“With the pressing issues of congestion, air pollution, inequality, and climate change, the question is no longer if a sustainable and ecomobile transportation system will exist but when. Effective implementation can be realized by making an informed decision. This is imperative because you cannot manage what you do not know. This report demonstrates how the EcoMobility SHIFT+ tool can be adopted to assess and measure the transportation system of six cities in China, India, and Uganda. The EcoMobility SHIFT+ is a useful tool for local authorities to measure, assess, and act to improve ecomobility. Furthermore, evaluation and monitoring is an essential step in the process of developing sustainable urban mobility plans.”
Author: erik
Call for participants: Climate Resilient Urban Development in South East Europe and the Caucasus region
Responding to climate change plays a crucial role today in sustainable urban development policies worldwide. The Southeast European region is no way exception being heavily impacted by growing trend of urbanisation. This is now coupled with the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 affecting the lifestyles of cities and municipalities, which need to adapt to more innovative and agile ways of working for future crises responses. Against this background, the international cities platform – Connective Cities cordially invites municipalities & urban practitioners to take part in the unprecedented and unique experience: Connective Cities Virtual Event: “Climate Resilient Urban Development” on 8-19 June 2020.
Bring your initial urban project idea and we will incubate it within 2 weeks of digital experience where you can expect to listen to inspiring keynote presentations from leading European scientists and share insights with your peers in carefully curated Peer2Peer collaboration and exchange formats. During asynchronous and synchronous workshops, you will learn how to collaborate digitally and get acquainted with tools, methods and the overall mindset Design Thinking that helps you to be more innovative and successful.
Check out our Call for Participants for more details and apply by 17 May 2020. The invite is predominantly open for the countries fitting under the EU’s reginal dimension of Eastern Partnership and Western Balkans
More information in the Call for Participants [pdf, 1,89mb].
Concerning the questions from international applicants on the event and the participation process, please contact: Mr. Irakli Samkharadze, GIZ Regional Network Coordinator Connective Cities – Southeast Europe. Tbilisi, Georgia (irakli.samkharadze@giz.de)
Interested German experts should contact Ms. Alice Balbo, Connective Cities Project Manager at the German Association of Cities (Alice.Balbo@staedtetag.de)
Climate Proofing Urban Development
The impacts of climate change include extreme weather events such as heavy rainfalls, severe thunderstorms, prolonged droughts and heat waves. These impacts pose major challenges for cities around the world. Although climate change is a global challenge, adapting to its impacts is largely a local process.
Almost 30 local practitioners from 12 cities, 10 countries and four continents accepted the invitation of Connective Cities and the City of Dortmund to a dialogue event on the topic of ‘Climate proofing urban development’, which took place from 3 to 5 September 2019 in Dortmund, Germany. This report documents the discussed good practices, solution approaches and developed project ideas.
UN-Habitat COVID-19 Response Plan and Campaign
The continuing spread of the COVID-19 crisis threatens the most vulnerable in cities and communities, particularly the one billion people living in slums and informal settlements. To address the crisis, UN-Habitat is launching an urgent COVID-19 Response Plan for 64 countries focusing on immediate action in poor and densely populated areas. This is supported by the COVID-19 Campaign to mobilize support among national, city and local governments and community leaders through its network of urban professionals, grassroots organizations and businesses.
Over 95 per cent of the world’s coronavirus cases are in urban areas across over 210 countries in nearly 1,500 cities. People in informal settlements are particularly at risk as they live in overcrowded conditions, lack adequate housing and basic services such as water and sanitation and many are informal workers surviving from one day to the next. This makes it extremely hard to implement measures to slow transmission such physical distancing, self-quarantine, handwashing or community-wide lockdowns.
UN-Habitat, which has over 40 years of urban experience, much of it in humanitarian situations, is working with its partners on the ground including mayors, governors, transport and utility providers, women, youth and community organizations and NGOs to urgently deliver the USD 72 million Response Plan in Africa, the Arab States, Asia Pacific, and Latin American and the Caribbean.
This catalytic support will amplify the impact of ongoing initiatives by central and local governments, communities and other UN agencies. Funding requirements will be updated as the situation evolves and needs are further assessed.
Over 70 per cent of the support will be used to help informal settlements to improve affordable access to water and sanitation, raise awareness about COVID-19, and support initiatives to prevent people becoming homeless by providing temporary shelter or alternative income generating activities. Ensuring safe transport and repurposing buildings to isolate those infected are other priority areas.
To ensure that urban responses, such as provision of water, food, housing, health services and livelihoods, are targeted to the most vulnerable and high risk areas, UN-Habitat will assist with data collection, mapping of existing and emerging hot spots and analysis working with its network of local and global partners. This will help evidence-based decision making by local governments and key stakeholders.
As the pandemic plunges the world’s economy into a global recession, UN-Habitat is focusing on policies and measures to mitigate the local social and economic impact of COVID-19 and is working with a coalition of global thought leaders and stakeholders in public and private spheres.
UN-Habitat has already provided seed funding of over USD 1.3 million for scaling up projects in 13 countries with community preparedness, outreach and hygiene support. The agency has also jointly launched with United Cities and Local Governments and Metropolis, a #BeyondTheOutbreak virtual live learning series for mayors and local leaders to share urban solutions.
“The UN-Habitat team is working night and day to help city and community leaders on the frontline of this pandemic to reduce the risks in informal settlements and help the most vulnerable.
“With our extensive network of partners as well as our in-house experts, UN-Habitat is working closely with cities and communities to find innovative and targeted solutions to provide water and sanitation, safe transport and to mitigate the economic impact on the urban poor,” said UN-Habitat’s Executive Director, Maimunah Mohd Sharif.
“We want to help build up the resilience of our community partners to respond to specific and varied challenges over the coming months and beyond.”
At the global level, UN-Habitat shares good practice and solutions and identifies successful policy, legal measures and governance approaches to respond to current needs and long term resilience.
In Africa, UN-Habitat will support 20 countries, prioritizing the coordination of emergency preparedness and response, improving access to food and basic services including water, sanitation and hygiene, and promoting entrepreneurship. UN-Habitat’s response in 11 countries in the Arab region focuses on improving water, sanitation, and hygiene, ensuring safe transport, securing livelihoods, vulnerability assessments and risk area mapping.
In 17 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the agency will collate, analyse and produce relevant data, improve hygiene, water, sanitation and health facilities and raise public awareness. And in 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, UN-Habitat will strengthen the capacity of local authorities, help mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic on the urban poor and join regional efforts to bring investment to vulnerable areas.
To amplify the impact and broaden the reach of the Response Plan, UN-Habitat is launching a COVID-19 Campaign ‘Take action with us in cities and communities’ which calls on civil society organizations, community groups, professional, academic and research institutions, businesses and local authorities to commit online to acting in solidarity to fight the pandemic in cities and helping the most vulnerable communities. The Campaign will provide a central place to network and share solutions, initiatives, good practice, lessons and stories from partners and strengthen integrated action to improve the resilience of cities and communities.
The Response Plan and the COVID-19 Campaign provide a roadmap and rallying point for the combined commitment of UN-Habitat and its network of urban actors to support cities’ proactive responses to protect their populations, halt the pandemic and work towards recovery and resilience.
For more information contact: Susannah Price, UN-Habitat Chief of Communication
Email: Susannah.price@un.org Tel: +254 722719867
UN-Habitat COVID-19 Response Plan
“The world is living through an unprecedented crisis as COVID-19 continues to spread, with tens of thousands of lives lost and over two hundred countries affected. In just a few months, the pandemic has transformed the way we live, work, travel and socialize. The world’s cities are generally reacting quickly to this urban humanitarian crisis and how they respond is critical to protect their population, halt the pandemic and set the scene for resilience and recovery.”
Näher – Öffentlicher – Agiler
Which future prospects do sustainable and crisis-proof cities have after the Corona pandemic? It is becoming increasingly clear that the corona crisis marks a turning point – politically, economically, socially, and individually. The future of cities and their links with the surroundings must also be rethought. The “post-corona city” will be “closer”, “more public” and “more agile” and can provide impulses for a “post-corona world” – more social, greener, more diverse.
This article is only available in German.
Dealing with the Corona Virus
Local utilities all over the world face unprecedented challenges in dealing with the Corona Virus. German utilities have exchanged their respective experiences and the measures they have taken in order to support one another and learn from one another. The German Association of Local Public Utilities has compiled, written down, and translated these experiences into English so that they may benefit utilities worldwide.
culture 21 – #CULTUREcovid19
COVID-19 is severely hitting the cultural life of our cities. Cultural venues as libraries, theaters and museums had to close and events had to be cancelled, with harsh consequences for freelance artists and creative professionals. The UCLG Committee for Culture has established a page listing the actions that cities and local governments are undertaking to ensure the right to culture for all citizens: http://www.agenda21culture.net/culturecovid19.
This page is updated periodically by the UCLG Culture Committee, using Twitter to share this page, using the tag #CultureCOVID-19
This page is part of the BeyondTheOutbreak initiative, the “Live Learning Experience: beyond the immediate response to the outbreak”, developed by UCLG.
Tackling coronavirus (COVID‑19) Contributing to a global effort
On its microsite about COVID-19 the OECD is compiling data, analysis and recommendations on a range of topics to address the emerging health, economic and societal crisis, facilitate co-ordination, and contribute to the necessary global action when confronting this enormous collective challenge.
In addition it offers “a country policy tracker”.
What are countries doing to contain the spread of the coronavirus? How are countries helping people, small businesses and the economy to weather the crisis and beyond? This Country Policy Tracker helps you to navigate the global response.
In addition – on city level – a summary can be found in the briefing note on
Cities policy responses
https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/…
Cities may be better equipped than the rest of their country to respond to the COVID19 crisis due to their well-developed health care facilities. However, cities are densely populated places where people live and gather, thus at risk of spreading the virus due to the close proximity among residents and challenges to implement social distancing. The briefing note provides examples of measures taken by cities to respond to the current coronavirus epidemic, clustered around six categories: i) communication and awareness raising, ii) workplace and commuting; iii) social distance; iv) vulnerable groups; v) local service delivery; and vi) support to business.
If you wish to submit examples of how your cities respond to COVID-19, please contact
Incremental community-based exit strategies for initiating and removing COVID-19 lockdowns
“Many nations across the Asia-Pacific have implemented guidelines for social distancing and introduced lockdowns to control COVID-19. However, now many leaders face the question of how they will be able to relieve their communities of the protective constraints in place. Who decides when safe is ‘safe enough’, or what level of residual risk is acceptable? Getting this wrong is something no leader can afford. By applying a community-based incremental approach to the easing of lockdowns, tailored to demographic and social stratifications of risk, much of the guesswork can be eliminated.”