Our future is urban. Cities are increasingly gaining importance internationally, and urban actors are facing worldwide comparable issues in urban development: in the course of rapid urbanisation, the global building stock is expected to double in the next 30 years, and even quadruple in some countries. In Africa alone, two-thirds of future cities have not yet been built. Cities influence practically all areas of life and offer great potential for achieving the 2030 Agenda. At the same time, cities bear a high responsibility for achieving the global climate protection goals of the Paris Agreement.

In this light, the United Nations have launched the Urban October, an event month in which UN-Habitat partner organizations are encouraged to organize activities, events and discussions on the topic of urban sustainability.

The urban projects at Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) took this as an opportunity and jointly created the GIZ URBAN OCTOBER 2021 the fourth year in a row to exchange knowledge and start discussions on urban topics with researchers, politicians, practitioners and the interested public: from climate resilience and economic development to social cohesion and digitalisation - the range of issues to be discussed is broad. The GIZ URBAN OCTOBER 2021 outlines in more than 30 events this cross-cutting relevance of sustainable urban development within and beyond GIZ.

JOIN the GIZ URBAN OCTOBER 2021!

The official opening takes place virtually (event link here) on the World Habitat Day 2021 on October 4^th, 2021 at 11:00 am (CEST). Joachim Göske, head of GIZ division Global Policy, Governance, Cities will lead the ceremony, which includes a sneak preview of a video blog production about the partnership between the urban districts Berlin Treptow-Köpenick and Eskişehir Tepebaşı.

Furthermore, the event programme includes, aside from many exciting virtual discussions and seminars, also in-person city tours in Bonn, Frankfurt, and Cologne to get to know and to discuss urban issues in practice and at a local, municipal level.

You can find all events in the GIZ URBAN OCTOBER 2021 Event Programme, as well as detailed information and conditions of participation in the GIZ URBAN OCTOBER 2021 Event Booklet. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the coordination team via urbanoctober@giz.de.

We are looking forward to your participation and many interesting contributions!