The Madrid TRF has introduced innovation to the traditional approach adopted by the Municipality in the past towards urban vulnerability and segregation. This innovation encompasses different aspects:

• Since the 1960s, social vulnerability has traditionally been concentrated in some city districts . This trend had been repeated and consolidated in the following decades until 2015. In that year, the new local government decided to fight against social vulnerability and its spatial concentration as a policy priority, adopting a mixed place-based and people-based approach.

• In order to undertake the aforementioned objective, the Municipality sought academic support. A team of scientists from Carlos III University of Madrid developed an innovative methodology able to take into account the changing and multi-dimensional factors that result in urban vulnerability and spatial segregation. The so-called Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a multivariable analysis methodology that assigns a vulnerability indicator to each of the neighbourhoods and districts in the city. The level of neighbourhood disaggregation allows urban vulnerability to be mapped in detail. As a result, this methodology identifies the large areas of concentration of vulnerability in the most deprived districts, as well as smaller areas located in richer districts.

• The economic resources of the TRF are distributed based on the specific needs of each district, and managed directly by the district councils. This is another relevant innovation. In the last decades Madrid has been a very centralized city, where the districts (the institutional bodies closest to the citizens) did not have capacity to act regarding this and many other matters. The TRF is advancing in the decentralization strategy that the Municipality has been undertaking since 2015.

• The district councils also manage the participative processes of the TRF methodology, aimed at selecting the measures to be undertaken in each district. In these processes, all the relevant local stakeholders are involved, including the citizens and their associations. In this regard, the TRF methodology is also introducing innovation in decision-making, as previously Madrid did not have experience in sustained participative processes.

• As a result of all this, the TRF is creating a new way of building up social capability and reinforcing local resilience.

The city of Madrid has traditionally been characterized by significant territorial social unbalance. This tendency began in the 60s, was clearly identified in the 80s, and has persisted up until the present day, consolidating a pattern of spatial organization that concentrates social vulnerability in some districts, making Madrid the most segregated european capital.

The TRF as a tool to identify social vulnerability is the result of years of scientific research that have resulted in the development of the AHP multicriteria methodology. The AHP provides a neighbourhood vulnerability index based on 12 objective indicators, structured in 5 groups with a relative weight: population (14,2%), socio-economic status (24,7%), economic activity (33,3%), urban development (17,6%), and social care needs (7,5%).

Apart from budget allocation, these indicators are also used to evaluate the results of the process. As a result, the TRF has entailed the transfer of knowledge and data to and from the world of Academia and local authorities and policy-makers.

• The TRF has caught the interest of different city councils in Spain. For example, the Municipality of Madrid has been asked to provide information on this instrument by the Municipality of Oviedo (the capital city of the region of Asturias, with a population of around 220,000 inhabitants), that aims to implement a similar instrument, and has set a task force to study how the TRF methodology can be transferred to its specific situation.

• The TRF has also caught the attention of local authorities from other countries. This has become evident following all the international and national events at which the TRF has been presented, and its dissemination in the media (newspapers, online, radio, tv, etc.), on occasions when different cities have requested the Municipality of Madrid to inform about it. In this regard, the TRF is not only transferring its methodology and experience to other local administrations, it is also drawing the attention of different stakeholders to the importance of facing social vulnerability at a municipal level, showing that it is possible to do so in an effective and equitable way.

The Territorial Coordination Department of the Municipality of Madrid is the leader of the TRF initiative. It provides the funding, distributes it amongst the district councils according to the AHP methodology and provides them with technical and administrative support. The district councils contribute with their proximity to the citizens, organizing dialogues and participative processes that decide which projects receive funding and in some cases, the guidelines of the project’s design. Sectorial agents provide their expertise in their area of interest (EMVS in public housing, ApE in employment policies, Madrid Salud in health programs) developing the projects according to the participative processes. NGOs and neighbourhood associations are also involved in the implementation of the local projects, especially in the 22 Integrated Neighbourhood Plans, contributing with their key knowledge of the affected areas and communities, proposing innovations and developing their initiatives.

Users, stakeholders and local communities are involved after the allocation of the budget to each council. Then different projects are presented in a concertation process, prioritized by the different agencies, that can also present their own proposals. The content of some of these iniciatives will then be defined in depth through further voting processes. Finally, some of the projects are executed by local organizations. From 2016 to 2017, the “Local Forums” (LF) have been established as permanent participative spaces in which decision-making and concertation processes take place. This has been a successful new initiative that is enhancing the capacity of the instrument to address the requirements of all social groups. LF are independently structured in each district, but they generally have working groups for each of the TRF areas of action: Social Intervention, Housing, Employment and Urban Development.

The 3 original objectives  have been achieved:

1. Inter-territorial solidarity, cohesion and the territorial balance of the city: - The TRF is the first of Madrid’s instruments to address vulnerability, based on a solid methodology that compares and monitors the situation of all the districts annually, reducing both the social, and the urban deficiencies of the neighbourhood. - The transference of coordination and responsibility between different institutional levels is increasing. The TRF involves local government, 3 local agencies and 21 district councils.

2. Integrated sustainable development:

a. Environmental dimension:

- 37 public spaces are being regenerated and made universally accessible.

- 15 socio-cultural facilities and 8 sports facilities are being improved or created.

- 5 social housing buildings will be constructed, some of them with a specific gender approach.

b. Economic dimension: - 9 out of 24 approved workshops are dedicated to women and to the long-term unemployed.

- More than 1,500 unemployed citizens are being trained/reinserted into the labour market.

c. Social dimension: - 22 mediation, security, and Integrated Neighbourhood Plans have been approved.

- 67 out of 178 (2017) approved initiatives are focused on gender equality and vulnerable social groups.

3. Citizen participation in government:

- Public debate: More than 165 projects were debated between different stakeholders in 65 meetings with more than 550 people, and where 243 entities were represented.

- All the actions have been approved by all the relevant actors and institutions. As a result, district councils are being empowered and recognized as institutional bodies that give the local community a voice in decision-making.

- Digital governance: 30 % of the projects were proposed by the public using the online participative platform of the Municipality (http://decide.madrid.es).

The TRF implementation process has faced two main challenges:

1. First, the TRF had to be able to count on a consistent methodology to be able to identify Madrid's vulnerable areas. This challenge was met by integrating academic knowledge into the instrument's design, in particular, by researchers from Madrid's Carlos III University, who developed the multivariable analysis methodology able to take the complex nature of urban vulnerability into account.

2. The second challenge consisted in making the TRF an instrument that integrated local knowledge and demands (non- expert contribution) with the knowledge and experience of specialists and decision-makers (expert contribution). This problem was solved by turning the TRF into a participative instrument. The TRF allows participation in the context of "Local Forum" meetings and e-government polling through the Municipality participation platform (http://decide.madrid.es).

The TRF has been a successful initiative so far, thanks to the political leadership of the Municipality of Madrid, that created a new Area of Government, the Territorial Coordination Council (TCC), that centralizes the financial resources and is focused on the task of territorial organization (the TRF used about 90% of the TCC budget in 2016 and 2017, and is estimated to consume about 80% of it in 2018). The CRC also provides specialized technical human resources to the district councils. It is necessary that district councils are motivated in the implementation of the projects, which they usually are, as the TRF represents an extra contribution to their ordinary budget and a significant help in developing projects that, in most cases, the local communities have long been demanding.

Social segregation and urban vulnerability are common problems in contemporary cities, especially in the countries of southern Europe, and in Latin America. However, they are also present in all the OECD sphere, for instance northern and central European and North American cities. Increased urban segregation is correlated with a reduction in social cohesion. Therefore, the TRF is tackling a widespread and potentially conflictual challenge of urban societies all over the world. The AHP scientific methodology used by the TRF for budget allocation is objective, uses a relatively simple set of statistical data and is therefore easily replicated elsewhere; the AHP has allowed a quick, non-contested distribution of the financial resources of the TRF, which commonly is the main obstacle in complex initiatives and is known to drag out the process. In addition, the participative methodology makes the instrument adaptable to different contexts and local characteristics.

• The TRF is providing the Municipality with experience on how to improve local strategies for urban regeneration by involving all the relevant stakeholders in the process, trying to overcome the lack of participative tradition in Madrid

• The TRF is also gaining practical experience on how the devolution of competences to the district councils can take place at a larger scale, in the framework of the Municipality’s undergoing decentralization process.

• The TRF is improving local horizontal governance as district council departments are making a concerted effort to collaborate with the people, helping the Municipality to better understand their needs and adjust the characteristics of the projects. For instance of this collaboration is the creation of the Integrated Neighbourhood Plans in 2017.

• Hence, now the TRF is a permanent instrument with a proven ability to address social vulnerability.

The TRF has been developed at a great speed: in 2015, the Decentralization Strategy of the Municipality was approved. The TRF was first introduced in 2016, is being developed throughout 2017 and is set to continue in 2018. It has been widely accepted by all the agents, both institutional and civil.