To address environmental challenges related to the loss of native species as well as the increasing CO2 emissions due to urbanisation, Karak municipality in Jordan constructed a nursery that aims at growing trees from native species. Besides demonstrating environmental protection and the transition into renewable energy sources, the project will have an economic impact resulting from the savings in the municipal budget as well as job creation for the local community.
Category: Cities and climate change
First planning steps for a pilot composting plant
Waste management experts from the Ecuadorian capital Quito and Hamburg (Germany) designed a first pilot composting plant for organic waste. It intends to serve the city of Quito as an introduction to sustainable waste recycling.
Scaling up cycling infrastructure in Lindau, Germany
As cycling is becoming increasingly popular for leisure and as an alternative to using the car, municipalities have to adapt their cycling infrastructure. However, they should not forget to involve their citizens in the planning process.
Turning waste into a resource
The City of Bizerte (Tunisia) introduced the separation and composting of organic waste, in cooperation with the City of Rostock (Germany). During a dialogue event and two reciprocal delegation trips, the idea for the project was jointly developed by experts from Rostock and Bizerte. With funding from the ‘Partnership Projects for Sustainable Local Development (Nakopa)’ programme of the Service Agency Communities in One World (SKEW), a composting plant was built and commissioned at the end of 2020.
Quito: not returning to the “old normal” after Covid-19
In Quito, many people have started travelling by bike during the Covid-19 pandemic. This momentum has to be used to change people’s mobility behaviour also in the long-term.
Call for participants: How to promote locally-driven knowledge networks for climate neutral city development solutions
“How to assure a locally-driven and knowledge network-oriented approach to Climate neutral City Development?” is one of the key questions the 2nd Green City Pioneers of Change Workshop will provide answers to. Join us in this 2nd Pioneer-Event and register here!
As part of the Connective Cities’ recovery program on “Municipal response to COVID-19” the topical cluster “Green Urban Development” is currently working on synergies between mobility and urban space solutions involving cities like e.g. Kigali, Kisumu, Hamburg, Hanoi, Dortmund, Belo Horizonte, Kochi, Lalitpur, Quito, and Buenos Aires.
The cluster wants to encourage an exchange between Green City Pioneers of Change which involves, apart from peer-learning between the above-mentioned cities, two public events.
The first of the two planned Green City Pioneers of Change Workshops was conducted on 19. January 2022. It focused on the presentation of inspirational international practices and encouraged a reflection among city pioneers on how to promote first green initiatives and the role of pioneers in facilitating them (see video and case documentation here).
This 2nd Green City Pioneers of Change Workshop on 25 February 2022 will focus on the reflection of critical success criteria for the promotion of bottom-up approaches to Climate neutral City Development. The cities cooperating in the cluster and the experts facilitating the cluster will share their efforts and their way of learning in
- the creation of local knowledge networks that integrate young researchers und local universities, change makers in the local administration, existing firms and start-ups with new business models
- promoting several smaller “learning by doing” and implementation-oriented initiatives that are becoming building blocks for a more systemic transformation approach in the respective cities.
Based on the presentation of these concrete experiences we will reflect with the participants in an interactive way on the need and ways to promote a locally versus mainly externally driven approach to Climate neutral City Development.
Join us in this 2nd City Pioneer of Change Event! Register now here.
Conference language is English.
Urban Gardening Guidebook
From July to December 2020, an initial intensive global programme on ‘municipal response to the pandemic’ was conducted by Connective Cities that has been augmented with the programme ‘municipal recovery from the pandemic’ starting August 2021. The working group “Biodiversity and Environmental Protection” was the first group to be established as part of this programme.
This Guidebook is one result of an extensive exhange. It explains, why Urban Gardening Matters? and guides the reader through all steps of an urban gardening project – from the first situational analysis, over the preparatory and implementation phase up to a final monitoring and evaluation.
Unturning the Stones – Exploring Climate Finance for Asian Cities
In the event 25 urban practitioners and experts from 6 countries exchanged on innovative and efficient financing approaches to build climate resilient and low-carbon cities. They were united by the fact that all of them are working at the forefront of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in their cities. The event was jointly organised by Connective Cities, TURBOCLIC (Transformation – Urban Opportunities – Climate Change), an initiative from GIZ’s sector networks TUEWAS (Transport Environment Energy and Water in Asia) and SNGA (Governance Asia).
Southeast European (SEE) Regional Network continues exchange on recovery methods and practices
A total of up to 100 urban practitioners and experts participated in the Network Events held on behalf of Connective Cities international network initiative and Covid-19 Program. Two separate events held on 12th of November and 13th of December 2021, served as final big get-togethers of the year 2021 for the SEE Network members, leaving them with some food for thought and the floor for exchanges widely open for an upcoming year.
First Event on November 12, 2021 – “Connective Cities virtual exchange discussing the Southeast European Network’s development and presenting good municipal practices in the area of digitalization and crisis management” – was devoted to supporting peer-to-peer exchange and gathering municipal representatives, as well as field experts, to discuss crisis management and digitalization experiences, existing challenges, and to explore how scale-up strategies could be enhanced to meet crisis-induced demands. To cover these topics, the event was divided into three parts ensuring representation of all types of interaction as well as exchange. The web-seminar featured a Keynote speaker, who focused on COVID-19 and long-term challenges for territorial policies, followed by 3 case-study presentations on municipal responses to COVID-19 in terms of digitalization and crisis management from Melitopol (Ukraine), Tbilisi (Georgia) and Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina) – these examples demonstrated diverse practices taken up by each municipality during recent times. A panel discussion about the importance of digitalization for efficient crisis management at local governance level amid COVID-19 served as a closing ground of the event, ensuring an all-encompassing discussion on challenges, visions and possible peer-to-peer exchanges in the regards of topics discussed all throughout the day.
Recording and resources of the first session can be found on Connective Cities Platform here.
Sustainable urban energy planning in Southeast Europe
Sustainable Urban Energy Planning was a continuation theme for this year’s event gathering representatives of municipalities from Belarus, Ukraine, Kosovo and Georgia along with other interested practitioners in the field. These countries are the parties to international climate agreements and aim to harmonize their legislation with the energy acquis.
The Connective Cities Planning Workshop, held on 2-4 November 2021, represented a follow-up learning process for those 10 municipalities that were keen to engage after the Dialogue Event held in May 2021. The workshop aimed at supporting the municipalities in fine-tuning their project ideas and developing them further towards bankable project proposals. Due to COVID-19 pandemic it was decided to conduct the event virtually.