fi-compass MRA RICE project on the potential for urban development financial instruments featured in DG REGIO’s Panorama Magazine
The fi-compass Multi-region assistance (MRA) project Revolving Instruments for Cities in Europe (RICE) is in the focus of an article in the summer 2019 edition of DG REGIO’s Panorama Magazine.
The objective of MRA projects is the assessment of the possible use of financial instruments under European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) in specific thematic areas of common interest. The MRA projects involve at least two managing authorities from different EU Member States.
The Panorama article describes how the MRA-RICE project partners The City of The Hague (Lead), Greater London Authority, the City of Milan and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority joined forces to consider how ESIF financial instruments can increase private sector investment in urban development, in particular in relation to smart cities.
The project established the common financing needs of cities, thus identifying those sectors in which financial instruments can best support projects aligned with a city’s policy priorities. The project also developed a blueprint City Fund, a flexible model that can be adapted to the specific needs of cities across the EU to support urban development. William van den Bungelaar, RICE’s project manager described the blueprint City Fund as “a city-led financial instrument, independently managed, with an investment strategy aligned to the city’s strategic priorities that achieves significant leverage of the public investment”.
“For those cities new to the world of financial instruments such as Urban Development Funds, the MRA-RICE project offers a useful tool to embark on the development of a new financial instrument and to assess its feasibility in a local context,” says Lucia Scopelliti, municipality of Milan.
Click here to read the full article about the MRA RICE project in the Panorama magazine (pages 40 and 41).
All MRA-RICE project deliverables, including the RICE blueprint City Fund described in the MRA-RICE Final Phase 2 Report are available here on the fi-compass website.