Category: Integrated urban development

Support for more bike lanes in cities

Posted on by erik

On 8 September 2021 the event “Pop-up bike lanes: long-term opportunities for green urban development after the COVID-19 pandemic?” took place as part of the virtual event series Insight Sessions: (Post) COVID Urban Futures. The series facilitates a recurring exchange on various topics of sustainable urban development in the (post) COVID-19 era between urban practitioners and interested participants worldwide. In entertaining exchange formats, space is created for impulses and reflection, and innovative solutions are presented.

The current event focused on pop-up bike lanes and changes in urban mobility during the pandemic. Over 30 participants from Bangladesh, Georgia, Tunisia, Egypt, Japan and Germany, among others, took part in the event. Representatives of cities worldwide discussed the possibilities and opportunities that arise from the long-term maintenance of the newly created cycle paths.

Programme

After a brief insight into this year’s Connective Cities COVID-19 programme, Sebastián Posada Garcia of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Department at the Secretariat of Mobility of the City of Bogotá, Colombia, presented the concept of pop-up bike lanes and good practice in Bogotá. At peak times in April and May 2020, the city installed more than 80km of additional temporary bike lanes, some of which have already been converted into permanent new bike lanes. In his presentation, Mr. Posada Garcia also addressed some frequently mentioned criticisms against pop-up bike lanes, such as increased numbers of accidents or increased congestion for motorists. He emphasised, based on statistical analyses, that the speed of car traffic did not decrease during the pandemic. However, many more citizens used bicycles to get around the city of Bogotá during COVID-19.

Afterwards, Thomas Kiel d’Aragon, Head of the Transport and Civil Engineering Department at the German Association of Cities in Berlin, presented examples of pop-up cycle paths in German cities. He also discussed the legal basis for the construction of additional cycle paths, as well as the financing of sustainable urban projects. Mr. Kiel d’Aragon also highlighted the enormous knowledge in the private sector compared to cities and pleaded for a close cooperation between the municipal administration with cycling initiatives or sustainability movements and private institutions.

Finally, Seçil Öznur Yakan, co-founder of the Women on Bicycle Initiative in Istanbul, Turkey, gave insights into the work of her initiative. In an impressive way, she showed how women around the world are working for more equity in bicycle mobility and networking with each other as well as with urban actors. Ms Öznur Yakan also presented the film My Bicycle My City, which was released in 2019 as part of World Bicycle Day. The film is available on YouTube: Benim Bisikletim Benim Şehrim Film – 2019 – YouTube

The presentations were followed by a lively discussion in which further questions could be answered, for example on the political promotion of increasing bicycle mobility in the different cities and countries. Finally, the Connective Cities working groups “Gender responsive urban mobility” and “Smart Mobility” were presented in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. You want to be part of the working groups? You can find more information and register here: Platform COVID-19 | Connective Cities Network

Recording

You can find the recording of the event here: Insight Session: Pop-up bike lanes - Long-term opportunities for green urban development?

Presentation

Good Practice Bogotá, Colombia

Pop-Up Bikelanes in German Cities

Insights Women on Bicycles

Providing access to cycling as a sustainable and affordable form of transport

Posted on by erik

Mzikhona Mgedle, a local resident in Langa township (Cape Town, South Africa), founded Langa Bicycle Hub in 2020 with a vision of positively influencing the community of Langa while providing access to a sustainable and affordable form of transport by using bicycles to move people and basic goods and facilitate community building. This project is in partnership with Open Streets Cape Town, Darrvin Ebikes Africa, Langa Safety Patrol and Langa Community individuals.

Call for participants: Risk informed urban development

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Are you an urban representative, employee of a municipality or an urban practitioner from a NGO, university, research unity, or other working directly with cities administrations in a low- or middle-income country? You want to work towards a flood risk informed urban development and would like to apply for the City Climate Finance Gap Fund?

Join our working group and:

  • Get introduced to the City Climate Finance Gap Fund and what it offers
  • Profit from peer-to-peer consultations and jointly work on challenges, project ideas and expressions of interest with your peers
  • Learn from good practice examples of international cities working on risk management
  • Receive individual expert’s advice on your ideas
  • Benefit from a strong cooperation with UNFCCC, UNDRR and the WorldBank
  • Profit from different capacity building measure to improve your skills and understanding of risk informed urban development

European cities have experienced flooding many times in history, however, the scale and numbers of losses of life from the flooding in July 2021 have been devastating. Hitting the long safely imagined temperate zone, the events reveal the importance and urgency of discussing measures to enhance disaster preparedness, strengthen resilience and enhancing preparedness in cities around the globe. The need of cities worldwide to adapt to a changing climate and an increasing number of extreme weather events is more prominent than ever to save lives, reduce economic losses and protect critical infrastructure. The competences and institutional capacities of policy- and decision-makers need to be strengthened to address risks.

Within the working group on risked informed urban development, which will be hosted jointly by the Global Initiative Disaster Risk Management (GIDRM) and Connective Cities, cities will work together towards handing in their expressions of interest for the City Climate Finance Gap Fund by peer-to-peer exchanges, learning from good practice examples and profiting from individual experts’ advice. Specific topics of the project ideas may include public sensitization for disaster management, risk assessment and communication, risk governance, as well as other scopes depending on the participating cities’ needs.

You are interested in becoming part of the joint GIDRM and Connective Cities working group on risk informed urban development? Please consider the following steps:

Join the working group online: Risk informed urban development | Connective Cities Network

Join the first meeting: 12 October 2021, 14:00-15:00 CET

For further requests, do not hesitate to contact Karl-Heinz Gaudry (karl-heinz.gaudrysada@giz.de) or Ricarda Meissner (ricarda.meissner@giz.de).

Cities Challenge: 2030 Agenda meets Urban Climate Action

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What does a climate-friendly, inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable city look like in practice? In 2019, GIZ’s CitiesChallenge 2030 ideas competition set out to showcase and support examples for this all over the world. More than 30 projects replied to the calls for application. GIZ and BMZ selected four winning projects to be Urban Living Labs:

  • In Portoviejo, Ecuador, women in a poor peri-urban settlement acted as guardians to support the vulnerable and the sick, working together with the municipal disaster management department. With the help of students and experts from universities and professional organisations, they managed to secure paths and public spaces from landslides.
  • In Jordan’s capital Amman, an NGO created microforests in high-density, precarious neighbourhoods. This triggered cross-sectoral cooperation between stakeholders, who together tested novel planting methods to improve air quality, combat heat islands and create rainwater storage.
  • In Windhoek, Namibia, slum dwellers on the outskirts of the city created a neighbourhood park that invites people to stay and play while protecting their homes from seasonal flooding. They also planned the future development of their own settlement through a participatory process, supported by the municipality.
  • In the Serbian capital Belgrade, food service operators and digital start-ups in the Serbian capital Belgrade saved food from being destroyed. Instead, they made it available to families in need while improving urban food security and reducing the burden on landfills.

These four Urban Living Labs show some of the many ways that interventions in cities bring local governments, experts, communities and entrepreneurs together. By working together with local partners, they improved the resilience and quality of life for vulnerable groups, ensured access to public services, used resources more sustainably, and promoted climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Towards a gender-sensitive city – first group meetings

Posted on by erik

On 24 September, the launch event “Towards a gender-sensitive city” with about 45 participants from 8 countries laid the foundation for the formation of various working groups.

Professionals, including those who could not attend this event, are now cordially invited: Join the working groups and benefit from collegial advice, international good practices from Vienna, Barcelona and other cities, international consultation, work on your project idea/challenge and participate in at least 4 meetings with international peers. Starting on 30 September 2021 with workshops on the following topics:

Gender-sensitive urban planning and development, 16:00 – 17:00 Uhr MESZ

Urban approaches combating domestic violence, 16:00 – 17:00 Uhr MESZ

Gender responsive urban mobility, 17:30 – 18:00 Uhr MESZ

To the overview, further information and registration on the Connective Cites Community Platform.

More information, latest news and good practices on the topic: Gender sensitivity in the pandemic

Towards a gender-sensitive city

Posted on by erik

On September 2nd, the COVID Gender Cluster Kick-off took place under the thopic “Towards a gender-sensitive city”. About 45 participants from Ecuador, India, South Africa, Kenya, Tunisia, Chile, Georgia, Belgium and Germany, among others, participated online in the event. They discussed good practices and challenges in gender-sensitive urban planning and development, gender responsive urban mobility and combating domestic violence. Especially the tremendous engagement of participants and enthusiasm for strengthening gender-sensitive approaches in urban development to mitigate negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and contribute to greater gender equality was impressive.

The launch event laid the foundation for the formation of various working groups. In these, new project ideas for gender-sensitive urban development will be drafted in the future in peer-to-peer exchange formats and further developed with the support of regional and international experts.

Programme

A brief overview of this year’s Connective Cities COVID-19 program was followed by an introduction to the topic of gender-sensitive urban development in the (post-) COVID era. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated existing gender inequalities. This can be seen in all sectors: In public health, in business, and in social life. This has not only short- but also long-term implications for women’s career opportunities. Nevertheless, gender-sensitive practices already exist that can contribute to gender equality. The task now is to implement these practices and help urban actors to achieve sustainable, inclusive and (gender) equitable urban development in the post-COVID era.

Building on this idea, three good practices were presented at the Gender Cluster kick-off. First, Annika Dalén, Gender Equality Officer of the city of Umeå in Sweden, presented the model city for gender-sensitive urban planning and mobility. Umeå has been actively working on gender equality for more than 30 years, both at the political level and in all areas of city administration. Ms. Dalén emphasized the importance of long-term strategies to integrate gender-sensitive approaches in urban planning. In addition, she emphasized that it is essential to collect gender-specific data at the municipal and national level in order to make differences visible, for example in urban mobility as well as in the use of public open spaces, to analyze them and to initiate appropriate changes in urban planning and development.

Following the presentation from Umeå, Sweden, Katja Schülke, Equal Opportunities Officer of the City of Bonn, and Conny Schulte, Manager in the Victim Protection Working Group of the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg District, presented the approaches taken by the City of Bonn to combat domestic violence. In particular, they highlighted the poster campaign of the city of Bonn in the context of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which served to educate the public and inform women who experience violence about support services. In addition, Conny Schulte reported on the working group for victim protection of the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg district, which includes more than 50 organizations that have set themselves the goal of helping victims of violence of all kinds and, in particular, protecting children from violence. Both speakers emphasized the high demand of the numerous offers, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and stressed the importance of awareness campaigns.

Finally, Giada Cicognola of Cities Alliance presented the Cities for Women and Femmedina program in Tunis, which aims to rehabilitate and activate public spaces in the historic center of Tunis, the Medina, through an intensive process of participation by women. The project will explore gender-sensitive approaches to urban planning that support women and help city leaders improve participatory and gender-responsive decision-making.

Following the various presentations, an active exchange was facilitated among the participants. As a starting point for the work in the future working groups, the main challenges of the participating cities were collected. In particular, it was highlighted that many cities lack a holistic understanding of the individual situation of different genders on the ground, including cultural, demographic and religious differences. The availability of gender-aggregated data is also limited in many cities. The participating cities will further work on these challenges and develop new project ideas through peer-to-peer learning in the working groups.

Presentations

Umeå – Model city for gender responsive urban planning and mobility

Bonn – Approaches combating domestic violence

Cities Alliance – The Femmedina Project

You can find the recording of the event here: COVID Gender Cluster Kick-off | Connective Cities Network

Outlook: Open call for participation

Join the working groups and benefit from peer-to-peer consultation, international good practices from Vienna, Barcelona and other cities, on-demand international advisory, work on your project idea/challenge and join min. 4 meetings with international peers starting from 30/09/2021:

Gender-sensitive urban planning and development

Gender responsive urban mobility | Connective Cities Network

Urban approaches combating domestic violence

Contact

For further questions please contact Franziska Loibl (franziska.loibl@giz.de).

Tianjin Daqiuzhuang Eco-City: green, ecological and low carbon

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Daqiuzhuang has traditionally been an important industrial site, especially for the steel industry.

The Sino-German Tianjin Daqiuzhuang Eco-City has developed an overarching indicator system with 20 ecological indicators, 50 percent of which are from the areas of energy saving and emission reduction. Modern concepts and technologies from Germany serve as a reference and the Energy and Climate Protection Management System (EKM) of the German Energy Agency (DENA) as a basis. The modern indicator systems for regional development of the China-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, the Xiong’an New District and the Beijing Municipal Administrative Centre are also used as a basis. The Eco-City indicator system is divided into three areas: green ecology, liveable life and innovative production; of which 11 are control indicators and 9 are leading indicators. The indicator system thus guides the construction and development of the Eco-City throughout its life cycle.

Tackling drug addiction and drug use through an innovative partnership

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Drug addiction or drug use disorder is a major issue facing our cities and in fact, all parts of societies. During South Africa’s toughest lockdown, an innovative partnership with the city government, academics, NGOs, businesses, the police led to the setting up of a rehabilitation centre inside the iconic Moses Mabhida  Stadium for homeless people with drug use disorder called Bellhaven Harm Reduction Centre.

Early warning systems and disaster preparedness to protect against forest fires and preserve biodiversity

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The virtual kick-off event of the Biodiversity and Environmental Protection Working Group of the Connective Cities network in MENA was held on the 9th August 2021. The event aimed at initiating a practice–oriented knowledge exchange between urban practitioners in the field of biodiversity and environmental protection, facilitating peer learning on state-of-the-art technology to increase resilience and improve disaster preparedness related to forest fires, fostering development of concrete projects ideas related to forest fires prevention and raising awareness of the importance of biodiversity and the value of ecosystem protection, risk factors, and the protection and preparedness tools.

Two examples on the deployment of early warning systems for forest fires from Lebanon (SBR experience in forest fires prevention in Shouf Biosphere Reserve, by Mr. Nizar Hani) and Germany (Early warning system of forest fires in Lower Saxony, by Mr. Helmut Beuke) were presented. The event was attended by 20 municipalities joining from Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, and Germany. The participants showcased the progress achieved by local disaster management offices and engaged in peer learning for additional improvement of the local and national capacities. In addition, the participants shared practice-oriented experience, which facilitated transferring, sustaining and innovating effectively applied solutions.

A second virtual session for this working group will be held on the 8th September 2021, showcasing good practice examples from Hannover-Germany and Menjez-Lebanon on municipal leadership and commitment to improve biodiversity protection and successful local actions in the field of biodiversity management.