Local and regional governments are increasingly aware of the various global challenges that control their territories and seek their own and innovative responses from the local level. Since 2013 AL-LAs has promoted intense reflection and collective actions to strengthen and professionalize the internationalization of cities, focused above all on: 1) promoting a legal and institutional framework for foreign action; 2) the inclusion of strategic and participatory planning as the basis for the construction of the international strategy of a city, 3) sensitize public actors of the need to advance in the consolidation of local policies of international affairs and) the recognition of the local and regional governments as development actors and the need for a place in the global governance system.
As a learning model, AL-LAs has developed a series of activities to analyze the different facets and thematic fields in which the international action of local governments takes place, resulting in the “collection of AL-LAs notebooks for the internationalization of the cities ”in order to contribute to the cities in the search for answers, through the perspective of international action from different approaches and from the consideration of these actors as fundamental in the global scenario. The collection aims to systematize knowledge based on practice and offer a panorama of action for cities, local and regional governments and their networks to professionalize their international action.
Through their different volumes, the notebooks offer recommendations on how a city can approach different areas of the phenomenon of internationalization from a vision of public, strategic, participatory policy linked to local and regional identities. In turn, particular issues are addressed where internationalization has had special relevance: social inclusion, territorial attractiveness and sustainability.
At the moment AL-LAs has contributed to the understanding of the phenomenon of the internationalization of local governments in Europe and Latin America with 10 volumes of the Collection that cover the following topics: i) Legal and Institutional framework for International Action of Cities; ii) Internationalization of the local government. A public policy under construction, iii) Participatory Strategies to Internationalize the Territory. Looks from Latin America and Europe, iv) International action for a sustainable city. Trends, Actors and Good Practices, v) International Action for an attractive City, vi) International Action for an Inclusive City; vii) Local governments on the international agenda: actors or spectators?; viii) Towards sustainable international action in cities; ix) Local alliances for global challenges and x) The international action of local governments in times of crisis. An Euro-Latin American perspective.
AL-LAs translated the Executive Synthesis of the Notebooks for the Internationalization of Cities into three languages: Portuguese, French and English.