La Union awards shops, restaurants and fruit and vegetable vendors for environmentally friendly practices that help to reduce waste. La Union also focusses on environmental education and involves children and young people in environmental campaigns. Katherine Quirós, an employee of the environmental department, gathered ideas for this inspiring strategy at a Connective Cities dialogue event in Hamburg.

Data collection can be a major obstacle to the development of local development strategies, but a solid municipal database offers the opportunity to make informed fact-based planning decisions. Good practices on enabling fact-based decision making at a municipal level was shared by the GIS Directorate of the Municipality of Greater Amman, during the workshop that took place on 22 July 2024.

Planning a successful municipal election campaign involves several key elements, including understanding the political landscape, developing a campaign strategy, building a strong campaign team, formulating a compelling message, fundraising, public relations, and utilising media and technology - topics that were explored in depth during the workshop using concrete examples.

The topics discussed were as diverse as the participating cities from Namibia, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, Rwanda and Tanzania. Discussions centred on the upgrading of slums, the importance of integrated planning and sustainable development, the need for improved financing models, research into affordable building materials and the expansion of social housing initiatives.

From mid-2023 to mid-2025, six municipalities are working together as part of Connective Cities' deep dive “Heat in the City” to analyse the effects of heatwaves and the occurrence of heat islands in their cities and to develop locally adapted solutions. From 3 to 6 June 2024, they further developed their pilot projects and drew up action plans for their implementation at their third face-to-face workshop in Heidelberg.

Dr Anwaar Bani Salman, Head of Planning and Research at Kufranja Municipality in Jordan, talks about the municipality's competitive advantage in agri-tourism and eco-tourism due to its unique nature and high green cover, and describes how support from the Connective Cities network helped her to devise a local development strategy.

The continuation of the learning process on the topic of ‘Renewable energy options at municipal level’ brought together participants from six different countries in Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Municipal experts worked on project ideas in various learning units and were able to expand their skills and improve the planning of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects through peer-to-peer counselling.

Representatives of cities and local government organisations from all over the world with a strong interest in sustainability reporting and Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) are cordially invited. The deadline for applications is 30 September 2024.