Through his position as lead expert in two URBACT projects, Miguel Rivas has given support to the production of 15 Local Action Plans in different European cities within the URBACT Programme and with the URBACT method. Miguel´s particular way in this issue, first in URBACT-Creative Clusters (2008-2011) and then in CityLogo (2012-2015), includes: i) 360º site visits to all the participating cities, interviewing as much real and potential stakeholders as possible, and including a collective stakeholder analysis with the influence/important matrix; ii) Policy recommendations as opportunity for re-learning, which means a especial focus on identifying most common failures and gaps in the field; iii) State of Play reports at the beginning of the process, since it´s essential getting in-depth knowledge of the local backgrounds, ongoing developments and real expectations, in order to further adapt the overarching methodology of intervention to specific local conditions; iv) Detailed Questionnaires to partner cities during both the application period and the preparatory phase, including questions on real and potential stakeholders; v) Continuous encouragement to partner cities to involve their LSG members (particularly those from the private sector) in the transnational activities. As a result, absolutely all the Local Support Groups created within the URBACT-CityLogo context will have continuity as brand platforms, in one way or another. For instance, the Dundee Brand Alliance G

On monitoring tools, in URBACT-CityLogo Miguel organized a peer-review exercise that was conceived as ex-ante evaluation of the LAPs, http://issuu.com/grupotaso/docs/peer_review_report During his URBACT assignments as lead expert (Creative Clusters and CityLogo), Miguel takes special care of the political legitimation of the resulting action planning: his site visits include interview with elected representatives; LAP´s introductory notes by Mayors or elected representatives; Mayor summits within project final events; as in URBACT-CityLogo, he includes a Strategic Policy Statement as final deliverable. Regarding action planning, his work as LE within the URBACT programme also includes two complementary approaches: i) a Project-based Approach, as a way to move forward in the short-term, as one cannot easily engage only with strategy; ii) a Negotiation approach, which means to foresee bilateral meetings with each of the stakeholders, besides the group meetings, which has proved to be useful in getting LAPs with high applicability. From 2012 to 2014 Miguel has been appointed as one of the experts of the Policy learning platform of the European Creative Industries Alliance www.eciaplatform.eu. It gave him the opportunity to work with the Alliance concept, which means: i) Stakeholder involvement to co-produce policy recommendations; ii) from Experimentation to Policy Design, identifying large-scale demonstrators to mainstream tested pilots; iii) and more emphasis in “how to do” than in “what to do”.

Miguel keeps himself closely connected to the State of the Art regarding spatial economic development and urban development in terms of both theory and practice. He devotes significant part of his time to follow (and occasionally take part) the academic debate, basically to literature review. He also attends regularly international conferences and seminars - please see detailed CV enclosed. In what respect innovation and spatial economic development, it is worth to mention his involvement during a long period of time with the European community of Development Agencies, through EURADA.