Funding infrastructure and rebuilding the city over the city in a context of rarefied public resources: the equation seems particularly complex. It must, however, be solved, as urban infrastructure requires urgent investment and metropolization continues to unfold. Cities own many currently under-used operational and real estate assets. If correctly evaluated, these assets could help finance ambitious urban regeneration and infrastructure projects, designed by the public authority and implemented through a multi-stakeholder approach bringing together the public and private sectors. In January 2018, La Fabrique de la Cité published a report addressing this complex subject, based on the comparative study of four cities which have all attempted to use innovative financing models in order to fund urban projects: Copenhagen, Lyon, Hamburg, and Helsinki.
On 15 February 2018, La Fabrique de la Cité invited Dag Detter, Swedish economist and author of The Public Wealth of Nations (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015) to discuss this complex topic. This presentation was followed by a debate between Guillaume Malochet (director of strategic marketing, Eurovia), Franck Faucheux (sustainable city project manager, Vivapolis network) and Benoît Bardet (deputy director of the SPL Confluence) on new ways of funding urban projects.
Find out more in our expert viewpoint.
