This chapter presents an evidence-based roadmap for cities seeking to foster inclusive growth and reduce inequalities. It translates key insights from the previous chapters on inclusive growth policies and the enabling conditions for implementation into a practical, actionable guide for policymakers. Structured into five stages, the roadmap supports city leaders in translating inclusive growth ambitions into strategies and effective policy action.
What Works for Inclusive Growth in Cities
Abstract
The Roadmap for Inclusive Growth in Cities (hereafter the Roadmap) is structured across five stages which bring the policy pillars and enabling factors of this report together in a practical iterative framework to support city leaders translate inclusive growth ambitions into strategies and effective policy action.
Results from the OECD/EC survey showed that many cities are already taking action on inclusive growth, but often through fragmented initiatives. The Roadmap is designed to help cities move from intention to action, by offering an iterative process to support cities developing and delivering inclusive growth strategies that are:
evidence-based, grounded in a robust understanding of local opportunity gaps
people- and place-based, addressing both population groups and spatial inequalities, including how they have evolved over time
feasible, recognising institutional, governance, structural and fiscal constraints faced by cities.
Importantly, the Roadmap is not intended as a one-size-fits-all model or a linear approach. The stages should be considered an iterative process, which can allow cities to move towards an economic model which more people in society can contribute to and benefit from. Moreover, cities differ widely across many dimensions including size, economic profiles and demographic dynamics and so the Roadmap is designed to be flexible, allowing cities to adapt the approach to their own institutional context and policy priorities.
The Roadmap is structured into five stages to guide cities through the process of developing and delivering inclusive growth strategies:
Diagnose: Cities need a robust and shared understanding of where opportunity gaps exist, who is affected and why. Diagnosis goes beyond assembling indicators – it involves situating inequalities within the city’s structural context, mapping them spatially across neighbourhoods and population groups, and translating evidence into a clear problem definition that can guide policy decisions.
Prioritise: Inclusive growth spans multiple policy areas, including education labour markets, housing infrastructure and climate action. However, cities cannot act on all fronts simultaneously. In a context of constrained financial and technical resources, the Roadmap therefore emphasises prioritisation and design of policy initiatives with the greatest potential to close opportunity gaps, while being explicit about trade-offs.
Mobilise: Priorities only matter if they can be delivered. This stage focuses on mobilising the governance arrangements, partnerships, institutional capacity and financing needed to deliver integrated intervention packages to address overlapping, multidimensional disadvantages. To ensure delivery is feasible, cities must break down departmental silos, establish formal vertical co-ordination frameworks (such as multi-level contracts or agreements), preventing participation capture and implementing multi-year frameworks to align immediate fiscal cycles with long-term growth timelines.
Implement: Implementation is not a linear sequence of events, but a flexible, adaptive process where programmes evolve as they are delivered. By launching early actions and pilot initiatives cities can test new models and to build momentum underpinned by robust co-ordination mechanisms across departments and with partners to sustain continuous stakeholder engagement to allow delivery flexible and resilient to crises, funding shifts or political changes.
Monitor, learn and adapt: Inclusive growth strategies must remain adaptive. Monitoring and evaluation should not be treated solely as reporting exercises but opportunities to learn what works, refine interventions, and scale successful initiatives.
This first stage helps cities identify which policy pillars are most critical to addressing local opportunity gaps, while building on enabling factors such as data systems, analytical capacity and cross-departmental co‑ordination to translate evidence into a shared diagnosis.
Developing an inclusive growth strategy begins with a clear understanding of the challenges a city is trying to address. While data gaps can constrain analysis, the challenge often lies not only in whether data exist, but how they are produced, shared and interpreted, which means cities cannot always translate a description of data into a clear diagnosis. Evidence may be fragmented across departments, too slow to capture emerging trends or insufficiently connected to decision making when evidence and policy teams in a city are not linked up.
There is also a risk that outcomes shaped by broader factors, like demographic change, economic specialisation or governance arrangements, are interpreted as policy failures, when in fact these factors define, at least in part, the range of outcomes a city can realistically influence. As a result, while many cities produce detailed analysis of social and economic indicators, they often lack a shared and actionable evidence directly linked to policy priorities. Without this common diagnosis and effective co-ordination across departments and levels of government, responses tend to remain fragmented, with different actors acting on partial or sector-specific diagnoses of the evidence. This can lead to policy misalignment, inefficient resource allocation, and a proliferation of disconnected initiatives rather than a coherent strategy for inclusive growth (OECD, 2025[1]).
An effective diagnosis therefore goes beyond assembling indicators and instead translates evidence into a decision making tool that helps cities answer four key questions: What structural factors shape inclusive growth challenges and opportunity gaps? Where do these gaps occur within the city? Who is most affected? Why do these disparities persist?
Situate the city within its structural context
The challenges cities face in achieving inclusive growth are rooted in cities’ structural characteristics which shape both the patterns of inclusive growth challenges and the scope for local action. Certain city types cluster specific inclusive growth challenges, for instance large, economically diverse cities can face acute housing affordability pressures and spatial segregation, while smaller cities may struggle with the outmigration of skilled workers and more limited economic diversification (see Chapter 2). Recognising these structural challenges helps cities distinguish between long-term pressures and areas where policy intervention can have the greatest impact, while enabling them to design more targeted and effective policies that respond to (and where possible mitigate), these underlying structural drivers.
Note: See city typology analysis in Chapter 2.
In practice, cities may therefore begin the diagnosis stage by situating themselves within their broader structural context, focusing on dimensions that strongly shape inclusive growth outcomes. These structural dimensions include the city’s size, demographic dynamics and economic structure. Other context-specific factors such as governance structure, historical development, and spatial dynamics, including the wider territory and region, can further influence inclusive growth challenges and opportunities. Understanding these various structural dimensions allows cities to interpret their data more effectively and identify which challenges are structural pressures and which may be more responsive to policy action.
Map opportunity gaps spatially across the city
Inclusive growth challenges often vary widely within cities, with averages often masking large disparities across neighbourhoods. Spatial analysis is therefore essential to identify where opportunity gaps are most acute, including access to childcare and social services, education and training, employment, affordable and quality housing, public transport and green space, at a local scale. In Vilnius, Lithuania, for example, such analysis is used to track neighbourhood-level access and policy implementation to track progress against its 15-minute city ambition.
This spatial diagnosis underpins place-based policies, a core component of inclusive growth in cities, by addressing the “spatial mismatch” between where people live and where opportunities are located. Compared to one-size-fits-all approaches, place-based strategies enable more targeted resource allocation, support integrated service delivery across policy areas and leverage local assets such as community networks.
Using spatially granular data, such as neighbourhood-level indicators or geospatial analysis, can reveal patterns of disadvantage that are not visible in aggregate statistics. This includes identifying areas where multiple forms of disadvantage overlap, enabling policymakers to pinpoint priority locations for more targeted and integrated interventions. To strengthen this approach, cities can work with national statistical authorities to develop and access data at a finer spatial scale. For example, in France, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, INSEE) Filosofi dataset provides income data at the 200 metres (m) x 200 m grid level. This level of detail has revealed pockets of deprivation that were not visible at broader spatial scales, allowing for more precise identification and prioritisation of neighbourhoods for targeted policy action.
Identify population groups facing the greatest barriers
Inclusive growth strategies also require understanding which population groups face the greatest barriers to opportunities and services as part of a people-based approach that targets individuals and households directly. This is particularly important for marginalised or vulnerable groups such as Roma communities or minority populations that may not be reached by broader interventions due to structural disadvantage, institutional barriers or limited access to information. Where data are available, cities can examine disparities across key population characteristics including income, socio-economic background, sex, age, migration background, ethnicity or minority status and disability. However, some groups may remain under-represented or invisible in standard datasets. In such cases, explicit identification is necessary.
Many inequalities arise from intersecting disadvantage which can compound one another. Cities are therefore increasingly adopting intersectional approaches to better identify and reach those most at risk. For example, Cologne, Germany, uses intersectionality criteria in their NRWeltoffen (North Rhine-Westphalia open to the world) programme to target groups that face multiple, overlapping disadvantage. For example, considering someone who is affected by poverty, who is also a lone parent and has a disability builds intersectionality into the diagnosis and helps subsequent policy responses account for the complex ways disadvantage can overlap.
While quantitative indicators are key to identify these disparities, they can be complemented with qualitative insights from community consultations, citizens assemblies or focus groups with residents and people with lived experiences. These insights can reveal barriers that may not appear in statistical indicators like discrimination in labour markets or information gaps for available services.
Formulate and validate a shared diagnosis of inclusive growth challenges and opportunities
The final step of the diagnosis stage is translating evidence collected into a clear and shared understanding of the city’s inclusive growth challenges and opportunities. Rather than presenting a long list of indicators, an effective diagnosis synthesises evidence into a concise problem statement that can guide decision making and be used consistently across city departments. A strong diagnosis answers four key questions:
1. What structural factors shape inclusive growth challenges and opportunity gaps?
2. Where do these gaps occur within the city?
3. Who is most affected?
4. Why do these disparities persist?
A concise problem statement should clearly link these elements in a way that is actionable for policy design. For example: “Rising housing costs in central areas are limiting access to employment for low-income households, forced to live in poorly connected peripheral neighbourhoods with weaker transport and service provision”. This type of statement moves beyond description to identify the drivers, geography affected groups and mechanisms of persistence.
Developing this shared diagnosis requires close collaboration not only with residents and affected groups but also across municipal teams responsible for data, policy design and service delivery. Ensuring alignment of evidence and policy teams is particularly important for ensuring that analysis translates into a common framing of the problem rather than remaining fragmented across sectors or departments.
In Krakow, Poland, the Multiculturism and Migration Observatory (MMO-OWiM) is a joint initiative of the municipality of Krakow and the Krakow University of Economics designed to strengthen the city’s capacity to understand and manage migration-drive change (Box 5.1). The observatory produces detailed analytical reports, initiates long-term studies of immigrant communities and convenes regular seminars to translate research into actionable insights for local and regional stakeholders. By addressing an evidence gap around migration dynamics, MMO-OWiM supports more inclusive urban governance, helping the city identify integration barriers, recognise migrants’ social and economic contributions and develop recommendations to improve migration and multiculturism management.
What are the objectives?
The Multiculturism and Migration Observatory’s core objective is to analyse migration processes and multicultural transformations in Krakow’s urban space and strengthen evidence-based management of these dynamics at the city and regional scales.
How does it work in practice? Understanding the good practice through the lens of the Roadmap for Inclusive Growth in Cities
Stage 1 – Diagnose: The observatory conducts analyses of migration and multicultural change, initiates long-term studies of immigrants in Krakow and synthesises findings into accessible outputs to support city decision making.
Stage 2 – Prioritise: The observatory helps Krakow prioritise by identifying key integration barriers, areas of spatial concentration of migrants and domains where targeted improvements in governance and services can maximise social and economic potential.
Stage 3 – Design and mobilise: The observatory presents a multi-actor governance model, integrating academic, municipal and regional actors where relevant. It was created via an agreement between the municipality of Krakow and the Krakow University of Economics.
Stage 4 – Implement: Implementation takes the form of regular knowledge products and engagement formats to be used as guidance, including detailed reports on migration trends and policy-relevant domains (economy, education participation, etc.).
Stage 5 – Monitor, learn and adapt: Monitoring is the observatory’s core function. It continuously updates the evidence base through recurring reports and ongoing studies, enabling to learn over time and refine responses as migration patterns shift.
What can other communities learn from this example?
Engage partnerships and stakeholders: Joint municipal-academic delivery which is built into the observatory’s governance model shows how municipalities can partner with universities to deepen analytical capacity while keeping outputs policy relevant and locally grounded.
Use evidence to adapt policies and measures: By producing evidence that links to multiple inclusive growth pillars such as education, labour market integration and service access, the observatory helps Krakow to integrate inclusion of migrants across departments.
Note: See Step 2 of the OECD/EC survey in Annex A.
Once formulated, a diagnosis can be validated with municipal departments, regional and national authorities, civil society organisations and representatives from affected communities. This validation process helps support that the diagnoses that reflect both evidence and lived experience, while also building a shared understanding across institutions. A clear and widely supported diagnosis provides the foundation for the next stage of the Roadmap: prioritising and designing policy interventions that can have the greatest impact on closing opportunity gaps.
Once cities have developed a diagnosis of their inclusive growth challenges, the next stage is deciding where to act. This is often one of the most difficult stages of strategy development as inclusive growth spans many policy areas, from education and labour markets to housing, infrastructure and climate policy. Cities can face a temptation to address a wide range of issues simultaneously; however, international experience shows that strategies with too many priorities often struggle to deliver meaningful change (OECD, 2023[2]). When priorities are overly broad or poorly prioritised, policy coherence is weakened as governments face difficulties aligning actions across sectors and levels of government. This can lead to fragmented implementation, diluted resources and reduced capacity to focus resources on the most critical objectives.
Effective action on inclusive growth therefore requires clear prioritisation. This involves identifying the key policy pillars with the greatest potential to close opportunity gaps, given the city’s structural context, institutional capacity and fiscal constraints (see, for example, Figure 5.2). Prioritisation is ultimately about doing fewer things better: focusing political attention, resources and institutional effort on interventions that have proven most effective and can deliver meaningful impact. It can support more sustained action on inclusive growth through higher-impact policies which can help maintain public and political support for inclusive growth over time. Underpinning this are key enabling factors such as participatory approaches which engage residents and stakeholders so that they reflect lived experiences and build public support for difficult trade-offs alongside use of data and indicators to define measurable priorities and strong co-ordinated governance which defines roles and responsibilities.
Illustrative matrix
Identify and tailor high-impact policy priorities
Inclusive growth is shaped by a wide range of policy areas. However, not all policy levers are equally important for every city, as their relevance depends on local conditions, structural characteristics and the specific challenges each city faces. Cities can therefore begin by identifying which policy pillars are most strongly linked to the opportunity gaps identified during the diagnosis stage.
The Inclusive Growth in Cities framework highlights five key policy pillars which emerge as central drivers of inclusive growth outcomes in cities: education and skills development; labour market access and job quality; access to affordable and quality housing and inclusive built environment; access to public services and infrastructure; and climate transition and environmental quality. Rather than attempting to act across all pillars simultaneously, cities can benefit from identifying a more limited number of policy areas where interventions could deliver the greatest improvements for opportunity and living standards. So that priorities are both evidence-based and locally relevant, cities can combine analytical findings with input from residents and stakeholders, particularly those most affected by inequality.
Within these priority areas, cities then can target interventions more precisely. This involves tailoring policies to local context, reflecting structural characteristics, institutional capacity and demographic trends, by combining two complementary approaches. People-based policies focus on specific groups facing barriers to opportunity, such as those experiencing homelessness, minority groups or Roma people. Meanwhile place-based policies target neighbourhoods where disadvantage is concentrated. Combining these approaches helps address both the individual and spatial dimensions of inequality. Cluj-Napoca’s (Romania) Housing-First driven desegregation exemplifies this combined people- and place-based approach that prioritises action to secure decent housing for residents of a specific area in the city (Box 5.2).
What are the objectives?
The policy seeks to end spatial segregation and secure decent, sustainable housing for residents of Pata-Rât (an urban marginalised area “ZUM”), while addressing the interconnected drivers of exclusion that shape everyday life in the community: low educational attainment, weak attachment to formal employment, limited access to health and social services, and persistent discrimination.
How does it work in practice? Understanding the good practice through the lens of the Roadmap for Inclusive Growth in Cities
Stage 1 – Diagnose: The intervention starts from a hard, shared evidence base through a census-like reference study covering roughly 95% of households in ZUM Pata-Rât, strengthened by focus groups and wider community consultations. The diagnosis highlights that disadvantage is layered and reinforcing.
Stage 2 – Prioritise: On the basis of this diagnosis, the strategy formally validates Pata-Rât as a ZUM and makes it the primary priority because of the intersectional intensity of housing deprivation, low employment, education exclusion, limited-service access and discrimination.
Stage 3 – Design and mobilise: The main projects were carried out by the Cluj Metropolitan Area (CMA) Association, as a larger consortium leader. Now, delivery is centred on the same CMA and the Local Action Group, whose nucleus is also CMA. This model convenes municipal and metropolitan authorities, academia, civil society, private actors, and Roma grassroots representation.
Stage 4 – Implement: Implementation centres on housing-first desegregation with families rehoused into integrated, non-segregated residential areas outside Pata-Rât and supported through sustained follow-up that stabilises housing and strengthens access to schooling, healthcare, social protection and labour-market pathways.
Stage 5 – Monitor, learn and adapt: Monitoring and evaluation are treated as part of delivery combining KPIs, surveys, qualitative research, and participatory research involving the targeted population, so the programme can adapt based on lived experience and measurable progress.
What can other communities learn from this example?
Design integrated intervention packages: Relocations for families into housing integrated with other supports enable barriers to be addressed over several dimensions. In addition, the strategy explicitly combines investments in “hard” infrastructure related to relocation with “soft” supports such as post-move psychosocial and administrative support plus education and employment pathways to sustain outcomes and prevent resegregation.
Mobilise and align financing: The Cluj-Napoca approach demonstrates how long-term transformation can require stitching together successive funds (EEA/ Norway/ ESF+/ ERDF CLLD) to avoid gaps in service provision that undermine trust and delivery capacity.
Note: See Step 2 of the OECD/EC survey in Annex A.
An effective prioritisation process also requires making difficult choices as not all policy areas can receive equal attention or resources. Cities may therefore consider explicitly identifying their core priorities (where policy action will be concentrated), supporting actions (which compliment priorities but receive fewer resources) and lower-impact initiatives (which can be postponed or deprioritised) (Figure 5.2). While politically challenging, this stage helps to create inclusive growth strategies that are focused and implementable.
Distinguish transformative reforms from short-term gains
Inclusive growth strategies often need to balance long-term structural reforms with actions that can deliver results more quickly. Structural reforms might involve changes in housing supply, education systems or labour market institutions; while these can deliver substantial long-term benefits, they can take time to produce results and may also require co-ordinated actions with other levels of governance. To build political momentum and public support, cities may need to demonstrate earlier progress.
To prevent timelines from fragmenting, cities are increasingly adopting mission-oriented approaches to anchor their strategic vision. By setting clear, bold and time-bound goals for inclusive growth, such as eradicating youth unemployment, cities can establish a north star that aligns all actors. This long-term strategic vision services as the frameworks within which both long-term investments and immediate, localised projects are co-ordinated, turning isolated initiatives into cumulative stepping stones towards overarching missions.
Transformative structural reforms address structural drivers of inequality in a city alongside opportunity gaps. For example, in Paris, France, the long-term expansion of the Regional Express Rail (RER) network of trains increased employment in connected neighbourhoods by 8.8% over the 1975 to 1990 period (Mayer and Trevien, 2017[3]). Quick-win interventions conversely can deliver visible improvements in the short term while supporting broader strategic goals and set the grounds for systemic actions. For example, in Buffalo, New York, the United States, the Clean Sweep initiative provided immediate neighbourhood cleaning with door-to-door social engagement to increase resident trust and reporting of local problems by residents.
Define measurable priorities and accountability
Once priorities have been identified, they need to be translated into clear policy objectives. Without measurable goals and defined responsibilities, inclusive growth strategies risk remaining aspirational rather than operational. Cities may therefore consider defining clear objectives linked to priority policy pillars, measurable indicators to track progress and specific targets over defined time horizons. These targets can help guide implementation and support progress to be monitored over time. In Barcelona (Spain) the Strategy for Inclusion and Reduction of Social Inequalities (2017-2027) identifies five strategic areas for action: reducing structural inequality and strengthening social cohesion; guaranteeing social rights and access to basic services; promoting autonomy and economic inclusion; strengthening community action and social participation; and improving governance, co-ordination and evaluation of social policies. These priorities are then translated into 42 specific, measurable objectives linked to dedicated multi-year funding.
Before finalising objectives, cities can benefit from stress-testing priorities across three key dimensions to check they are realistic in practice. First for feasibility – whether the city has the institutional capacity, resources and co-ordination mechanisms needed for implementation. Analysis shows that smaller or intermediary cities may face greater feasibility constraints due to more limited fiscal room for manoeuvre, shrinking populations or a lack of technical expertise. Second on equity – how proposed interventions will affect different population groups and neighbourhoods, ensuring they do not unintentionally reinforce existing disparities or overlook those most in need. In Dublin, Ireland, evidence books are used to disaggregate data and uncover hidden vulnerabilities that standard, high-level indicators may overlook. Third, sustainability – can interventions be maintained over time, including their financial viability and alignment with long-term development and climate goals. So that environmental policies are also inclusive, cities like Milan, Italy, have integrated social safeguards into their climate action, such as offering targeted exemptions and subsidised for low-income residents within its Low Emission Zone. Applying this early-stage screening helps identify potential implementation risks and refine priorities before they are translated into delivery.
The prioritisation and design stage transforms diagnosis into a clear strategic direction. By focusing on a limited number of high-impact policy areas, tailoring priorities to local conditions and defining measurable objectives, cities can create strategies that are both ambitious and implementable. The next stage of the Roadmap focuses on translating these priorities into integrated interventions and delivery systems capable of turning strategy into action.
Identifying priorities is only the first step towards delivering inclusive growth. Many cities develop strong strategies but struggle to translate them into effective implementation, due to implementation gaps: policies that appear coherent on paper face hurdles during delivery. These gaps include responsibilities being fragmented across departments and levels of government, co-ordination costs being underestimated, funding streams that may not align with programme timelines and capacity constraints that can limit the ability to co-ordinate complex initiatives. This stage operationalises the policy pillars through integrated interventions, while mobilising key enabling factors – governance arrangements, partnerships, financing and institutional capacity – making sure delivery is feasible and co-ordinated.
Inclusive growth policies are particularly affected by these implementation challenges because they cut across multiple policy areas such as education, labour markets, housing, transport and climate policy, and involve a wide range of stakeholders. Closing implementation gaps requires cities to move beyond individual interventions towards integrated delivery systems. This involves aligning interventions across sectors, mobilising partnerships and ensuring that governance and financing arrangements are in place to support implementation.
Design integrated intervention packages
Inclusive growth challenges in cities rarely stem from a single policy failure. Instead, they arise from multidimensional inequalities and overlapping disadvantages that accumulate across the life course and reinforce one another spatially. For example, a young person in a disadvantaged neighbourhood may face several simultaneous barriers to employment, including limited access to training, weak transport connectivity, care responsibilities or employer biases. Addressing only one of these barriers is unlikely to deliver meaningful change, particularly as employment alone is not always sufficient to lift individuals out of poverty, with nearly one in ten EU workers at risk of poverty (Eurostat, 2025[4]).
Cities can therefore benefit from designing integrated intervention packages that combine actions across policy areas, alongside people-based support and place-based investments. This is particularly important for groups facing compounded exclusion and underscores the need for cross-sectoral approaches. Moving towards a “whole-place” model, organising services around residents’ needs, rather than individual departmental silos, can increase the overall impact of policy interventions by addressing multiple constraints simultaneously. In Landshut, Germany, the Home & Care project, funded by ERDF, supports single mothers by combining flexible childcare with employment re-entry services, addressing the intersecting challenges of care burdens and precarious work (UIA, 2023[5]).
Establish co-ordinated delivery structures
Cities can strengthen vertical co-ordination through formal mechanisms such as agreements, contracts or partnership frameworks across levels of government. For example, Australia’s City Deals, Finland’s agreements on land use, housing and transport (Maankäytön, asumisen ja liikenteen, MAL) and France’s contracts between the state and regions (Contrats de plan État-Région) provide structured frameworks to align responsibilities, funding and objectives. These arrangements can support multilevel governance by clarifying roles, enabling resource sharing and providing multiyear stability for long-term investment, while aligning local action with regional, national or EU priorities.
At the city level, cross-departmental teams may be established with responsibility for co-ordinating the design and implementation of inclusive growth initiatives. These teams can help align policy areas, monitor progress towards shared objectives and resolve bottlenecks. Clear leadership and decision making authority are essential to make sure that co-ordination mechanisms remain effective. For example, in Canada, Toronto’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Office works across housing, labour and public health departments to integrate equity considerations directly into city budgeting and service delivery.
However, formal structures alone are not sufficient. Cities often face challenges translating co-ordination commitments into aligned day-to-day operations. Strengthening operational co-ordination is therefore critical. This can include establishing shared indicators across institutions, regular reporting on how mainstream resources are allocated to priority groups and areas, and structured performance reviews where partners assess progress, identify gaps and adjust delivery. Determining leadership is ultimately a political decision, requiring a clear mandate to convene actors and drive alignment across sectors and levels of government.
Engage partnerships and stakeholders
Partnerships play a critical role in delivering inclusive growth policies. Potential partners range from civil society organisations, community groups, employers, business associations, universities, and regional and national government. These actors contribute valuable expertise, resources and insights into local challenges.
Engaging residents is also essential to making sure that interventions respond to real needs and to strengthen the legitimacy of local action. To be effective, citizen participation should be embedded into action by cities across initial diagnosis through to implementation and monitoring, rather than being a one-off consultation exercise at the beginning or the end of a project. However, meaningful engagement faces structural hurdles. In particular, cities must proactively manage the risk of participation capture where more vocal or well-resourced groups dominate decision making. When participation is captured by privileged groups, it inadvertently reinforces existing spatial and social inequalities, steering resources away from the neighbourhoods that need them most.
Targeted outreach and capacity building are therefore important ways to reach marginalised or “hidden” populations such as Roma communities or the working poor. Cities are increasingly adopting co-production approaches. For example, in Italy, Turin’s Co-City project, funded by ERDF, uses collaboration pacts to transform underused public buildings into community assets. In Germany, Düsseldorf’s Zukunft Quartier programme (Box 5.3) engages residents through participatory planning and neighbourhood mapping, while in the Netherlands, South Rotterdam’s BRIDGE programme, funded by ERDF, aligns municipal services, schools and employers around shared employment targets. In Portugal, Lisbon allocates up to 5% of municipal investment and demonstrates how citizen engagement can strengthen trust and improve the alignment of investments with local needs.
What are the objectives?
The overarching objective of the Zukunft Quartier (Neighbourhood of the Future) initiative is to enable all residents in Düsseldorf to have similar life and development opportunities across neighbourhoods and benefit equally from the city’s dynamism. To achieve this, the framework sets out strategic objectives that combine improved spatial observation and improved cross-sectoral organisation for integrated delivery.
How does it work in practice? Understanding the good practice through the lens of the Roadmap for Inclusive Growth in Cities
Stage 1 – Diagnose: The Zukunft Quartier programme is anchored in a robust diagnostic approach through a citywide monitoring tool that compiles neighbourhood indicators (e.g. demographics, children’s health, green space access, social infrastructure and housing) and enables comparison across small areas.
Stage 2 – Prioritise: Using a synthesis of multiple thematic layers, Düsseldorf identified 12 Action Areas where disadvantage overlaps across several domains. The method highlights that areas with deficits in multiple categories warrant integrated attention.
Stage 3 – Design and mobilise: Delivery is enabled through a structured governance model designed to break silos and sustain partnerships. A Steering Group are the central decision and alignment body of the programme, while an interdepartmental Working Group prepares decisions and supports monitoring, including with continued atlas work.
Stage 4 – Implement: Implementation combines strategic tools (profiling and concept development) with place-based actions and “quick wins”. The development of neighbourhood profiles and concept sketches translate diagnosis into actionable plans and funding pathways.
Stage 5 – Monitor, learn and adapt: The Zukunft Quartier is explicitly framed as a dynamic, self-learning process. The indicators and focus areas are periodically reviewed and programme learning is reinforced through the annual conferences and ongoing steering.
What can other communities learn from this example?
Use a neighbourhood evidence tool to make spatial inequalities actionable: A regularly updated Databook (like Düsseldorf’s Quartiersatlas) helps identify where multiple disadvantages overlap and supports prioritisation, resource allocation and funding cases.
Combine long-term strategy with visible short-term actions: The programme’s process logic stresses stepwise delivery and visible successes, helping to sustain participation and trust while longer-term neighbourhood change unfolds.
Note: See Step 2 of the OECD/EC survey in Annex A.
Mobilise and align funding and financing
Funding and financing remain a significant barrier to implementing inclusive growth strategies, with 60% of respondent cities to the OECD/EC survey identifying insufficient funding as a primary constraint on action. Cities typically rely on a mix of municipal budgets, regional funding, national programmes, EU funds and private investment, which often operate under different timelines, eligibility criteria and reporting requirements.
Cities can begin by mapping available funding sources across levels of government. Results from the OECD/EC survey show that 77% of respondent cities already rely on multiple funding streams for inclusive growth including municipal budgets (85% of cities), national programmes (77%) and EU instruments (48%). In the European Union, funds such as the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) play a critical role in supporting inclusive growth, social inclusion and urban infrastructure. For the 2021-2027 period they will together provide over EUR 300 billion in investments to develop EU regions and cities (European Commission, 2026[6]). Mapping these sources can help cities identify opportunities to combine funding streams for integrated interventions.
At the same time, cities should make sure that targeted or programme-specific funding complements, rather than replaces, mainstream service provision. In practice, this means using temporary or earmarked funding to enhance or expand existing services, such as piloting new approaches or reaching underserved groups, while ensuring core services like education, healthcare or employment support remain funded through stable budgets. Introducing an “additionality check” can help support this balance. This involves verifying that new funding adds to existing provision, rather than filling gaps left by declining core budgets, reducing the risk that essential services become dependent on short-term or project-based financing.
Aligning funding with delivery timelines is also critical. A common challenge is the mismatch between short‑term budget cycles and the long-term nature of inclusive growth interventions, such as affordable housing or public transport infrastructure development, which may unfold over 10-15 years. While annual budgets and political cycles can constrain continuity, longer-term funding frameworks can help provide greater stability and predictability. Cities may therefore need to balance multi-annual planning, which provides stability for achieving inclusive growth objectives, with shorter-term, flexible funding that can respond to emerging needs. In this context, EU Cohesion Policy funds play an important role, as their multi-annual programming cycles are often better suited with the timeframes required for structural urban change. At the local level, in Portugal, Lisbon’s Social Development Plan establishes a multi-annual framework that pools financial, logistical and human resources across departments.
Finally, financing approaches should be proportionate to local capacity. While innovative instruments like social impact bonds or blended finance can mobilise additional resources, they require technical expertise and may be less accessible for smaller cities. Survey results show that only one in three municipalities currently use market-based finance like loans or bonds, with smaller cities remaining heavily dependent on grants and national transfers. Furthermore, shrinking cities face rising per-capita service costs as their tax bases erode, making complex financing even more difficult to sustain.
The mobilisation stage therefore helps translate strategic priorities into deliverable programmes supported by governance structures, partnerships and financing. Cities that succeed in mobilising these elements are better positioned to move from strategy development toward tangible improvements in opportunity and living standards, setting the ground for the next stage of the Roadmap focused on implementing inclusive growth initiatives and sustaining momentum over time.
Well-designed inclusive growth strategies can struggle during implementation even when the right conditions are mobilised. Across cities the most common challenge is not always identifying priorities or designing policies but sustaining effective delivery over time. Implementation often involves navigating practical constraints requiring strong enabling conditions such as administrative capacity, evolving political priorities, co-ordination challenges across departments and the need for effective communication to maintain support among stakeholders and residents.
Successful implementation requires shifting from a linear process to a more flexible, adaptive approach that allows programmes to evolve while maintaining strategic direction. This stage transforms inclusive growth policy packages into operational programmes that address the multidimensional nature of disadvantage over the long term.
Launch early actions to demonstrate progress
Inclusive growth strategies can involve reforms that take time to deliver results. However, maintaining political momentum and public support requires visible early progress during the implementation stage. Cities may therefore benefit from launching early-stage initiatives or pilot projects that demonstrate the strategy in action.
Early actions can help cities test new approaches before scaling them up, build confidence among the community, demonstrate a commitment to inclusive growth and generate lessons to inform subsequent stages. These initiatives do not need to solve structural challenges immediately; instead, they can provide a proof-of-concept to allow cities to refine delivery models.
Pilot initiatives can also provide evidence on what works in practice. These can be driven by policymakers or the community themselves. Community-driven initiatives can support empowerment of vulnerable groups or neighbourhoods and further build trust, which can be beneficial for scaling up future actions or designing similar initiatives. In Vantaa, Finland, pilots and “agile testing” allowed the city to refine their Growth and Social Investment Pacts, testing three different versions across five companies before a wider pilot to determine which model best supported both business growth and social outcomes. Cities can use early implementation phases to examine questions such as:
Which delivery mechanisms are most effective?
Are programmes reaching the intended population groups?
Are administrative processes creating unnecessary barriers to participation?
In Brno, Czechia, the Rapid Re-Housing pilot initiative aims to end homelessness with a Housing First model for families with children by providing immediate access to stable housing, combined with intensive and tailored social support (Box 5.4). The programme has demonstrated strong outcomes, with 96% of supported families maintaining their housing after one year while also generating substantial social and health benefits.
What are the objectives?
The Brno Rapid Re-Housing initiative aims to end homelessness among families with children by providing immediate access to stable housing combined with intensive, tailored social support. The pilot programme specifically targeted highly vulnerable families living in substandard conditions, with the objective of achieving high housing retention rates and improving overall living conditions and well‑being.
How does it work in practice? Understanding the good practice through the lens of the Roadmap for Inclusive Growth in Cities
Stage 1 – Diagnose: In Brno, around 400 families experience homelessness, often residing in temporary hostels that provide unstable and inadequate living conditions while creating costly and ineffective pathways that fail to support long-term exits from homelessness.
Stage 2 – Prioritise: Brno prioritised testing a Housing First approach for families, based on the principle that access to stable housing is a prerequisite for addressing other social challenges, rather than a reward contingent on behavioural change.
Stage 3 – Design and mobilise: The initiative was built on strong collaboration between the municipality and social service providers. Staff from participating organisations were trained in assertive, strengths-based social work, including community-based approaches and the involvement of peer workers.
Stage 4 – Implement: The Rapid Re-Housing pilot in Brno combined targeted identification of beneficiaries with the immediate provision of independent housing and intensive, tailored support. The programme began the identification of families experiencing housing instability, who were rapidly placed into standard housing units.
Stage 5 – Monitor, learn and adapt: The programme incorporated a strong evaluation and learning component, combining quantitative and qualitative methods to assess impacts on housing stability, family well-being and service effectiveness. The inclusion of a control group enabled robust evidence on outcomes compared to traditional approaches.
What can other communities learn from this example?
Draw on international best practices while adapting them to local contexts: Brno demonstrates how globally proven approaches, such as Housing First, can be tailored to local realities, including in relation with marginalised groups such as Roma communities.
Invest in staff capacity to work with vulnerable populations: Delivering effective support requires trained professionals who understand how to engage with vulnerable groups, build trust and respond to their specific needs.
Note: See Step 2 of the OECD/EC survey in Annex A.
Strengthen co-ordination during delivery
Even when strategies are designed collaboratively, challenges can emerge during implementation related to co-ordination. For example, different departments may operate under distinct timelines, priorities or performance frameworks. Without active co-ordination, this can lead to delays, duplication or gaps in delivery. Cities can benefit from establishing regular co-ordination mechanisms to ensure that programmes remain aligned with strategic objectives.
Cross-disciplinary teams established during the mobilisation stage can play a key role in overseeing implementation. Regular co-ordination mechanisms allow teams to review progress against targets, identify emerging bottlenecks, adjust implementation timelines and co-ordinate actions across policy sectors. These reviews can help programmes remain responsive to evolving circumstances while maintaining momentum. In the London Borough of Camden, the United Kingdom, Mission-Oriented Boards oversee cross-sectoral goals, ensuring that departments are aligned toward outcomes such as ensuring every young person has access to economic opportunity by 2025.
Maintain stakeholder engagement and transparency
Inclusive growth strategies ultimately aim to improve opportunities and living conditions for residents, but their success depends on the institutional legitimacy and trust built through continuous engagement. Maintaining public trust and engagement during implementation is therefore essential because concentrated disadvantage can erode social cohesion if residents feel disconnected from the policy process. Communicating clearly about progress and challenges can help to sustain stakeholder support and encourage continued participation in initiatives.
A variety of media can help cities communicate on the progress of initiatives, including online dashboards, public progress reports and social media engagement. In Terrassa, Spain, the Presupuesto Municipal (municipal budget) platform provides interactive dashboards with social spending data to foster greater public scrutiny and collaboration.
Residents and community organisations can also provide valuable insights into how policies function in practices. Cities can benefit from establishing feedback channels that allow stakeholders to share their experience with programmes. This can be done through co-decision and co-implementation with community organisations including a focus on the most marginalised groups, who are often under-represented in mainstream consultations, community focus groups, walk along diagnostics, participatory workshops or digital feedback platforms. Insights gathered through these mechanisms help cities refine programmes and identify implementation challenges early. In Łódź, Poland, the Municipal Social Welfare Centre employs intercultural assistants and social workers with lived experience to improve trust and reduce “blind spots” in service design.
Cities are operating in environments that are constantly changing: from economic shocks to demographic shifts and climate transitions. These factors can reshape local opportunities and inequalities. As a result, effective inclusive growth strategies require continuous learning and adaptation. Monitoring progress allows cities to assess whether policies are delivering intended outcomes, while structured learning processes help refine approaches and scale what works.
However, monitoring systems in cities can involve a large set of indicators which are not always easy to interpret and act on, while evaluation findings are not always part of strategic planning or budgeting processes. Cities can therefore benefit from developing practical monitoring and learning systems to track progress across policy pillars while strengthening enabling factors such as data use, evaluation systems and feedback mechanisms that connect evidence directly to policy decisions. Rather than happening at the end of the process, cities should embed continuous monitoring, evaluation and adjustment throughout action to drive inclusive growth.
Monitoring, learning and adaptation allow cities to sustain progress toward inclusive growth in the face of changing economic and social conditions. By linking data to decision making, continuously refining policies and scaling successful initiatives, cities can build resilient policy systems capable of delivering long-term improvements in opportunity and well-being in cities.
Track outcomes using a practical monitoring framework
Inclusive growth strategies often involve multiple policy areas and objectives. Without a structured monitoring framework, it can be difficult to assess whether interventions are delivering meaningful progress. Cities may therefore benefit from distinguishing a focused set of outcome indicators which directly link to strategic priorities, alongside a limited number of delivery (process/output) metrics that capture progress towards key objectives.
Outcome indicators measure whether a policy is achieving its ultimate aims, and for inclusive growth specifically, whether the intervention is improving socio-economic conditions. These should directly link to clearly defined policy goals set in the prioritisation stage and capture change in people’s lives over time (Schumann, 2016[7]). Frameworks such as the OECD Multidimensional Living Standards approach demonstrates how outcome indicators can integrate income with non-monetary dimensions like health and employment (Boarini, Murtin and Schreyer, 2015[8]).
Delivery metrics, by contrast, track whether programmes are being implemented as intended. They focus on activities and immediate outputs rather than final impacts. Examples include the number of residents enrolled in a training programme, the number of affordable housing units delivered or the share of eligible households accessing childcare services. These metrics provide more immediate feedback on programme rollout and operational performance but do not, on their own, demonstrate whether policy goals are being achieved.
In practice, effective monitoring frameworks combine both types of indicators. Outcome indicators provide a strategic, long-term view of impact while delivery metrics offer a short-term, operational view of implementation. Together they allow cities to assess not only whether policies are working but also why, helping to identify whether limited progress reflects design flaws (objectives or targeting) or implementation challenges (delivery and take-up). To remain actionable, cities may benefit from focusing on a limited set of outcome indicators, aligned with strategic priorities, alongside targeted delivery metrics. In addition, tracking indicators over time and at a disaggregated scale, by neighbourhood, age group, sex or for marginalised groups (such as Roma people), helps to make sure that progress is inclusive and no groups are left behind.
Use evidence to adapt inclusive growth policies and resources
Monitoring systems are most effective when they actively inform decision making. Cities can therefore establish regular review processes to assess progress and identify opportunities to refine policy approaches. These may involve tracking progress against targets, analysing differences across neighbourhoods or population groups and identifying programmes that are underperforming or exceeding expectations.
Adapting programmes based on emerging evidence, allows more effective responses to emerging challenges and can prevent small challenges from becoming major implementation barriers. This can include reallocating resources across initiatives, strengthening delivery partnerships or adjusting timelines if implementation proves more complex than anticipated.
Evidence from monitoring and evaluation also enables cities to evolve their interventions over time, whether by refining programme design to better reach target groups or discontinuing initiatives with limited impact. For example, Helsinki, Finland, requires municipal social programmes to be underpinned by explicit theories of change, combined with annual outcome reviews. This allows findings from programme evaluations to feed directly into budgetary and strategic planning, allowing the city to treat its inclusive growth strategy as a dynamic policy framework rather than a fixed plan. To support this approach, Helsinki has invested in real-time data infrastructure across housing, mobility and environmental services enabling continuous monitoring of outcomes and more responsive policy adjustment under its Place of Growth 2021-2025 strategy.
Share and institutionalise inclusive growth success
Cities can develop innovative initiatives that generate promising results but remain limited in scale or duration. Monitoring and evaluation processes can help identify which initiatives should be expanded or embedded more permanently in city policy frameworks. Evidence of effectiveness is a primary driver for the scaling of successful interventions. In France, independent evaluations showing positive improvements in labour market inclusion and well-being supported the decision to expand the French Territoires zéro chômeur de longue durée (Territories with Zero Long-Term Unemployed People - TZCLD) – an initiative aiming to eradicate long-term unemployment through community-driven employment and service provision – experiment from 10 to more than 60 territories (Box 5.5). The second evaluation report highlights that the initiative has led to improved employment rates and well-being in participating territories (Dares, 2024[9]). Similarly in the United Kingdom, the documented long-term benefits of the Sure Start programme in improving child health and cognitive development led to its relaunch as a national network of integrated family support hubs.
What are the objectives?
The Zero Long-term Unemployed Territories (Territoires zéro chômeur de longue durée – TZCLD) initiative aims to demonstrate that long-term unemployment can be effectively addressed at the local level by providing sustainable, tailored employment opportunities to all individuals excluded from the labour market. The TZCLD initiative seeks to redirect “passive” public spending, such as unemployment benefits, into impactful social investment by using these resources to create purpose-driven employment enterprises that provide jobs for people experiencing long-term unemployment.
How does it work in practice? Understanding the good practice through the lens of the Roadmap for Inclusive Growth in Cities
Stage 1 – Diagnose: The TZCLD initiative responds to persistent structural unemployment that has led to long-term labour market exclusion, despite existing public policies and support systems.
Stage 2 – Prioritise: The initiative prioritises individuals who are durably excluded from the labour market, recognising that long-term unemployed people face the greatest barriers to re-employment and experience the most severe social and economic consequences.
Stage 3 – Design and mobilise: The initiative is based on a territorial and participatory model, mobilising a wide range of local stakeholders, including residents, businesses, associations and public institutions, around the co-ordination of the Local Committee for Employment (LCE).
Stage 4 – Implement: After the establishment of a LCE, the initiative identifies and engages people who are long-term unemployed, while, in parallel, mapping unmet local needs in collaboration with residents, businesses and public institutions. Then, an enterprise for employment (Entreprises à But d’Emploi) is established, often building on existing social economy structures to offer permanent, voluntary employment contracts to participants.
Stage 5 – Monitor, learn and adapt: Building on TZCLD’s first phase, involving an initial group of ten pilot territories, a second phase expanded the initiative to 60 territories. In parallel, the TZCLD Observatory was launched in 2022 as a platform for research and knowledge-sharing.
What can other communities learn from this example?
Reallocate existing public spending towards job creation: TZCLD demonstrates that long-term unemployment can be addressed without significant additional public cost by redirecting existing expenditure (e.g. unemployment benefits) towards financing sustainable jobs.
Build strong, place-based governance through local coalitions: The initiative highlights the importance of territorial co-ordination through structures such as Local Committees for Employment, which brings together municipalities, businesses, associations and residents.
Adopt a participatory, people-centred approach: Placing individuals at the centre, by recognising their skills, aspirations and willingness to work, while conducting proactive outreach and engagement, are essential to reach those who are often excluded from institutional systems.
Embed experimentation, evaluation and learning from the outset. The phased piloting approach and the creation of the TZCLD Observatory illustrate the value of combining implementation with rigorous research and continuous learning.
Note: See Step 2 of the OECD/EC survey in Annex A.
Cities can benefit from systematically documenting the design and outcome of successful programmes, with lesson sharing helping to support internal learning across departments and facilitates knowledge exchange through structured platforms like the EU’s URBACT, PORTICO, the EU Cities Portal and Urban Agenda for the EU partnerships, which help transfer proven solutions across different urban contexts.
Finally for inclusive growth strategies to have lasting impact, successful initiatives must become part of mainstream city policy and budgeting processes. This can involve embedding initiatives within long-term strategic plans, integrating effective programmes into departmental budgets and aligning policies with national or regional programmes to secure sustained funding. Institutionalising successful initiatives helps support progress toward inclusive growth so that it can continue beyond individual political or funding cycles.
References
[8] Boarini, R., F. Murtin and P. Schreyer (2015), “Inclusive Growth: The OECD Measurement Framework”, OECD Statistics Working Papers, No. 2015/6, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5jrqppxjqhg4-en.
[9] Dares (2024), Expérimentation Territoires zéro chômeur de longue durée : note d’étape du comité scientifique, https://dares.travail-emploi.gouv.fr/publication/experimentation-territoires-zero-chomeur-de-longue-duree-note-detape-du-comite.
[6] European Commission (2026), Available budget of Cohesion Policy 2021-2027, https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/funding/available-budget_en.
[4] Eurostat (2025), In-work at-risk-of-poverty rate (dataset), https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tespm070/default/table?lang=en.
[3] Mayer, T. and C. Trevien (2017), “The impact of urban public transportation evidence from the Paris region”, Journal of Urban Economics, Vol. 102, pp. 1-21, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2017.07.003.
[1] OECD (2025), Place-Based Policies for the Future, OECD Regional Development Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/e5ff6716-en.
[2] OECD (2023), Driving Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development: Accelerating Progress on the SDGs, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/a6cb4aa1-en.
[7] Schumann, A. (2016), “Using Outcome Indicators to Improve Policies: Methods, Design Strategies and Implementation”, OECD Regional Development Working Papers, No. 2016/2, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5jm5cgr8j532-en.
[5] UIA (2023), “An innovative housing project for single mothers and their children in Landshut”, Urban Innovative Actions, https://uia.urban-initiative.eu/sites/default/files/2023-07/PolicyPaperFINAL.pdf.