudden outbreak may actually be an unofficial strike, Tagesspigel reports.
THANKS TO: Tommaso Lecca, Jordyn Dahl, Leyla Aksu, Paul Dallison, Max Griera, editors Kelsey Hayes, Sanya Khetani-Shah and Stephan Faris, and producer Giulia Poloni.
SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: Brussels Playbook | London Playbook | London Playbook PM | Playbook Paris | EU Election Playbook | Berlin Playbook | Global Playbook | POLITICO Confidential | Sunday Crunch | EU Influence | London Influence | China Watcher | Berlin Bulletin | D.C. Playbook | Living Cities | D.C. Influence | All our POLITICO Pro policy morning newsletters
POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab is a collaborative journalism project seeking solutions to challenges faced by modern societies in an age of rapid change. Over the coming months we will host a conversation on how to make cities more livable and sustainable.