"Urban populations in cities around the world are growing at unprecedented rates, changing the profiles of the urban world and redefining the outlook of the urban phenomenon. As cities grow, there are complex challenges stemming from stretched transportation, housing, energy and water infrastructure. Ancillary, pandemics, rising food prices, polluted waterways and skies, blackouts and joblessness have eroded quality of life and destabilized societies and their prospects for prosperity. This demographic change is also assigning and demanding new roles and functions for cities as well as changing their economic, social and political character. Many, especially in the developing world, are not functioning well due to significant social problems such as high levels of poverty and poor infrastructure.

This challenges urban practitioners to harness urbanisation for sustainable development and inclusive growth in these cities under strenuous conditions. Hence, the pressure to reinvent planning and transform cities at local, regional and national scales. Architects, engineers, urban planners, civil society and policy makers face unprecedented challenges to creating sustainable, healthy, ‘smart’, ‘green’, adaptive, inclusive, productive, safe, flexible and resilient cities.

The theme of the 52nd ISOCARP International Planning Congress “Cities we Have vs. Cities we Need” is conceived as a catalyst to foster trans-disciplinary ways to interpret the past and conceive the future of cities. This requires a reflection on current practice of planning and the making of cities and for the generation of different ways in which the cities we need are created. It calls for sharing of knowledge and practice about cities as well as innovative ways in which desirable cities of the future are created. The theme provides an opportunity to work toward collaborative solutions for the challenges faced by the cities we have in order to create the cities we need in future."

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