The European Union and the United Nations Organization recently signed a Protocol with the aim of promoting research in the sector of sustainable urban development. The Protocol was signed by the Eu Commissioner for Research Janez Potocnik and the Director of the Un Programme for Human Settlements (Habitat). It envisages a series of accords on research in the areas of urbanism and governance, the management of water resources, housing, healthcare systems and the occupation of the land. The research funded thanks to the partnership between the two international organizations has as its main aim the definition of projects applicable on a large scale to prevent the negative impact of the demographic boom announced at the planetary level for the next decades: in Europe alone, it is calculated that over 80% of citizens will live in cities whose habitat risks being degraded in the absence of interventions that the Protocol intends first to identify and then put into practice. Info: http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/environment/index_en.htm
