Cities are home to 75 per cent of Europe's population and produce 85 per cent of its GDP. The Eurocities organisation has 135 members and 45 associates from Manchester to Munich and from Brighton to Barcelona and lobbies domestic governments and EU Commissioners on their behalf. Its three main work streams are recovery, climate and inclusion. Green Party council leader Bill Randall reports on its 25th annual conference recently in Genoa, Planning for people.

Motor yachts as big as minesweepers were tied up alongside the huge converted cotton warehouse where the 300 delegates from all corners of Europe gathered.The conference was concerned with a world far removed from the opulence of the motor yachts, which winter and refit in Genoa, Italy's fifth biggest industrial centre. It looked at ways cities, most of them strapped for cash, can lead Europe out of the serious economic, environmental and social changes it faces. ‘How we respond to these challenges in cities has profound strategic consequences for us and the rest of Europe,' said Frank Jensen, Lord Mayor of Copenhagen and Eurocities president.