The Chairman of the PASCAL Governing Board, Professor Josef Konvitz, today released information on a new initiative by PASCAL to extend the pioneering work undertaken under the PASCAL International Exchanges (PIE) to a quest to identify future directions for learning cities up to 2020. This initiative will be known as Learning Cities 2020.

Professor Konvitz released the following statement:

I am pleased to announce today the inauguration of a dialogue by PASCAL to identify future directions for learning cities up to 2020. This dialogue will be facilitated by a new section of the PIE web site with the designation Learning Cities 2020, and will be launched by a suite of three papers based on lessons from the PIE experience over the past three years prepared for the 11^th PASCAL International Conference, Cities Learning Together, to be held in Hong Kong on 18-20 November this year. At a time when people want to know what can work and why, this conference makes a unique contribution to a 2020 vision for learning cities, connecting three years of PASCAL PIE studies to a vision of how much more can be accomplished.

The PASCAL International Exchanges (PIE) project was launched in January 2011 to provide for online exchanges of information and experiences between cities around the world relevant to building sustainable learning cities, and contributing towards the achievement of a universal learning society. There are now twenty papers on the PIE web site for cities located across five continents in what is emerging as a distinctive, perhaps unique, approach to cities sharing insights and learning together.

Stimulus papers may be read on the PIE web site for the following cities: Glasgow, Cork, Limerick, Kaunas, Bari, Bielefeld, Dar es Salaam, Kampala, Dakar, Gaborone, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Gwang Myeong, Hume, Sydney, Vancouver and New York. PASCAL is most grateful to the authors of these papers who have contributed to building profiles of cities around the world that provide a diverse range of perspectives on learning in cities.

The value of these exchanges has been enhanced by the growing diversity in these profiles of key aspects of learning and community building in cities, a theme taken up in the papers that are being posted on the new site. These papers comment on insights of value from the initial phase of PIE development. Some examples of these are:

• Beijing and Shanghai papers show how learning city strategies can be successful in mega cities this size;
• The importance of initiatives in local communities is illustrated in both these cities, and in Sydney and New York;
• Cork and Limerick demonstrate how lifelong learning festivals can provide a platform for broader action towards building sustainable learning cities;
• The Hume Global Learning Village illustrates the key role of strategic action by local government authorities linked to a clear vision of the future.

PIE exchanges led to conceptual work by PASCAL directed at identifying and advocating more holistic and integrated approaches to building sustainable learning cities that combined the aspirations and objectives of Learning Cities, Healthy Cities, Green Cities, and Cultural Cities. This approach was given the name EcCoWell, and may be seen in papers on the EcCoWell section of the PIE web site. I am delighted that the city of Cork has shown leadership in examining how an EcCoWell approach could be implemented in their city, and that they, inspired by Peter Kearns, co-Director of PIE, will run a conference on this topic on 26 and 27 September 2013 with Professor Michael Osborne, Director of PASCAL (Europe) as keynote speaker.

The EcCoWell papers have now been joined by two further papers, each written by Peter Kearns, prepared for the Hong Kong conference. These papers are the following.

• PIE Futures - Towards a Vision of Learning Cities 2020, a paper that reflects on the PIE experience and which sets out eight possible objectives for the next stage of PIE development beyond the Hong Kong conference.
• Cities Learning Together: the PIE experience, a paper that is built around extracts from PIE stimulus papers related to the themes of the Hong Kong conference.

Policy implications for city governments and their partners will be brought into the dialogue on Learning Cities 2020 that I am inaugurating today. The examples I have cited in this statement show areas where cities can build synergies and achieve value added outcomes with benefits for their citizens.

The papers brought into the Learning Cities 2020 site represent the start of this process in distilling insights from the PIE experience over 2011 to 2013. PASCAL will add to these insights in an on-going cumulative process as we move towards a 2020 vision for learning cities in a universal learning society. The outcomes of the PASCAL Hong Kong conference will provide the next key milestone in this process.

I hope that these papers will stimulate an active dialogue through blog exchanges on this site that will add to the evolving ideas on future directions for learning cities that can then be taken up in discussions at the Hong Kong conference, and brought into a post-Hong Kong vision for Learning Cities 2020. I commend these papers and this new PASCAL initiative for your attention and support.

Professor Josef Konvitz
Chair, PASCAL International Observatory
July 15th, 2013