Cities often form networks in order to exchange good practices and cooperate through working groups. Examples include the Network of Intercultural Cities (RECI), the World Organization of United Cities and Local Governments or the Network of Port Cities.
ECOPER has begun a study to follow the cooperation of city networks and analyze their alignment with the 2030 Agenda through the content of their activity on Twitter. In an initial experiment, ECOPER considered which of the following city networks is most aligned with the 2030 Agenda:
- RECI-Network of Intercultural Cities
- World Organization of United Cities and Local Governments
- Network of port cities
- Regions 4 Sustainable Development
- UNDP City to City
- Platform 4 Dev
- UN Network on migration
In addition, the experiment measured which SDGs were the most important for these networks and which city within a list of five (Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona, Edinburgh, Munich) had a more active participation in the network, according to the mentions on Twitter. As registered Twitter developers, ECOPER evaluators accessed 3,200 tweets from each network’s account, with a total of 19,672 messages. This revealed that the United Nations Network on Migration is the most aligned with the 2030 Agenda according to its activity on Twitter.
In addition, global health is the SDG that attracts the most attention in this network and all the others, which is undoubtedly related to the context of the pandemic. Finally, it is worth noting that Spanish cities are the most named in the list. Bilbao stands out in four out of seven networks while Barcelona stands out in the two networks most aligned with the 2030 Agenda.