Category: Housing

From Vision to Reality

Posted on by burkhard

Working Group: Sustainable & Affordable Housing – Connective Cities

Affordable and sustainable housing remains one of the most pressing challenges for cities worldwide. In the next phase of the Connective Cities Sustainable & Affordable Housing Working Group, this online workshop introduces visualisation methods as a practical tool to support planning, communication, and peer learning among cities.

Building on previous working group exchanges, the session integrates principles of the New European Bauhaus and explores how AI-based visualisation can help cities translate strategic housing goals into tangible spatial concepts.

 

An old high-rise building in Bucharest. In front of it, a paved square filled with parked cars.
Photo: Connective Cities
The same building, but now there is a park with benches in front of it where people can sit and relax.
Square in Bucharest redesigned with the help of AI

The workshop combines hands-on visualisation with a mini peer-learning format, allowing participating cities to reflect on concrete cases related to building rehabilitation, public spaces, infill development, and neighbourhood upgrading.

Objectives

  • Introduce AI-supported visualisation approaches for affordable and sustainable housing
  • Apply NEB principles (sustainability, inclusion, aesthetics) to real city cases
  • Strengthen peer consultation and collective learning among Connective Cities alumni
  • Bridge the gap between visual concepts and implementation planning

 

Format

  • Short expert inputs
  • Live AI-based visualisation session using selected city cases
  • City-led peer consultation with feedback from peers, experts, and the Connective Cities team

 

The same image now with an additional cycle path through the park
Alternative visualisation models

The same image, now with an additional lane for buses

Practical information

  • Date: 22 January 2026
  • Time: 10:00–13:00 CET
  • Location: Online (Connective Cities Platform)
  • Language: English
  • Participation: Free of charge, register here


The workshop is open to the public. Active participation in the AI-based visualisation (including uploading own photos) is reserved for members of the Connective Cities Sustainable & Low-Cost Housing Alumni Group.

In case of questions, please contact:

Moses Munuve – moses.munuve@giz.de or Jelena Karamatijevic – jelena.karamatijevic@giz.de

Successful pandemic response in the slums of Lusaka, Zambia

Posted on by erik

Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, is growing rapidly. Within the last 20 years the number of inhabitants has risen from one million to over three million in 2020. The city’s formal housing could not be expanded fast enough, which is why especially the slums experience fast growth. Today around 70 percent of the city’s population is living in slums. 

In Zambia, COVID-19 primarily affects densely populated areas and especially the capital city of Lusaka, where more than half of the country’s recorded corona infections have been counted.

Lusaka’s slum dwellers are particularly vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic due to a high population density and an often insecure employment situation. In particular, the unemployment caused by Corona measures and the subsequent inability to pay has multiple broader consequences for slum dwellers, including: 

  • Food insecurity
  • Threats of eviction and forced evictions by landlords
  • Inability to pay for water supply and land rent to the city council. 

The Lusaka City Council took broad measures to address this. For example, land rents owed to the city council were reduced by 50 percent and fees for legalizing land ownership were sharply reduced. This relieved the burden on landowners and landlords, who were thus able to partially forgo rental income and refrain from evicting residents.  

Also, water access was no longer cut due to lack of payment, as water is particularly crucial for hygiene and thus for pandemic control.

In addition, food was distributed, and digital aid was disbursed to combat the acute effects of the pandemic. Decentralization helped to avoid crowded distribution points. High-traffic locations such as markets are regularly being disinfected so that the population can work and shop there with minimized risk. 

It became apparent that a multi-sectoral approach and the involvement of various stakeholders and local community leaders was necessary to pool resources and avoid duplication of effort

Further information

Urbanisation and proliferation of informal settlements in Lusaka, Zambia (PDF)

Recording of Event (Presentation on Lusaka starts min. 18): Urban Poverty and Living Conditions: Limiting COVID-19 Impacts in Densely Populated Backyard Rental Areas (only for those registered on the Connective Cities Platform) 

Contact

Danny Chibinda
Director of Housing and Social Services
Lusaka City Council, Zambia
info@lcc.gov.zm

Podcast with Dr. Lardo Stander: Economic Response and Housing

Posted on by erik

“The social compact is critical in order to respond quickly and appropriately to future pandemics.”

Economic modelling to better understand crisis scenarios; mapping vulnerable groups for targeted help. Dr. Lardo Stander from Pretoria, South Africa, told us how did they deal with the South African slums’ economic and housing problems during lockdown.

More: https://youtu.be/Z2XUO7wxIPI

Join us and watch a special series of videos and podcasts that will show how to overcome a crisis from many different points of view. More videos, podcasts and interviews coming soon on our COVID-19 page.

Final Report: Virtual Global Exchange

Posted on by erik

The exchange was designed to bring together urban practitioners from all over the globe. The goal was to ignite creativity, innovation, solidarity and motivation, while creating and enhancing this global community of practice around the common purpose of combating the global COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences with smart local solutions and strategies.

During the first week, urban practitioners and experts from different municipalities, the civil society, business and academia, presented a total of 56 Good Practices in 18 sessions and gave insights into their experienced challenges and local solutions to deal with the pandemic. The exchange were centered around the nine topics were Public Health, Crisis Management, Economic Response, Housing, Education, Digitalisation, Crisis Communication, Innovation, and Green Urban Recovery.

The second week was about receiving practical “How To” capsules with practical exercises on topics that came up repeatedly during the exchange events such as: social media usage, digital tools, and how to plan for virtual meetings. Finally, the newly learned mindsets and tools could be applied in a 4-hour solution design workshop.

International exchange of experiences: lessons learned in the Covid-19 crisis

Posted on by erik

As soon as it was clear that the Covid-19 would pose serious challenges to municipalities around the world, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) addressed Connective Cities to adapt its methodology to provide municipal practitioners with an opportunity to share their experiences in an agile and flexible way.

In many ways, local authorities are constantly at the forefront of global challenges, as they are the first level of government to feel the impact of any crisis. Yet municipalities also have the potential to act as fruitful sources of innovative solutions in addressing these challenges, and those solutions would also require cooperation with different levels of government and the involvement of many different types of stakeholders: Academia, Civil Society, Private Sector, etc..

The series started in July/2020 and had the objective to help improving the responsiveness and resilience of urban actors through exchange and peer-to-peer learning by promoting the exchange of practical solutions between practitioners and to disseminate good practices. The explosive spread of the virus put existing municipal structures and capacities to the test. On the other hand, the interconnectivity and digitalisation opened up the possibility of offering a series of exchange events 100% virtually.

Hardly all the benefits of a well-organised personal exchange can be fully replaced by the current technologies. Nevertheless, in a crisis like the one caused by the Covid-19, technology made it possible to organise more than 35 response dialogue events with the participation of more than 800 specialists in such a short time.

Our main objective was to bring together experiences to be presented during and discuss how local authorities can cooperate, learn from each other and ultimately build their capacity to address global challenges. On the 9th of December, Connective Cities organised the official final event of the series “Municipal Response to COVID-19”.

Besides a keynote presentation from the Head of the Urban Policies and Reviews Unit the OECD, the event on the 9th of December included a showcase of examples from Stuttgart-Germany, Belo Horizonte-Brazil, Aman-Jordan, Tshwane-South Africa and Lviv-Ukraine. In closing an e-learning course on crisis management was presented by Dr. Peter Tinnemann, Head Global Health Science Unit, from the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

During our additional session of 2020 on the 10th of December, tools and protocols that cities employ to monitor and control the infection chains during the COVID-19 pandemic were explored. While taking a closer look at the efficiency and effectivity of the tracking systems applied in the South Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, discuss existing challenges, and explore how can we enhance or scale-up tracing strategies. Speakers shared their experiences from different levels of local governance and research from Georgia, Serbia and Germany.

The Connective Cities team would like to thank all the inspiring and impressive urban practitioners who invested their time in sharing and discussing their good practices in response to the pandemic. In 2021 Connective Cities will continue to offer events and exchanges focused on the municipal needs connected to the Covid-19 pandemic. We warmly invite you to stay connected through our website and all our social media channels and stay tuned for updates and future events.

Virtual Global Exchange

Posted on by erik

The exchange was designed to bring together urban practitioners from all over the globe. The goal was to ignite creativity, innovation, solidarity and motivation, while creating and enhancing this global community of practice around the common purpose of combating the global COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences with smart local solutions and strategies.

During the first week, urban practitioners and experts from different municipalities, the civil society, business and academia, presented a total of 56 Good Practices in 18 sessions and gave insights into their experienced challenges and local solutions to deal with the pandemic. The exchange were centered around the nine topics were Public Health, Crisis Management, Economic Response, Housing, Education, Digitalisation, Crisis Communication, Innovation, and Green Urban Recovery.

The second week was about receiving practical “How To” workshops with practical exercises on topics that came up repeatedly during the exchange events such as: social media usage, digital tools, and how to plan for virtual meetings. Finally, the newly learned mindsets and tools could be applied in a 4-hour solution design workshop.

Download documentation

Municipal expert exchange to COVID-19- compact

Posted on by erik

Topics: Public Health & Crisis Management / Economy, Housing & Education / Digitalisation & Communication / Innovation

Time: 23 November – 3 December 2020

Cities worldwide are severely affected by the impacts of COVID-19. Unlike national governments, municipalities are in close contact with their citizens and are responsible for the implementation of measures decided by governments to reduce the spread of Corona infections.

Cities worldwide also have collected important experiences, which will be of immense relevance in the global fight against the virus. The crisis has shown how important the resilience of municipalities is: this directly applies to local crisis management and disaster preparedness as well as to the need for constantly adaptive urban planning. The current crisis has shown and proven once again that resilience is an essential capacity of municipalities.

To continue tackling the challenges of the pandemic in the future and to find suitable solutions to minimise its negative impact, it is now necessary to learn from and share experiences that will support the joint development of further measures. In the framework of its COVID-19 Municipal response dialogue, Connective Cities is organising a virtual global exchange series on “Municipal Response to COVID-19” from 23 November to 3 December 2020 and kindly invites you to be part of this series of events. This international exchange effort takes place in cooperation with engaged urban practitioners, municipal experts as well as local experts from academia, civil society and business.

More information

Call for solutions until 9 November: #SolutionsForCities

Posted on by erik

Worldwide cities face similar challenges. This has become even more visible through the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic situation has generated inspiring creativity and solidarity. How can we transfer innovative solutions from the pandemic to the future? How can we promote sustainable urban development for the common good? To tackle these questions, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community initiated the international, digital ideas competition #SolutionsForCities.

In a two-day virtual Challenge Lab, current challenges of cities were identified together with German Smart City model projects and with partner cities of the International Smart Cities Network (ISCN). These challenges will be published on the platform www.solutionsforcities.de with the Call for Solutions from October 28th.

Call for Solutions from October 28th to November 9th 2020

The Call for Solutions is a global call for the submission of digital solutions for the common good. It is aimed at international companies and start-ups, as well as local authorities, research institutions and projects, and civil society. The Call for Solutions opens on October 28th 2020 during the Smart City Day at the Smart Country Convention 2020! Until November 9th 2020, digital solutions can be submitted on the platform www.solutionsforcities.de as response to the published urban challenges.

Scalathon from November 23rd – 25th 2020

After the Call for Solutions, the participating cities or municipalities select the most suitable solutions for their challenges and compete in the Scalathon as a team with the respective solution providers.

The Scalathon is the core of the ideas competition and will take place from November 23rd – 25th 2020. During the three-day virtual workshop, selected solution providers will work closely together with the respective city or municipality, further develop the digital solutions and adapt them to the concrete local challenges.

Call for participants: International exchange of experiences: lessons learned in the Covid-19 crisis

Posted on by erik

August – December 2020

Cities worldwide are still experiencing the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic throughout all their municipal departments. In addition to public health care, municipal services must be maintained during the crisis. Local governments must also ensure their own ability to function properly. Some consequences of the pandemic, such as halting economic development, hit local authorities first. Municipalities are currently having to learn to cope with new situations very fast. But the crisis has also shown how important the resilience of municipalities is: this directly applies to local crisis management and disaster preparedness as well as the need for continually adaptive urban planning and development towards increasing the resilience of cities. The current crisis has shown and proven once again that resilience is an essential capacity of municipalities.

Many cities and municipalities have found solutions to the new challenges and developed new strategies. In order to better address the issues related to the pandemic, it is now necessary to share and possibly develop these solutions and strategies together.  
From August to December 2020, the international community of practice for sustainable urban development Connective Cities is organising a series of virtual exchange formats on measures, challenges, and solutions to overcome the corona crisis in cooperation with engaged urban practitioners (municipal experts as well as local experts from academia, civil society and business).

The series of virtual exchange events targets German and international urban practitioners working on various aspects of municipal strategies to cope with the COVID-19 crisis. Presentations of good practice examples will encourage the participating stakeholders to exchange ideas. Developing customized and practical solutions for relevant affected cities can also be an additional and beneficial outcome of the series in the context of a follow-up cooperation.

More information: Detailed and regular updated schedule of events

So coronavirus will change cities – will that include slums?

Posted on by erik

for David Sanderson, it’s hard to see how the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to any better outcomes for the close to a billion or so people who live in fast-growing, low-income, informal settlements, or slums, that cram cities throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. These settlements are some of the densest and most poorly serviced places on Earth.

The Ebola outbreak of 2014-16 killed over 11,000 people across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and had devastating impacts on economies, lives and health-care systems. However, yet evidence of post-Ebola improvements in urban planning are hard to find. The coronavirus — just one more tragedy for many who live in slums?

Read full article at The Conversation