URBACT II Capitalisation: Cities of Tomorrow, Action Today - Better cities, a framework for city action on jobs

This paper from the URBACT ‘More Jobs: Better Cities’ workstream provides a framework for city action on jobs, which aims to help cities support and grow more and better jobs for the recovery. It is aimed at practitioners and policy-makers at the city level, as well as those at national and international levels, concerned with urban employment and skills policy and practice. It asserts that cities need to address three broad sets of issues – jobs and the economy, people and the labour market, and the connections between them (such as governance, intelligence and capacity) – to achieve economic recovery, growth and resilience. It examines each of these in turn and includes examples from a wide range of cities, projects and organisations. It sets out a whole system approach, a strategic, coherent, systematic and integrated means of creating more and better jobs. This is a new approach for new times, which can secure better outcomes from city actions. It can be used as a tool to review and develop existing approaches, stimulating a rethinking of city action and providing advice and guidance to policy-makers and practitioners.