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Demographic change brings complex challenges to the economic, social, and environmental systems of cities, with its asymmetric, overlapping, and compounded impacts across people and places. This paper analyses the main demographic trends and challenges in cities across OECD countries, with a focus on G7 cities. It disentangles trends and challenges across three distinct, yet interrelated, dynamics: i) ageing population and decreasing household size in cities (for instance, the number of older adults in cities increased by 2.4% per year in G7 countries between 2008 and 2018), ii) city population growth or decline (for instance, 20% of cities across OECD countries experienced population decline between 2001 and 2021), and iii) spatial segregation within cities (for instance, commuting zones of metropolitan areas are ageing faster than inner cities). Based on the evidence-based analyses, the paper provides policy insights to address the impacts of demographic change and to build more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient cities and urban systems, with city-specific examples. Preliminary findings from the paper served as input to the G7 Ministerial Meeting on Sustainable Urban Development (7-9 July 2023, Takamatsu, Japan) under the G7 Japanese Presidency.

The OECD Territorial Review of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium, provides an in-depth assessment of the trends, challenges and opportunities for sustainable and inclusive urban development in the region. It aims to help tackle the so-called ‘Brussels paradox’ between a highly performing region in terms of economic wealth creation and competitiveness but relatively poor social conditions. The region is also grappling with a shortage of affordable and quality housing, as well as several mobility challenges, including a high reliance on individual cars and traffic congestion, resulting in high commuting times and pollution levels, despite good accessibility to public transport. Although a comprehensive urban and land-use planning system exists, there is a lack of co-ordination with the surrounding regions and municipalities to drive more effective policies on housing, mobility, and other infrastructure investments. This review also examines the governance and institutional framework and suggests policy actions to strengthen co-ordination and co-operation mechanisms, and promote incremental collaboration at the metropolitan level. Finally, the review provides recommendations to enhance public finances in the region, focusing on better compensating for its additional charges, co-ordinating public investment among levels of government more efficiently, and establishing a metropolitan fund.

Reaching climate neutrality requires economic transformations of unprecedented scale and speed. Immediate action from the business community can avoid unnecessary costs, create wellbeing co-benefits and prepare local businesses with a better competitive position in the future climate neutral economy. This report shows what reaching climate neutrality by 2040 means for Hamburg businesses and identifies key actions they need to undertake. It provides insights where the Hamburg economy and its businesses stand on the way to climate neutrality and on their needs to advance, drawing on a business survey. The study also shares insights from action plans of selected comparison cities. It points to cross-sector as well as to sector-specific challenges and opportunities for Hamburg businesses. This includes making better use of low-cost renewables, addressing energy efficiency in buildings as well as challenges and opportunities in activities in and around the port and in industry. It highlights Hamburg's potential as a hydrogen hub as well as the need to adopt circular economy practices. It illustrates that a regional and business perspective are necessary to achieve climate neutrality in prosperity, requiring individual and collective business action.

This paper provides evidence on the impact of international migrants on regional innovation. The study combines administrative individual-level data covering all Australian residents with data on intellectual property rights applications such as patents, trademarks, and design rights. The analysis uses a standard shift-share instrument based on past migrant settlements to identify the causal effects of migration on innovation. Its four main findings are the following: First, on average, a one percentage point increase in the regional employment share of higher-educated migrants relative to total employment leads to a 4.8% rise in regional patent applications in the medium run (five years). Second, while migrants of all skill and education levels have a positive impact on patenting, those in scientific occupations have the largest effect. Third, regions with lower levels of patenting benefit relatively more from increases in migration compared to those with higher patenting levels. Fourth, there is no effect of migration on trademarks or design rights applications.

Cities have a pivotal role to play in achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. Smart city solutions can help enable and accelerate the net-zero transition by, among many others, curtailing energy use, accelerating the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, improving resource efficiency, reducing transport demand, and fostering necessary behavioural change. This paper summarises the proceedings of the 3rd OECD Roundtable on Smart Cities and Inclusive Growth, which took place on 3 July 2023 at the OECD Headquarters in Paris. It discusses concrete solutions that can boost the net-zero transition, explores the barriers to scaling up smart city solutions and the enabling factors that can help overcome them, and proposes ways to strengthen the net-zero objective in the OECD Smart City Measurement Framework.

The SME Policy Index: Eastern Partner Countries 2024 – Building resilience in challenging times is a unique benchmarking tool to assess and monitor progress in the design and implementation of SME policies against EU and international best practice. It embraces the priorities laid out in the European Union’s SME Strategy for a sustainable and digital Europe and is structured around the ten principles of the Small Business Act for Europe, which provide a wide range of measures to guide the design and implementation of SME policies. This report marks the fourth edition in this series, following assessments in 2012, 2016, and 2020. It tracks progress made since 2020 and offers the latest key findings on SME development and related policies in the countries of the Eastern Partnership (EaP). It also identifies emerging challenges affecting SMEs in the region and provides recommendations to address them. The 2024 edition benefits from an updated methodology that also offers a deeper analysis of policies to support the digital transformation of SMEs.