The European Commission has proposed five main objectives for Cohesion Policy after 2020: 1) a smarter, 2) greener and low-carbon, 3) more connected, 4) more social Europe; and 5) a Europe that is closer to its citizens. Thanks to Cohesion Policy, regions and cities in the EU can invest in innovation, energy efficiency, digital, energy and transport networks. They can ensure that education and training gives people the new skills needed in their local labour market. And, above all, Cohesion Policy gives regional and local authorities the power to identify their own projects and priorities in an integrated and participatory way. They can find the best solutions for their community to address and take advantage of these megatrends.

The shift from the industrial to the post-industrial knowledge economy has not only caused growing economic inequality and new class divide, but growing spatial inequality and the rise of regional winners and losers, of which the populist backlash across the world is a consequence. Coping with this will require developing policies that can deal with spatial inequality, and even more so, devolving political, economic and fiscal power to cities and communities who can best deal with local problems.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recently celebrated its 70th anniversary, but the road is still long. Poverty may be receding, but it has not yet been eradicated; and social inequalities remain and may even be becoming more apparent. Universal access to education is still not guaranteed across the globe. Populism is gaining ground, driven by ideologies diametrically opposed to basic universal principles, and geopolitical tensions endure. Climate change is now a given, and talk is no longer of global warming, but of climate change adaptation. The international community needs to take some bold political decisions because protecting natural resources and limiting global warming have become key challenges.

From the 1950s to the 1990s, certain observers predicted the death of the city as a result of the declining comparative advantage of spatial concentration in comparison with alternative configurations based on mobility (Webber, 1964[328]) or telecommunications (Mitchell, 1995[329]).