Author: erik

Heat in the City

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“Heat in the City” is the first Deep Dive learning project run by Connective Cities. Through the “Deep Dive” model, the Connective Cities platform allows municipalities to assign two or three staff spend two to three years as part of an international group focusing on a global issue which is relevant to cities.

2023 was the warmest year since weather records began. Heat accumulated with great intensity in cities, leading to the formation of “heat islands”. In the period from 1986 to 2005 German cities experienced twice as many days with temperatures of 30°C or more than in surrounding areas. Without wide-ranging countermeasures, this number could increase tenfold by 2100. Hot weather particularly affects vulnerable groups such as older people, children, the sick, homeless people and people who work outdoors.

From mid-2023 to mid-2025, six municipalities are joining forces for the Connective Cities “Heat in the City” Deep Dive. Together they are analysing the impacts of heatwaves and how heat islands form in their cities, and they are developing solutions tailored to local conditions. The cities involved are Lüdenscheid and Heidelberg (Germany), Aswan (Egypt), Nairobi and Mombasa (Kenya), and Lviv (Ukraine).

At a meeting in Nairobi in March 2024 the delegates undertook detailed work to identify the challenges their cities face and started developing a strategy to manage them. By the end of 2024 they aim to implement pilot projects which can be scaled up at a later date. At a third in-person workshop in Heidelberg from 3 to 6 June 2024 they expanded on their pilot projects and drafted action plans for implementing the projects.

This documentation presents the results to date in detail.

Data-driven municipal planning

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Connective Cities’ working group ‘Local development strategies’ is supporting municipalities in the MENA region to embark on their process of local strategic planning. With the aim of formulating local development strategies, this process involves data collection, engagement with community stakeholders, collaboration between municipal departments and accurate needs assessment. Data collection in particular has been identified as a major impediment in devising local development strategies that respond to the current needs of the local communities. Taking the first steps towards establishing up-to-date robust municipal database presents an opportunity for making informed planning decisions that are evidence-based.

Kufranja municipality – city of oxygen in Jordan

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This is the first video in the second edition of ‘Voices from Connective Cities’. Dr. Anwaar Bani Salman, Head of Planning and studies at Kufranja municipality in Jordan talks about the competitive advantage of the municipality in agri- and eco-tourism due to its unique nature and high percentage of green cover. She highlights the benefits of peer learning particularly from Madaba municipality on the topics of local development strategies, proposal writing, and forging partnerships with stakeholders from different sectors. She noted that the moral support that she received from Connective Cities network helped her overcome various challenges such as fear of failure.

Watch video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/q6TZawYNglY

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Further information: Municipal Business Incubators in Madaba

Solar pumps, e-mobility, and climate-friendly street lighting in Sub-Saharan Africa

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The workshop is part of a working group for Renewable Energy Applications for Cities convened by Connective Cities in collaboration with the Romanian development agency RoAid.

Apart from the municipal experts and the Connective Cities team, the conference was graced by the attendance of Daniella Dobre (RoAid), Massimiliano Pedretti (Delegation of the European Union to Tanzania), and Dr. Tobias Godau (GIZ ProWaS – Water Security and Climate Resilience for Urban Areas in Tanzania.

The conference was a follow-up event of the kick-off workshop in Nairobi in 2023, focusing on the topic of Street Lighting and E-Mobility applications in the urban context.

Participants

The participant experts represented the cities of Nairobi, Kisumu and County of Baringo (Kenya), City of Kasungu (Malawi), Gulu city (Uganda), City of Dar es Salaam, City of Mwanza and City of Tanga (Tanzania). The Working Group is accompanied by the international representatives from the cities of Gersthofen (Germany), Slatina and Alba Luluia (both Romania).

Participating institutions were:

  • Malawi Local Government Association (MALGA)
  • Regional Administration and Local Government Tanzania (PO-RALG)
  • The City Climate Gap Fund (through the project support office of the Global Covenant of Mayors)
  • The African Development Bank (through the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Department)

Ideas presented:

All ten cities presented their projects and received advice. All ten cities are familiar with the prerequisites for funding and have completed 70% of these requirements.

Kisumu, Kenya:

Improving electric mobility and street lighting in the city of Kisumu. Piloting a PPP model for the deployment of charging infrastructure for 2- and 3-wheel motorcycles.

Baringo, Kenya:

Solarization of a water pump that pumps water from Lake Baringo to a treatment plant in Kabernet town.

Gulu, Uganda:

Solarization of the main street of Gulu City.

Mwanza, Tanzania:

Solar Project on Ijinga Island generated from solar panels to operate water pumps that push water to a treatment tank. Fundraising stage, feasibility analysis completed already.

Nairobi: Energy efficiency and Solarization of markets. Target pilot projects: City Market, City Park Market, Kangundo Road Market and Gikomba Market. Energy audits for these sites have been carried out.

Dar es Salaam: Solar powered street lighting along market street incorporating solar power radio for the market and charging stations for three wheelers.

Tanga: The cites faces an ever-growing landfill. The city intends to undertake a waste to energy project. To begin, the city therefore aims to undertake waste value chain analysis. This will highlight the waste characteristics and the attendant calorific values.

Kasungu: The City of Kasungu presented a double challenge of deforestation due to the heavy usage of biofuels (firewood and charcoal) and the high cost of power for lighting the streets compounded by lack of such streetlights in many areas. The city therefore prioritizes for the project to prepare a solution for solar street lighting still integrated with the main grid for back-up.

Malawi Local Government Association (MALGA): The proposed project focuses on installing solar-powered streetlights to improve lighting in selected municipalities and cities in Malawi. This initiative aims to enhance the local business environment, improve security, and contribute to local economic development.

Targeted Municipalities: Kasungu, Karonga, Luchenza, Mangochi.
Targeted Cities: Zomba City, another city to be determined.

Next Steps of the Working Group

In the journey to support the cities to develop solutions to their challenges, Connective Cities and RoAid plan to continue their support via:

  • Insight sessions and webinars: present emerging knowledge in short learning sessions.
  • Best practices: Publishing of innovative solutions of the collaborating cities.
  • Conferences / Workshops: to bring the city experts together to scale up peer to peer and associated learning.
  • Expert missions: will be availed to city experts with clear cases and inputs for experiential learning and exchange. This will include virtual formats where cities are connected according to relevance of needs.

Bonn benefits in the long term from expert exchange on SDG monitoring

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The city of Bonn is considered a pioneer in reporting on the local implementation of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda. In 2022, it presented its second voluntary implementation report – a Voluntary Local Review (VLR) – to the United Nations. A significant milestone in this journey was a dialogue event held in April 2021, which the city organized jointly with Connective Cities.

Growing attention for Voluntary Local Reviews

Bonn embarked early on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015. It was among the first of approximately 40 cities worldwide to submit a VLR. Following the publication of its first VLR in 2020, there was a desire to further advance its work through international exchange and to share its experiences with others.

Disaster management and fire services in Polokwane

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The South African municipality of Polokwane is regularly affected by urban flash floods, causing severe damage to municipal infrastructure. Phuti Kabe, Manager of Disaster Management and Fire Services, explains in this Good Practice how an interdisciplinary team managed the flood damage and secured emergency funding.

Strengthening Risk-Informed Urban Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

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SADC Peer-to-Peer Learning Platform for Integrating Disaster Risk Management into Urban Planning and Development

The race against time to determine resilience-driven solutions to highly complex and existential urban disaster risk challenges is increasingly necessary more so in Africa. Projections point to the fact that by 2050, 90% of the global urbanization will be experienced in Africa and Asia. Despite Africa’s low contributions to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, the continent remains the most vulnerable to hazards and risk drivers like such as, but not limited to, climate change and (climate) variability. Evidently, Africa’s cities face exponential growth, unplanned urbanization trends and unfolding vulnerabilities threatening thus, to undo urban development gains. By 2050, most of the countries in the region will have made an urban transition, meaning that more than 50% of their population will live in urban areas, which are in turn, the cornerstone of Africa’s socio-economic development (IFRI 2022). As hubs of infrastructure, services, trade and people, cities are faced with one of the major urban threats in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), namely floods, subsequently challenging the continent’s socio-economic development ambitions. Urbanization is arguably an inevitable, unstoppable yet positive trend which nevertheless has the potential to greatly increase risk.

To incorporate integrated Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and climate change adaptation measures into multilateral and bilateral development cooperation programs – within and across all sectors -, Connective Cities (CC) and the Resilience Initiative Africa (RIA) have called the joint initiative on risk-informed urban development (RIUD) to enable peer to peer exchanges through a hybrid modular learning processes (LP). The LP focuses on strengthening risk-informed urban development by creating innovative solutions for flood risk management in urban systems situated in Sub-Sahara Africa with a focus in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Region.

The LP enables the use of an agile, barrier-reduced learning and exchange platform for RIUD, which is used by regional, national, and local governmental and non-governmental actors. The modular and systemic approach of the LP for RIUD includes areas related to “Sustainable Urban Development” and “Good governance” facilitating the formation of new partnerships across vertical and horizontal scales for urban/regional resilience. Through the differentiated yet complementary political counterparts, between CC and RIA, the GIZ is able to ensure scalability and wide-spread transfer and communication of the results (i.e. RIUD SADC Publication).

To enhance resilience in southern African cities, CC and RIA developed a series of hybrid modular LPs (Live Events and virtual Insight Sessions) which focus on peer to peer exchange on integrated flood risk management in SADC as part of Sub-Sahara Africa.

The kick-off event in Windhoek, Namibia took place in April 2023 and marked the first round of the LEP by creating feedback loops to inform the development of context-specific, gender-equitable and climate-change-sensitive solution options directed at tackling urban flood risk challenges in both structural and non-structural terms. During the kick-off event, the peer-to-peer exchange was guided by initial thematic areas i.e: 1) Understanding and managing flood risk drivers, 2) Green infrastructure and nature-based approaches for risk-informed solutions, and 3) Risk communication flows and good governance.

Women’s leadership in municipalities

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The disparity in confidence and trust placed in female leaders in municipalities compared to their male counterparts presents a significant impediment towards promoting women’s leadership in municipalities. This gap is manifested in various ways, including biased perceptions, limited support from the voters, and unequal treatment in professional settings that hinders their efforts to create positive change.

The working group ‘Women’s leadership in municipalities’ has identified this topic among three thematic focus topics that also include election campaigning and lobbying strategies, as well as legislative reforms of municipal election laws. The workshop held on the 25th June aimed at 1) proposing practical ideas and mechanisms to enhance women’s self-confidence to fully achieve their leadership potential, 2) investigating ways to strengthen trust between women and society with regards to assuming decision-making roles and implementing reform programs.

Related publication:

Municipal Observatory for Gender Mainstreaming
A guide for municipalities in the MENA region

10 Years Connective Cities

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“And there is a magic in every beginning…” these Hermann Hesse’s words can be used to describe the atmosphere when almost 70 experts from local politics, local administration and academia came together for their first exchange of ideas exactly ten years ago in Leipzig’s former stylishly renovated town bath. (Some impressions: https://youtu.be/CA7naV3BFco )

The motto of the kick-off event was “Sustainable urban development between resource efficiency and sufficiency”. The key concepts of “efficiency” and “sufficiency” were presented as two complementary strategies for sustainable urban development. The discussion ranged from technological innovations for resource-efficient development paths, to social innovations that focused on the transformation of social and individual lifestyles. The approaches and topics discussed then, have lost none of their importance for sustainable urban development. Such topics under the umbrella of Connective Cities today include “flood management”, “energy-efficient urban redevelopment and energy-efficient construction”, “revitalisation of contaminated inner-city areas”, “citizen participation”, “participatory, integrated urban renewal”, “neighbourhood development” or “urban gardening and urban agriculture”.

The very first kick-off event was attended by a large number of international participants, including experts from South Africa, Kenya, Morocco, Indonesia, China, Colombia, Hungary, and Serbia.

Local Economic Development Forum in Tbilisi

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Tbilisi, June 7th – Connective Cities Southeast Europe convened a parallel session during the Local Economic Development (LED) Forum in Tbilisi, focusing on “Renewable Energy Options at the Municipal Level.” This session provided a platform for mayors from Georgian municipalities, including Senaki, Eredvi, and Khoni, to exchange insights, challenges, and innovative approaches in advancing renewable energy initiatives within their jurisdictions. Furthermore, Dr. Irakli Samkharadze, Energy Advisor of Omnia, provided insights into the European Green Deal and its implications for municipalities, enriching the discussion with a broader perspective on sustainable energy transitions.

The Mayor of Senaki Municipality shared notable advancements, including the integration of renewable energy sources into municipal buildings and the installation of solar panels across various locations to raise awareness and support action plans aligned with the Covenant of Mayors.