The city is always suspended as a case of ‘heres’ and ‘elsewheres’, connected … and that is why artists may be doing a better job than southern, or northern, theorists in ‘painting’, ‘composing’, ‘dancing’ and ‘writing’ cities into being.
Festivals provide a window onto practices which integrate tangible and intangible heritage in the context of wider sustainable development challenges.
This report presents an anthology of festivals, collated by researchers and practitioners, which reveals the possibilities, promise and pitfalls of planning for culture and sustainable development.
Category: Integrated urban development
How to get from Planning to Financing Sustainable Urban Mobility Projects?
Cities in Latin America have made a variety of advances towards designing projects that seek not only to confront the problems created in recent decades by urbanisation and the impact of climate change, but also to improve the quality of life for the whole population due to a healthier, better protected environment.
Bogotá, meanwhile, is currently drawing up a transformational sustainable mobility and urban development project with the support of the C40 Cities Finance Facility (CFF). It includes a 25-kilometre cycleway from the south to the north of the city, with finance being sought from a wide variety of sources. The support provided by the CFF will include the delivery of several technical studies and collaborative workshops to ensure project sustainability, capacity development and public participation.
This workshop served to promote an exchange of knowledge between cities in Colombia and Latin America which are in the process of preparing, financing or even implementing similar projects.
From Waste to Resource – Integrated Municipal Solid Waste Management Solutions
In collaboration with UCLG-MEWA and in the framework of the “Municipal know-how for host communities in the Middle-East” programme, Connective Cities organised a practitioners’ workshop on integrated solid waste management in İzmit/ Kocaeli, Turkey from July 4-6th, 2017.
The workshop aimed at fostering exchange between urban waste management practitioners from Turkey and Germany through good practice presentations and peer-to-peer advisory in order to create local action plans that improve solid waste management in an integrative manner.
The report provides a brief summary of the workshop, describing the starting situation in Turkey and featuring key discussion points, presented good practices and the project ideas developed in the workshop.
Solutions for gender fair cities
"This report is the product of the Womanability research-action project. It reveals the numerous, and sometimes unexpected, obstacles to the equal access and enjoyment of public spaces by women, from a lack of green spaces, accessible public transportation, and public toilets, to persistent harassment and outright violence. Building on these experiences and observations, the report offers a series of recommendations and best practices, many developed by women themselves, for creating the gender equal cities of the future. […]"
Regional Peer-Learning and Action Planning Workshop
Together with UCLG World Secretariat and UCLG Asia-Pacific, Connective Cities organised the Regional Peer-Learning and Action Planning Workshop on “Urban Renewal in Historic Town Centres and Public Space Improvement” in Jakarta, Indonesia from 17 – 19 July 2017.
During the three-day workshop urban heritage specialists and planners from the Asian region and Germany discussed and advised the ongoing urban renewal of Jakarta’s Historic Town Centre Kota Tua as well as supported the proccess of drafting the application for UNESCO World Heritage Site.
This short report provides summary of the workshop, describing particular challenges faced in Kota Tua, featuring good practices presented at the event and summarising the recommendations developed in a joint work of experts.
Connective Cities Local Project Planning Workshop
Urban transport planners and representatives of civil society and private sector from Chiang Mai Municipality in Northern Thailand and from Germany gathered on July 12-14, 2017 for a three-day workshop to discuss and advise the urban mobility planning of Chiang Mai and identify practical solutions for embarking on a low carbon mobility strategy.
This short report provides summary of the workshop, describing particular challenges faced by Chiang Mai, featuring good practices and baseline studies presented during the event as well as showcasing solutions developed in a joint work of experts.
Taller de Proyecto de Connective Cities en América Latina
Ante la creciente urbanización en América Latina, las ciudades se ven enfrentadas a grandes desafíos de la movilidad urbana. También las ciudades de municipios alemanes, en muchos casos se ven frente a desafíos similares. Estos desafíos se refieren a temas como la integración de barrios menos privilegiados, al transporte eficiente entre vivienda y trabajo para los ciudadanos o al aseguramiento de un sistema de transporte en favor de un desarrollo económico local. Al mismo tiempo se busca garantizar una buena calidad del aire, mejorando así la salud de los ciudadanos y el clima urbano.
En respuesta a la demanda por parte de expertos de la práctica municipal latinoamericana y alemana, Connective Cities organizó en 2015 un evento en Bogotá Colombia acerca del tema Movilidad Urbana. Durante ese evento, se expresó la necesidad para la realización de otro taller con el enfoque en los sistemas integrados de movilidad y sus relaciones con inclusión social y mitigación del cambio climático. Ante esto, Connective Cities ofrece en mayo de 2016 un taller referente a Sistemas Integrados de Movilidad para Ciudades Inclusivas y Amables con el Clima. El presente documento resume los resultados de dicho taller.
4th Connective Cities Asian Dialogue Event
Road transport accounts for over 80% of the total transport emissions in Asia. If no countermeasures are taken, CO2 emissions resulting from the transport sector are projected to rise by 70% by 2050. At the same time, 64.5% of Asia’s population will be urban by 2050. Therefore, the extremely rapid increase of urban population in Asia and the rising CO2 emissions resulting from the transport sector lead to a high demand for climate-friendly means of urban transport.
The 4th Connective Cities Practitioners’ Workshop, which took place from 27 to 29 September 2016 in Bangkok, Thailand, brought together representatives from China, Georgia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Germany to exchange on the varied and complex tasks of sustainable urban mobility and climate change focusing on climate-friendly means of urban transport to reduce air pollution.
Planning Integrated Solid Waste Management at Municipal Level
Rostock hosted and co-organised the event, and provided conference rooms in Rostock’s city hall. Representatives of the city gave interesting insights into the city’s solid waste management strategy and presented innovative projects on how to organise waste management in an environmentally safe and efficient way. They also organised highly informative site visits to illustrate different aspects of the city’s waste management system.
The Dialogue Event was attended by about 35 urban practitioners from Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Italy, France, Austria, Zimbabwe, Albania, and Germany. Two waste management experts respectively from the German Association of Cities (Deutscher Städtetag) and from the German Association of Local Public Utilities (Verband kommunaler Unternehmen e.V.) also contributed to the three-day exchange. Discussions benefited greatly from the vast experience of participants with different regional perspectives.
The publication documents the main results of the event. It contains a brief introduction to major aspects of Integrated Solid Waste Management and summarises local experiences presented at the event. The report also highlights key outcomes of the peer learning and action planning sessions. Action planning resulted in the development of four project ideas to improve waste management in different cities. These ideas are outlined briefly at the end of the publication.
The documentation also seeks to inform readers about the way Connective Cities works. It describes the approach as well as the methodology used at the event and explains how the initiative supports joint learning, knowledge exchange and municipal cooperation across the world.
City region food systems and food waste management
Rapid urban growth; growing food and nutrition insecurity; unbalanced food availability, distribution and access; environmental degradation, resource scarcity and climate change; unsustainable production and consumption patterns, including generation of food waste – all of these have important developmental implications for both urban and rural areas alike. It is increasingly recognised that in order to respond to these challenges, integrated territorial development and balanced urban-rural linkages must be pursued for the benefit of both urban and rural populations. City region food systems (CRFS) offer concrete policy and programme opportunities within which these developmental issues can be addressed and through which rural and urban areas and communities in a given city region can be directly linked. These specifically address Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 11a – to support positive economic, social and environmental links between urban, peri-urban and rural areas – and are instrumental in linking SDG 11 with SDG 2 (on sustainable agriculture and food and nutrition security) and SDG 12 (on sustainable production and consumption).
This publication documents thirteen case studies from city regions around the world which are developing CRFS projects, programmes, and policies, including those related to the prevention, reduction and management of food waste. Lessons learned from the case studies for sustainable development of CRFS call for local, city regional, and (sub) national governments to institutionalise city region food systems, providing them an institutional setting and budget, linking them to larger city region development plans, and monitoring their developmental impacts across urban and rural areas.