GUD EU LAW

The Governing the Urban Dimension of European Law (GUD EU Law) project aims to advance our understanding of the urban dimension of the European Union’s (EU) legal system. How do EU rules understand urban areas and their dynamics? How do their influence shape cities and, within them, the role and possibilities of urban actors and institutions? At the same time, how do cities react to this influence and how can this reaction contribute to re-shaping EU rules?

While they occupy just 2% of land, urban areas today host some 75% of Europeans and produce about 85% of the EU's total GDP. Due to their spatial density and social dynamism, cities are places of opportunity, innovation, and representation of diverse interests in the EU. But cities face today also economic change, pollution and inequalities that affect the overall quality of life of many citizens. Given the importance of these effects, EU institutions pay increasing attention to cities and are often called upon to govern the emerging conflicts. In this way, EU rules influence the social and political dynamics of cities, creating transformation, but also contestation and resistance.

Although legal scholarship has thus far paid some (limited) attention to cities, it has mainly understood them as single-whole actors, without a clear distinction with other sub-national institutions. The main contribution of the GUD EU Law is to understand cities as collective actors and to study how their internal dynamics are influenced by EU norms. The project draws on an original interdisciplinary approach building on law, urban sociology, and public policy studies. It will analyze judicial decisions and implementation practices to discuss how EU law deals with and influences urban areas and their specific socio-political dynamics in three related fields (urban mobility, air quality and housing).

By taking an urban perspective on the study of EU law, the project’s main findings aim to advance our understanding of how EU affects our urban society and what this influence reveals about EU’s limits and capacity to solve urgent societal issues connected to urbanization. 

This project has been awarded in 2021 by the European Research Executive Agency, under the Marie-Sklodowska Curie Fellowship Programme. The project will run between 2023 and 2025.