Cities worldwide are challenged by a high complexity of acute and chronic problems, including challenges related to economic development, social polarisation and segregation as well as climate change and ecological degradation. While all of these problems are complex in themselves, they are also interrelated. Addressing them in a meaningful way requires governance systems with systemic capacities to deal with complexity. In order to create resilience in urban systems, cities need to be able to learn, adapt and transform across sectors and levels. One definition of urban resilience is the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow regardless of the kinds of chronic stress and acute shocks they experience. This is the definition the Rockefeller Foundation adopts in its mission to promote the well-being of humanity throughout the world by facilitating the building of resilience in cities worldwide through its 100 Resilient Cities Programme, launched in 2013. Rotterdam is one of the first cities to participate in this programme. The city has been a front-runner in preparing for climate change and striving for urban sustainability. This paper assesses the concept of urban resilience, introduces the Rockefeller Foundation's effort in building city resilience worldwide and illustrates this with the Rotterdam case.

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The way the novel concept of polycentric development is used across Europe resembles a general pattern of diffusion of innovation: new ideas emerge at many different places simultaneously. However there are many different opinions about precisely what polycentric development is. What will be made clear in this paper is that the concept of polycentric development brings together two conflicting perceptions of spatial-economic development, namely cohesion and competitiveness.

European Union directives, along with their transposing arrangements in EU member states, can have unanticipated and sometimes undesirable impacts on certain regions and places. These include impacts on the use of space (e.g. new infrastructure or sprawl), governance, and on wider social, economic or environmental dimensions. Although ex-ante assessment of the potential impacts of EU initiatives has been carried out since 2002 through the European Commission's Impact Assessment procedure and also through national equivalents in some member states, important impacts are still overlooked, frequently because of their territorially heterogeneous nature within and between EU member states. This paper presents the results of the ESPON EATIA research project, in which a new territorial impact assessment methodology was developed for national and regional administrations in EU member states in order to inform their national positions during the negotiation of European draft directives and potentially other policy proposals.

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