The promotion of integrated sustainable urban development by the European Union and its application in Aragon

Europe 2020, a strategy for Smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, wants to mark a new beginning in which Europe emerges stronger from the economic and financial crisis. This strategy aims at a different type of growth, smart, sustainable and inclusive, and it seeks to create the right conditions to achieve such kind of growth. All these aspects are especially involved in cities, because they are spatial concentrations of human activity and interactions between their inhabitants. In line with this importance of cities in implementing the Europe 2020 strategy, the urban dimension of Cohesion Policy has been significantly strengthened for the 2014-2020 period. In the case of the ERDF, Member States are now obliged to allocate at least 5% of their national ERDF budget to support integrated sustainable urban development strategies. In this paper we analyse the regulation of this new tool aimed at achieving sustainable and integrated urban development and its implementation in the Autonomous Community of Aragon.