Three more cities join ULI's Urban Investment Network

The cities of Amsterdam, Edinburgh and Istanbul have signed as founding members of the Urban Land Institute's Urban Investment Network, a new platform to improve public-private collaboration in urban investment and development. The announcement was made on Thursday at the first ever UIN summit at the Palau de Musica in Barcelona.

Barcelona is a founding partner of the Urban Investment Network, which was launched 18 months ago following ULI research into city investment and regeneration best practices in Europe. The ULI report, 'Closing the Investment Gap in Europe's Cities' concluded that 'investment gaps' appeared in four areas; capital, skills, frameworks and collaboration. ULI found that while there were many individual successes, there was no pan-European platform for continuous sharing of best practices between cities and the private sector.

To fill this gap, ULI and several founding partners, including ING Real Estate Development and lender Eurohypo, launched the Network to provide 'high quality content mixed with regular knowledge sharing workshops and conferences'.

Also on Thursday, ULI said that a survey of its 2,000 European members established that long-term, solid relationships between the private and public sectors are viewed as invaluable in securing investment into urban areas. Click on the link below for more on the survey results.