URBIS - What can it do for your city?

Session summary

URBIS is an initiative that offers advisory support to urban authorities, both public and private entities, to facilitate, accelerate and unlock urban investment projects, programmes and platforms. Developed in partnership by the European Commission (EC) and the European Investment Bank (EIB), it actively supports the EU Urban Agenda. URBIS provides tailor-made technical and financial advice to cities, and explores innovative financing approaches. This session provided an overview of what URBIS can do for European cities, the type of advisory services available through URBIS and some real examples of URBIS advisory support.

The first presentation set the scene and explained that URBIS is part of the European Investment Advisory Hub, which was jointly set up by the EIB and the EC as one of the pillars of the Investment Plan for Europe with the objective to support investments in the real economy. The Advisory Hub has been designed to act as a single access point to various types of advisory services. It offers support to a wide variety of project promoters throughout the entire project cycle in multiple sectors. URBIS is a dedicated advisory service for cities under the Advisory Hub, which is available to cities of all sizes across Europe.

JASPERS presented an assignment focused on advisory support to the four Visegrad countries: Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary, with a view to smart city developments. The study’s objective is to make clear recommendations on what the local and regional stakeholders can improve, among others, in terms of strategy development, integrated planning, governance, and digitalisation in line with the strategic objectives set out in the EU Urban Agenda and Cohesion Policy. JASPERS is one of the contributors to URBIS and, in line with its mandate, provides advisory support to Managing Authorities and Beneficiaries on projects co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund and/or Cohesion Fund.

The next URBIS example focused on social and affordable housing in Poland. In 2017 the EIB and Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK) established an Investment Platform to cooperate in identifying an investment project pipeline and to provide funding to social and affordable housing projects in Poland. URBIS support was provided in conducting a market survey to determine the demand for debt financing in the Polish social and affordable sector and to analyse the relevance of the so-called "rent to buy" option and its impact on social inclusion.

Finally, an overview of what investment platforms are was provided, which also included the key steps towards creating one. An investment platform to support smart developments in Slovakia was presented as an example, which was created with the aim to combine EFSI and ESIF and to aggregate smaller projects and create critical mass.

Take away message

URBIS provides tailor-made technical and financial advice to cities from project preparation to implementation. It provides advice on innovative financing approaches such as feasibility work for investment platforms. The advisory support provided under URBIS must be investment related and for the benefit of urban authorities. The activity must build on planning-led approaches and reflect sustainable urban development principles. Advice is typically given to integrated urban development projects and programmes over EUR 20 million with a three to five year time period.

Quotes

"I am proud that national and international experience in housing policy enabled the team to provide valuable inputs to this URBIS project. I am glad to see BGK using the report in its further work on social affordable housing in Poland" - Kazimierz Kirejczyk, president of the Management Board, REAS

"URBIS is a dedicated advisory initiative for cities of all sizes across Europe" - Mark Mawhinney, head of the Advisory Hub

"The strategic deployment of EU grants and other financing sources to realise smart city developments requires tailored advice to build capacity at the national, regional and local level" - Jeroen Bakker, urban planning & development adviser at JASPERS Smart Development Division