Category: Urban budget and municipal finances

From the Open Municipality to the Smart City

Posted on by erik

Connective Cities regional network in the Middle East and North Africa organized a virtual insight session on how municipalities can utilise open governance models and harness the power of digitalisation for better urban planning and service delivery. The major potential of employing this approach lies in improved strategies for dynamic urban resource management, devising strategies for urban engagement and civic participation, as well as innovations in urban management, and policy analysis.

The insight session showcased municipal experiences on how open government principles can be localized to enhance transparency and citizen engagement and ultimately promote good governance. The role of digital transformation in increasing transparency and public participation was underscored. Furthermore, the insight session delved into application of digital tools, in particular AI-powered Geographic Information Systems (GIS), for supporting data-driven decision-making for infrastructure development and livability improvements. By showcasing good practice examples from Abu Dhabi (UAE) and Ras el-Matn (Lebanon), participants learned about successful experiences in integrating open government principles as well as urban informatics for sustainable urban growth and making municipalities more inclusive, efficient, and resilient.

On the importance of correctly assessing quality of life | Photo: Connective Cities
GIS-supported planning to improve the quality of life | Photo: Connective Cities

The first showcased good practice discussed geospatial solutions to empower governments and municipalities with AI-powered, user-friendly GIS platforms via automation, smart analytics, and seamless decision-making tools. Examples of these tools that are employed by the municipality of Abu Dhabi to achieve higher livability standards are custom GIS applications, smart city dashboards, spatial data infrastructure systems, real-time monitoring solutions, and geospatial decision support tools. These tools are customizable and scalable, and can be adapted to the municipal needs that include spatial analysis, infrastructure planning, data integration for engineering projects, and urban design visualization.

Principles of the open government | Photo: Connective Cities

In Ras el-Matn municipality, the principles of the open government were recently adopted to promote transparency and cooperation between municipalities and citizens. These principles were locally-adapted to form a framework for transparency, accountability, and citizen participation in local governance, particularly via increasing transparency and accountability, promoting citizen participation and collaborative governance, deploying technology, innovation and open data, improving access to information , and mainstreaming rule of law , ensuring fiscal transparency and public integrity, and optimizing responsiveness  by listening to public feedback and adapting policies accordingly. It was highlighted that the smart municipality complements the open government but does not replace it. Technology is a tool to support transparency and participation, but it is not the ultimate solution to improving livability in cities.

Steps towards setting up a municipal database | Photo: Connective Cities

By localizing transparency, citizen engagement, and data-driven decision-making—as demonstrated in Abu Dhabi’s geospatial solutions and Ras el-Matn’s participatory governance—cities can enhance livability and infrastructure planning. While technology enables efficiency, the foundation remains good governance: collaboration, accountability, and citizen-centric policies. The key takeaway: A “smart city” is not just about technology but about leveraging it to strengthen open, equitable, and sustainable urban development.

Recording of the session on Connective Cities platform (in Arabic).

Wildflower meadows, sports, music festivals, health

Posted on by erik

Through a crowdfunding platform, the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in the UK is involving the whole of society, including local business, in initiating, implementing and financing social projects. This promotes citizens’ initiative, and ensures a higher quality of life.

Unturning the Stones

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The virtual dialogue event “Unturning the stones – Exploring Climate Finance for Asian Cities” was held on the Connective Cities platform from the 28th to the 30th of September 2021. It was jointly hosted by Connective Cities and 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).

The active participants consisted of 25 urban practitioners and experts from 6 countries (Nepal, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Philippines and Germany) working in the sectors financing, public works / infrastructure, greening and planning departments. 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. In order to implement green and sustainable solutions that leapfrog current unsustainable patterns, it is essential to develop innovative and efficient financing approaches to build climate resilient and low-carbon cities.

Development of bankable project proposals for sustainable urban energy planning in Southeast Europe

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Nearly 50 people from approximately 10 municipalities across 5 countries of Southeastern Europe (SEE) region as well as from EU and MENA gathered during the Planning Workshop to further the process of their project development.

The Planning Workshop held on 2-4 November 2021, represented a follow-up and a continuation on a learning process started through Dialogue Event in May 2021.

The ongoing COVID-19 situation ruled out meeting up in person. That’s why the workshop was planned as an online consultation event. Rather than travelling to a single location, the teams worked individually on pre-defined ‘homework’ which was later smoothed off during the workshop’s first and last days. Connective Cities team with the aid from mentors, who guided the process, oversaw the proceedings of project outline finalizations. The workshop aimed at supporting the municipalities in fine-tuning their project ideas and developing them further towards bankable project proposals.

The concept and content of the Planning Workshop was elaborated based on the Connective Cities’ methodology and the findings of the pre-workshop interviews that were conducted with the respective municipalities.

2021 State of Cities Climate Finance

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The 2021 State of Cities Climate Finance Report examines the current state of urban climate investment, the barriers to reaching the needed investment levels, and the steps to overcoming these challenges. Produced by the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (the Alliance), the report contributes to the Alliance’s mission to mobilize city level climate finance at scale by 2030. The report also contributes to the Leadership for Urban Climate Investment framework initiative hosted by the Alliance, which aims to create a strong global architecture for subnational climate finance and tracking.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges for cities globally. Cities have borne the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic, with high mortality and infection rates and staggering economic losses. Many residents have and continue to endure months of pain. Job losses, most especially among women and young people, have led to stunning increases in poverty and hunger, threatening decades of development gains.

The pandemic recovery, however, opens a once in a generation opportunity to build sustainable, clean, inclusive, green cities that are fit for an imminent, unprecedented wave of urban growth. How we design power generation, transport and buildings in cities will be decisive in getting on track to achieve the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The report delivers its findings in two parts:

  • The Landscape of Urban Climate Finance (Part 1). Authored by the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance Secretariat (Climate Policy Initiative) in partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, Part 1 presents for the first time a comprehensive estimate of global urban climate finance. The Landscape was developed by tracking all sources of climate finance flows to urban areas and estimating urban climate investments in the buildings and transport sectors. Part 1 also presents some of the Alliance’s activities to address barriers to investment.
  • The Enabling Conditions for Urban Climate Finance (Part 2). Authored by the World Bank, Part 2 analyzes enabling frameworks and presents solutions for mobilizing climate finance for low-carbon, climate-resilient urban development pathways. It seeks to provide a common level of understanding of the terminologies, knowledge, and themes used by climate policy and climate finance practitioners, city-level urban planners, and municipal finance officials.

The Executive Summary summarizes the key findings from both Parts, including the current context for city-level climate action, estimated urban climate finance flows, the enabling conditions needed to mobilize more finance, and steps to address the urban climate investment gap.

Call for participants: Covid-19: Economic impact and recovery

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The Covid-19 pandemic has had a deteriorating impact on the national and local government economic resources. In economies that largely depend on informal labour market, a lot of people have lost their livelihoods. The governments have been torn between life and livelihoods as the interaction of people propels the spread of the virus.

This shift affected the revenue stream for the local government especially in the cities as a result of shrinking businesses and also a mass migration of the urban population to the rural areas. This has a negative impact on effective operations of the municipalities and service provision.

Whilst the impact of this pandemic has been felt worldwide, cities have responded with different measures to avert the spread and cushion against long-term impacts and even future pandemics. It’s against this background that Connective Cities1 is offering a platform in which cities will share the challenges they have experienced and interventions that have either been implemented or are being planned to safeguard against the negative impacts and future pandemics.

In the second series  at10th & 12th November, 2020, 13:00- 15:00 (CET), we look at the economic impact of the pandemic, recovery and resilience of cities.

Conference language is English.

More information:Concept paper [pdf 3 pages]

Participation and contact

If you have further questions or would like to participate, please send an e-mail to Sophia Kamau (sophia.kamau@giz.de), Regional Coordinator for Connective Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa.

South-East European Local Governments in Post Covid-19 Socio-Economic Recovery

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South-East European (SEE) local governments (LGs) have been and will certainly remain at the forefront in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic social and economic crisis. In serving and protecting their communities they have been facing unprecedented challenges in multiple dimensions. SEE local governments have been responding to these challenges with a strong spirit of solidarity, putting their citizens lives before everything else and working tirelessly to provide support to the most vulnerable.

The crisis required local governments to take timely measures to shut down selected local services, quickly switch to remote working practices and digitalise administrative services, expand programs for securing citizens healthcare, expand social protection and care for a significantly higher number of vulnerable people, take measures to allow the smooth implementation of online or long-distance learning, etc. In the aftermath of the control or minimisation of the first wave of infection SEE local governments have taken specific ad hoc measures to support the survival of their local communities and economies.

The purpose of this survey is to help improving the understanding over the impact of the COVID-19 crisis at the local government level in South-East Europe, identifying effective and innovative social and economic recovery strategies and ultimately helping formulating concrete policy proposals to inform advocacy efforts of NALAS member Local Government Associations.

The Future of Asian & Pacific Cities

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A sustainable future occurs when planning lays a foundation; resilience guards against future risk; smart cities deploy the best technology for the job; and financing tools help pay for it all.

The report focuses on four essentials that cities must get right. Urban and territorial planning, strengthening resilience to future risks, supporting the effective interplay between people and technology, and financing tools, all of which are essential to deliver sustainable smart cities in our region. With three to five future policy pathways per chapter, the report offers ways to seize these opportunities and realize sustainable urban development by 2030. Regional cooperation and strong partnerships among all interested parties will be essential to pool expertise, accelerate progress and deliver the integrated approach needed.

Innovative financial instruments in urban development and housing policy

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November 24-26, 2014 for the 3rd Connective Cities Dialogue Event to exchange on innovative financial instruments in urban development and housing policy.

Revolving Funds, Microcredits and other innovative financial instruments are relevant in urban development as well as in housing policy. They are of highest concern if no sufficient classical funding is available, where self-help approaches are to be strengthened and where unprofitable real estates are supposed to be brought back to the markets. Local actors from developing and emerging countries were asked to contribute to the Dialogue with their vast experience regarding instruments such as micro-credits, small scale support of housing and further innovative financing instruments.

The Dialogue’s event objective was to provide all participants with good insight to good practices in the field and to invite them on the other hand to contribute to the dialogue with their experience. Based on examples, the practitioners introduced during the workshop, the experts discussed challenges and needs for improving urban financing practice and governance.

How to get from Planning to Financing Sustainable Urban Mobility Projects?

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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.