This Memorandum is a policy-oriented research document conducted by the ICS-ULisboa
team of the Horizon 2020 project ROCK. It seeks to organise some of the most up-to-date
knowledge around Urban Centers and highlight important discussion topics, requiring further
attention. In addition to academic literature review, the Memorandum relies on contributions
from the international conference “Urban Centers: Acting upon or with cities?” organised by
the ICS-ULisboa on the 19th October 2018 (https://rockproject.eu/event-details/41). The
Conference took place in the Centre for Urban Information of Lisbon with the participation of
representatives from the following Urban Centers: Centro de Informação Urbana de Lisboa
(Lisbon); Fondazione Innovazione Urbana (Bologna); Urban Center of Torino; Pavillon de
L’Arsenal (Paris); Centro de Cultura Contemporània Barcelona; and casa della Città / Case del
Municipio (Rome). The participating Urban Centers were selected from the list provided by the
international laboratory on Urban Centers (http://www.urban-center.org/en/), on the basis of
their different working contexts, management models and activity. Representatives were
invited to share knowledge and experience about the role, the challenges and potential of
Urban Centers today and the different forms of action and participation they may have in the
development of their cities.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
