Last 28 & 29 January, the Elected City Councillor in the Area of Equality, Cooperation and Citizenship in the City Council of Bilbao, Nekane Alonso, participated in Madrid in the Open Cities International Conference "Competitive Advantages of OpenCities - Internationalisation & Population Strategies". Bilbao Metropoli-30 collaborated in this Conference given its role as Technical Secretariat for the City of Bilbao in the OpenCities Project.

OpenCities is a British Council project which focuses on the relationship between cities and their increasingly diverse populations and will explore how immigration can significantly contribute to city success, by tracing the links between new migrant populations (first and second generation) and the successful economic internationalisation of cities. The result will be a series of recommendations that will serve as guidelines for city politics. The project includes three main elements that will deliver tangible research outputs: research and content, conferences and publications, and cultural activities.

Apart from the Delegation from the Bilbao City Council, this first Conference included governance and migration experts, economists, media representatives and local and regional government officials and representatives of EU institutions. About 150 delegates representing European cities and regions as well as Latin America, North America and Asia participated in the Conference.

What is an Open City?

Together with Bilbao, the Cities of Madrid, Cardiff, Belfast, Dublin, Vienna, Gdansk, Malmö, Sofia and Düsseldorf also participate in the OpenCities Project. Through research already commissioned by the British Council, 8 factors affecting the openness of a city have been identified. The relationship between each of these factors and city openness and their relationship to successful internationalisation and open population strategies will be the core areas covered at the conference, which will answer some of the following questions:

• What are the factors that influence a city's openness profile?
• What do we mean by Openness?
• How can openness help cities produce successful internationalisation strategies?
• What is the role of key institutions and city networks in generating a future constructive agenda on Openness?

City Networks

In a similar way as others have defined Sustainable or Creative cities, OpenCities aims to define Openness as an essential asset to cities.

OpenCities is a British Council initiative that comes to life in September 2007. The Project arises from the consideration of immigration as one of the great phenomena of our present, and which is mainly observed in urban environment. The Project aims to set up a network of OpenCities thus creating a space for dialogue and research on the contribution of immigration in the development of cities.

This will be achieved, amongst others, through team workshops, international conferences, and a series of cultural activities aimed at including the whole community and raising the debate.

More information available at: http://opencities.britishcouncil.org