The Four Cities Initiative was launched by the mayors of Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and Osijek at their meeting in Zagreb on Tuesday, its purpose being to serve as a platform for cooperation on topics of common interest to the biggest Croatian cities, including affordable housing.

“In some cases, our cities cooperate better with cities abroad than with one another, which is absurd. We often struggle with the same problems and we have realised that we can run our cities much better if we cooperate more closely,” Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic told the press.

The initiative brings together the four largest Croatian cities and their mayors – Zagreb’s Tomasevic, Osijek’s Ivan Radaic, Split’s Ivica Puljak and Rijeka’s Marko Filipovic.

“We have agreed on the topics that we have in common – affordable housing, digitalisation and green transition,” Puljak said, adding that cities sharing the same problems also have a lot of interesting solutions for them, which they can share with one another.

Affordable housing is a matter of national survival, and that and other problems are what has brought the four cities together, Filipovic said, mentioning also the energy efficiency of buildings.

“I believe that the answer to many questions is integrated investment, and in that regard, all four cities are envisaged by the national financing framework,” he said.

Cooperation above party interests

The mayors previously had a number of meetings and cooperated bilaterally, and Radic noted that agreement was reached to form city task forces to work on solving the identified problems.

“Based on the example of Osijek we are adopting a new decision on local regulations, and it has already been implemented in Split. We will discuss digitalisation with Rijeka, a topic that we have in common with Zagreb is city transport, and in terms of waste management, Osijek has made major progress compared to other cities,” said Radic.

Tomasevic added that other interesting topics were the management of city property, waste management, and the choice of the future green transport model in cities, namely whether they would use hydrogen or electricity.

All four mayors see their cooperation as being above the interests of the individual parties, with Tomasevic dismissing speculation that the meetings are part of negotiations on a national political coalition.

The four mayors announced that the next meeting would be held in Rijeka in June, after which meetings would also be held in the other cities included in the initiative.