At the suggestion of the UN and as part of a comprehensive multi-stakeholder approach, the government of South Africa, together with the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) and 14 municipalities, initiated a remarkable process to localise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda, resulting in ten Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) with many other very positive downstream impacts in just eight months.
Author: erik
NEWSLETTER -Edition No. 82, March 2025
Dear readers,
‘Many ideas grow better when they are transplanted into a different mind than the one in which they originated.’ This quote from the American doctor and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes aptly describes the secret to the success of the events in this newsletter issue:
Experts from Germany, Kenya, Palestine and Montenegro inspire each other with their concepts and experiences on how the potential of vacant public buildings can be better utilised through temporary use.
Amman’s city administration, the Greater Amman Municipality, has drawn up the first Voluntary Local Review in the Arab world in an extensive participatory process lasting almost two years. It is now accelerating the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and transforming the metropolis of four million people into a city worth living in.
The SDG localisation process in South Africa was even more extensive, involving all relevant ministries, 14 municipalities, including all major cities and metropolitan regions, UCLG, UN-Habitat and other stakeholders. Under the coordination of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), 10 VLRs were created within eight months and an exchange platform was established.
The partnership between Dabola, Guinea and Dortmund is also bearing fruit in the reorganisation of waste management in Dabola.
Finally, we would like to invite you to our next Insight Session on 20 March at 10:30 am CET during which decentralised cooperation and heritage-based tourism will be explicitly acknowledged.
We wish you exciting reading
Your Connective Cities Team
Review
Avoiding vacancy by opening buildings to interim use
Review of the online expert meeting on 12 March 2025
Vacant buildings have untapped potential in many respects, both for the community and for urban development. In addition, there is a loss of building fabric, littering and vandalism with security risks. How can vacancies be avoided? Experts from Germany, Kenya, Palestine and Montenegro discussed opening up public buildings for interim use in a virtual meeting.
Insights
The Voluntary Local Review (VLR) of Amman
Accelerating the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals
With four million inhabitants, the Jordanian capital is home to around 40 percent of the country’s total population. In 2021, Amman’s city administration, the Greater Amman Municipality, decided to create a VLR – the first in the Arab region. In the summer of 2022, the VLR was completed and presented together with the Voluntary National Review at the UN High-Level Political Forum in New York. The VLR has proven to be a complete success – both as an analytical tool and as a process…
Ten at a stroke
How South Africa is driving the process of SDG localisation
At the suggestion of the UN and as part of a comprehensive multi-stakeholder approach, the government of South Africa, together with the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) and 14 municipalities, including all major cities and metropolitan regions, initiated a remarkable process to localize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda, from which ten Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) with many other very positive downstream impacts were created in just eight months. Unique!
Transforming waste management in Dabola, Guinea
A successful partnership for a healthier future
Dabola is struggling with the challenges of rapid population growth and inadequate waste management, which pose a serious threat to residents and the local ecosystem. In 2019, a strategic partnership between Dabola and Dortmund (Germany) was established to address these issues. A comprehensive waste management plan, developed with the participation of all relevant stakeholders, has since brought about very positive change in the city.
Outlook
Celebrating Decentralized Cooperation and Heritage-Driven Tourism
How cultural exchange promotes community engagement – Insight Session on 20 March at 10:30 CET
On 20 March, the International Day of Happiness, Connective Cities will host an Insight Session celebrating the transformative role of decentralised cooperation in promoting sustainable development. Participants will gain insights into successful tourism strategies from different municipalities – inspiring how partnerships can be used to achieve local and global goals.
Avoiding vacancy by opening buildings to interim use
During the process of redefining a building’s purpose and outlining the procedure and financing of the venture, constructions might fall vacant. A vacant building is wasted potential in many ways, for both the community and the cities’ urban development.
Moreover, an unused building often leads to an increase in visual and atmospheric pollution due to the accumulation of waste, water infiltration and possible growth of mold or toxic materials. Besides these ecological consequences, vandalism may increase as well as insecurity in the surroundings. Hence, the revitalisation of vacant buildings can come costly to municipalities and possible investors.
How can vacancy be avoided? Opening public buildings to interim use was one of the topics that participants of the learning process “2nd Hands on Public Buildings” wanted to focus on during the one-year-long learning process on reusing public buildings from the 1960s and 1970s. Therefore, experts from Germany, Kenya, Palestine and Montenegro came together virtually on March 12, 2025.
During the meeting, the German guests Oliver Hasemann, ZwischenZeitZentrale Bremen, and Moritz Tonn, Transiträume e.V., elaborated on the facilitation of interim use in Bremen and Berlin. With years of experience and quite some examples of moderating agreements between the buildings’ owners and users, the inputs allowed for a general understanding of the opportunities and challenges related to intermediate tenants. Given the vibrant cultural scene in Berlin, Transiträume e.V. has successfully allowed artist to transform vacant halls to impressive exhibition spaces, attracting large numbers of visitors. Among other, ZZZBremen showcased its “Wurst Case” (translates into “Sausage Case”), in which a sausage factory was reused involving the public in an extended participation process. The factory was then rented in a small scale to local entrepreneurs, artists, and for social initiatives and artisans testing of various kinds of use (offices, workshops, studios).
Giving the buildings a temporary use helps their protection, reduce the operational and maintenance costs for public vacancy and can support the cultural and creative industry. Through the participation of neighbourhoods, the interim use of vacant buildings also helps revitalizing disadvantaged areas. The main challenges consisted in setting a frame for interested users, which means to create the basic infrastructure and the legal framework for working in the abandoned buildings as well as finding sponsorships and raising awareness for the new project.
Based on these inputs, the group of experts discussed their project examples and ideas regarding a possible temporary use. Twenty floors of the former Hilton Hotel in Nairobi are currently vacant and the participants were interested in how interim use might lead to the attraction of possible investors. Although in one case an investor who had visited an exhibition in Berlin had finally bought the complex, the guests stated that this was not the main objective of interim utilisation. Financing was also a concern of a participants from Montenegro and Regensburg.
The consense was that those who profit most from the interim use should also be hold financially responsible. In most cases, tenants only pay a symbolic rent, but their conservation of the building presents an economic advantage for the owner. Cases are very individual. In Regensburg, the activation of central heating in the concerned building would have caused high costs. While the guest suggested house in house solutions, Regensburg had yet found creative forms of interim use and offered the fireguard and police to use the building for training purposes. Asked from Hebron, questions concerned the public participation process and best practices. The ongoing Connective Cities learning process will offer another follow-up activity on the involvement of the public, soon.
„Think about your interim project from the end. How is it guaranteed that the project ends in everybody’s consent?” Oliver Hasemann, ZweischenZeitZentrale Bremen
Together for a cleaner city: improvements in waste management
Dabola is a dynamic city in Guinea, with a population of 47,200. Located approximately 430 km from the capital Conakry, it is a vibrant hub for traditional agricultural activities, trade, and craftsmanship. However, the city faces significant challenges due to rapid population growth and inadequate waste management, which negatively impact public health and the environment. Insufficient infrastructure and the accumulation of waste in public spaces threaten the well-being of residents and the local ecosystem.
In response to these challenges, a partnership between Dabola and Dortmund was established in 2019, focusing on solid waste collection and treatment as well as environmental education.
Since August 2022, a local expert has been assisting the municipality of Dabola in developing a sustainable waste management system and strengthening the capacities of local actors.
The implementation of a waste management plan, developed in consultation with all relevant stakeholders, marked a significant turning point in Dabola. This initiative not only strengthened cooperation between the municipal administration and external actors but also established fruitful partnerships with private companies specializing in the field. As a result of these collaborative efforts, Dabola has seen a notable decrease in street waste.
Version française: Ensemble pour une ville plus propre: améliorations dans la gestion des déchets
The Voluntary Local Review (VLR) of Amman: Accelerating the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals
With four million inhabitants, the Jordanian capital is home to around 40 per cent of the country’s total population. In 2021, Amman’s city administration, the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM), decided to create a VLR – the first in the Arab region. In the summer of 2022, the VLR was finalised and presented together with the Voluntary National Review (VNR) at the UN High-Level Political Forum in New York.
The VLR has proven to be a complete success – both as an analytical tool and as a process:
- An ‘ecosystem’ for collecting validated data has been developed.
- Sustainability goals (SDGs) were integrated into various areas of policy, strategy development and administrative action.
- New formats for citizen participation were trialled.
- New projects and partnerships were initiated and ongoing ones strategically interlinked;
- The digitalisation of the administration is very advanced.
The simultaneous creation of VNR and VLR ensured policy coherence and mutual support between the two levels.
Expert exchange on the interim use of public buildings
Are you an expert in the interim use of buildings? If so, we would be delighted to welcome you to a Connective Cities expert meeting, where participants in the Connective Cities learning process ‘2nd Hands on Public Buildings’ will learn about the work of ZwischenZeitZentrale Bremen and Transiträume Berlin e.V. and discuss examples of their projects with experts in this field. The exchange of expertise will take place online on March 12, 2025, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. via WebEx (alternative date as the meeting in February was cancelled).
For ecological and, increasingly, economic reasons, the reuse or conversion of buildings from the 1960s and 1970s is of interest to municipalities and their building stock. The Connective Cities dialogue event in cooperation with the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development, Building and Housing from 24 to 27 September 2024 was dedicated to this paradigm shift. Around 30 municipal experts from Germany, Kenya, Montenegro, the Palestinian Territories, Zambia and Ukraine exchanged views on solutions and challenges for the sustainable reuse of public buildings and jointly developed project ideas. The ongoing one-year learning process of Connective Cities on the reuse and repurposing of modernist buildings offers further insights into the topics discussed in Berlin and the opportunity to develop concrete solutions through exchange and study tours. On March 12, 2025, we will focus on the topic of ‘interim use’, which arose during the event, particularly for participants from Nairobi. All objects and project examples provided by the participants can be found in this publication.
Please feel free to contact me if you are interested: marcella.sobisch@engagement-global.de.
NEWSLETTER -Edition No. 81, February 2025
Dear readers,
The writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once wrote “You can’t look into the future, but you can lay the foundations for the future – because the future can be built”, which very well describes the innovations and transformation processes at local level, covered in this issue of the Newsletter.
In this edition, we report on how the six participating municipalities in the “Deep Dive: Heat in the City” are now moving on to optimizing and scaling after successfully testing their project ideas.
We provide insights into the Connective Cities dialog event on Voluntary Local Reviews and show how action planning for sustainability reporting can accelerate the achievement of the SDGs.
The cities of Bonn, Hamburg, Mannheim and Stuttgart, among others, have initiated the Voluntary Local Government Review process. The German Institute of Urban Affairs took this as an opportunity to publish a special publication to give German municipalities a strong voice in the national sustainability debate.
The study “Municipalities and Digital Transformation in Arab Cities” by the Arab Urban Development Institute, in which Connective Cities also participated, shows digital transformation processes of 21 cities across the Arab region.
We would also like to invite you to join us and urban practitioners across the world to discuss further innovative solutions, including three virtual insight sessions on “Success Factors for Fundable Project Proposals”, “Waste to Profit” and on the International Day of Happiness the “Appreciation of Decentralized Cooperation and Heritage-Based Tourism”.
We are also organizing two workshops on following topics: “Risk-informed urban development in the ECOWAS region” in Lomè, Togo, and “Opportunities of green transformation for local economic development in Africa.” in Nairobi, Kenya.
We wish you inspiring reading!
Your Connective Cities Team
Review
Deep Dive: Heat in the City
From Piloting to optimization and upscaling – workshop in Aswan on 21-23 January 2025
The Deep Dive celebrated another milestone in the two year long process, with the latest workshop being held in Aswan – Egypt from 21st to 23rd January 2025. The workshop marked the transition from piloting solutions to optimising and up-scaling. Participants representing the cities of Nairobi, Aswan, Mombasa, Lüdenscheid, Heidelberg and Lviv discussed the results of the implementation of their pilots.
Insights
Action planning for sustainability reporting
Documentation of the Connective Cities dialogue event from 2 to 4 December 2024 in Berlin
For the first time, representatives of municipal associations met with their colleagues from municipal administrations at a Connective Cites dialogue event. The regional diversity with perspectives and practical examples from South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Germany, South-East Europe and Asia enlivened the discussion and contributed to the success of the event. Five project ideas were developed as part of the action planning for Voluntary Local Reviews and are expected to be implemented in 2025.
German municipalities initiate Voluntary Local Government Review (VLGR)
Special publication of the German Institute of Urban Affairs (difu)
On the occasion of the Connective Cities dialogue event on Voluntary Local Reviews in Berlin, the cities of Bonn, Hamburg, Mannheim and Stuttgart initiated the preparation of a Voluntary Local Government Review. The report by difu in cooperation with the municipal umbrella organisations summarises the sustainability efforts of 15 German cities. The aim of the report is to give local authorities a strong, coordinated voice in the national sustainability discourse.
The publication is currently only available in German. As soon as an English translation is available, we will link to it in the newsletter.
Municipalities and Digital Transformation in Arab Cities
An Institutional Development Perspective – Arab Urban Development Institute
This report examines the digital transformation in Arab cities, focusing on how cities can enhance resource management, improve services, and engage communities through diverse digital technologies that impact how cities and local authorities operate. The report showcases 21 examples from cities across the Arab region and features insights from over 20 urban experts actively working on municipal digital transformation.
Outlook
Insight Session – Lessons Learned in Developing Bankable Project Proposals
With guest speaker Dr Christo Marais, specialist in natural resource management, on 27 February 2025 at 9:00 a.m. CET
How can cities develop successful and affordable project proposals? In this Insight Session, Dr Christo Marais will share his experiences from the Learning & Exchange initiative to develop viable projects and show practical strategies for Risk Informed Urban Development.
Insight Session – Waste to Profit
With guest speaker Dr Farshid Pahlevani, international expert for sustainable solutions in waste management, on 13 March 2025 at 9:00 a.m. CET
How can waste be utilised economically and converted into valuable resources? In this Insight Session, Dr Farshid Pahlevani presents innovative approaches to recycling challenging waste materials and shows how they can be used as raw materials for high-performance products, thus combining ecological and economic benefits.
Risk-Informed Urban Development in the ECOWAS Region
Workshop series starts on 18 March 2025 in Lomé, Togo
Following a successful call for expressions of interest, cities from Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo were selected to take part in the workshop series. The thematic focus of the project ideas includes adapting to climate risks, strengthening early warning systems, infrastructure measures and involving civil society.
Celebrating Decentralized Cooperation and Heritage-Driven Tourism
How cultural exchange promotes community engagement – Insight Session on 20 March at 10:30 CET
On 20 March, the International Day of Happiness, Connective Cities will host an Insight Session celebrating the transformative role of decentralised cooperation in promoting sustainable development. Participants will gain insights into successful tourism strategies from different municipalities – inspiring how partnerships can be used to achieve local and global goals.
Exploring the opportunities of green transition for local economic development
Potential of renewable energies, especially green hydrogen – Workshop from 15 to 17 April in Naivasha, Kenya
The switch to renewable energies offers enormous economic opportunities, especially through green hydrogen. With abundant solar and wind energy, Africa has ideal conditions for sustainable hydrogen production. The workshop in Naivasha is part of the Connective Cities peer-learning process and is dedicated to innovative approaches for local economic development that thrives on green energy.
Action planning for sustainability reporting
The member states of the United Nations (UN) committed to work closely with local and regional governments to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
From 2 to 4 December 2024, Connective Cities organized in collaboration with the Association of German Cities a Dialogue Event in Berlin, in which 37 practitioners from 25 institutions and 15 countries met in order to exchange their experiences in the field of the Voluntary Local and Sub-National Review.
The focus of the dialogue event was on exchanging experiences and providing mutual peer-to-peer advice. The regional diversity, with perspectives and practical examples from South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Germany, Southeast Europe and Asia, invigorated the discussion and contributed to the success of the event.
Short summary and a photo gallery on our microsite ‘Action planning for sustainability reporting‘
Municipalities and Digital Transformation in Arab Cities
This report examines the digital transformation in Arab cities, focusing on how cities enhance resource management, improve services, and engage communities through diverse digital technologies that impact how cities and local authorities operate. The research focuses on five key pillars that drive successful digital transformation:
1. Strategic Leadership
2. Organizational Change
3. Skills & Capacities
4. Funding & Financial Resources
5. Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement
By exploring these pillars, the report sheds light on how cities build digital urban economies, societies, and environments.
The report showcases 21 examples from cities across the Arab region and features insights from over 20 urban experts actively working on municipal digital transformation.
The report was developed with the contribution of Connective Cities and city officials who generously contributed their insights.
Deep Dive: Heat in the City
The Deep Dive celebrated another milestone in the two year long process, with the latest workshop being held in Aswan – Egypt from 21st to 23rd January 2025. The workshop marked the transition from the phase of piloting of solutions towards optimization and upscaling. Participants representing the cities of Nairobi, Aswan, Mombasa, Lüdenscheid, Heidelberg and Lviv (virtually) discussed the results of implementing their pilots. Additionally, participants had the opportunity to learn about projects and initiatives implemented in Aswan governorate that are relevant to sustainable urban development and urban climate action.
Program
The workshop activities were carried out over three days, and included peer advisory activities, presentations and a technical input from Prof. Jürgen Kropp from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in addition to an excursion in Aswan. A series of peer-to-peer exchanges between the participants who are working in different local conditions was facilitated. During the first day, the participants discussed their key learnings from the implementation of their pilots and elaborated on the measures taken to ensure co-creation with relevant stakeholders and the sustainability of the pilots’ results. Furthermore, a keynote from the deputy governor of Aswan, Mr. Amr Lashin, shed light on efforts to transition towards human-centric urban development in the governorate. The introduction also included a presentation from UDF’s general manager for international cooperation and community participation, Dr. Marwa Soliman, which delved into the role of the Urban Development Fund (UDF) and its numerous projects on integrated urban development and urban climate action.
This was followed on the second day by a series of exercises that guided the participants into identifying areas for optimization in their pilots and methods for upscaling including 1) standardization of design and replication, 2)planning incremental upscaling, 3) financial and human resources allocation, 4) redefining the anticipated risks given the wider scale of implementation, and 5) monitoring of progress including the definition of key performance indicators.
The final day incorporated a session on reflections from the participants on their experiences throughout the implemented stages of the Deep Dive in addition to a hybrid session with Prof. Kropp, who addressed their questions on various technical topics including 1) using artificial intelligence in climate research and devising of solutions, 2) channeling climate finance to implement measures for mitigation of urban heat, 3) existing affordable solutions that are of high impact, 4) cities and local governments position in international climate talks such as the COP29, and 5) building climate-resilient health systems. These topics will be the focus of a series of virtual sessions that will be held in the upcoming months with Prof. Kropp and PIK.