All urban transition roads lead to governance? Jonas Bylund, JPI Urban Europe A summary of the SRIA Launch session on urban governance and participation I guess all transition roads lead to governance. Or at least have to make a detour through it at some point. As governance is always bound up with what path to take, what next steps to take and future states to arrange for, it is still an obligatory point of passage for all societal concerns. When you walk from your workplace past the grocery shop to the subway or bus, you’re touched by urban governance. When you read in your local news providers’ app that the large urban regional infrastructure upgrade actually cost the public EUR 10 billion – not five as projected yesterday – you’re also touched by governance. When your city offi- cials ask what can be done to accommodate the small stream of refugees now trying to find sanctuary in Europe (compared to the vastly greater number of refugees ‘staying local’ near the areas of the real crises), you’re hopefully touched by governance. Now, being touched by governance is not the same as having a direct say in these mat- ters. But it serves as a reminder of how urban societies may hang together by and through the issues their governance deals with. In the JPI Urban Europe Strategic Research and In- novation Agenda (SRIA), launched in September 2015, the theme on urban governance 1 and participation is therefore one of five thematic priorities. Relative to the other priorities – welfare and finance, vibrant urban economies, urban environmental resilience, urban accessibility and connectivity, plus the longitudinal programme of urban sustainable path- ways – governance tends to become an issue in all the others, whereas the reverse does not apply. As the SRIA is intended to be a living document, the SRIA Launch Event in the Committee of the Regions, 30 September 2015, entailed a session to set the stage for the next years work on the thematic priority of urban governance. he session was not inten- ded to be a bona fide peer review of the thematic priority or the SRIA as such. he overall objective of the session was to develop two–three key messages on important steps towards implementation of the SRIA. Moreover, the general aim of the session was to: JPI Urban Europe (2015) 1  – jpi-urbaneurope.eu – Jonas Bylund – Urban Governance and Participation 2015 1