57 urban cooperation projects in 34 countries, mapped on a single platform.
The European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), which coordinates the European Partnerships for Sustainable Cities programme, entrusted ArkoConsulting with the design and development of the Cities Data Collective (CDC) platform. This tool enables visualization, management, and monitoring of the 57 urban cooperation projects implemented in 34 countries across four continents.
The Partnerships for Sustainable Cities programme, funded by the European Commission, connects cities in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the European Neighbourhood around ten themes for sustainable urban development: multi-stakeholder territorial planning, citizen participation and e-governance, cultural heritage, job creation and circular economy, renewable energy and green transition, smart cities and digitalization, social inclusion, sustainable mobility, urban resilience, and waste and water management.
Managing a portfolio of this scale — 57 projects, 34 countries, four geographical regions — required a tool capable of serving partner cities, the coordination team, institutional stakeholders, and European policymakers simultaneously. ArkoConsulting designed the data architecture, developed the multilingual management system (French, English, Spanish, Portuguese), and deployed the platform’s functional modules: interactive mapping with two levels of geographical zoom and sector-based classification, editable project sheets with PDF export for local managers, a directory of partner organizations, a multilingual forum with automatic translation between the four languages, a dashboard with sectoral coverage and budget tracking indicators, and a bulk data import system for monitoring data.
The development cycle included the inception report (September 2022), the design and programming phase, and the final report with the delivery of mapping solutions. The platform https://partnerships4sustainablecities.eu/ provided ECDPM and the European Commission with a unified steering tool for the entire international urban cooperation programme.
