Press - Launch of the Future of Cities Partnership (WUF13)

Hello.
Good afternoon and welcome.
We are about to start a briefing today, the United Nations Human Settlements Program and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network are planning to launch a new strategic collaboration on the future of cities.
This initiative establishes a multi stakeholder platform to advance inclusive, resilient, sustainable, and digitally enabled urban development in support of the new urban agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
It is bringing together leading policymakers, academics and practitioners, and this initiative will serve as a global advisory platform to generate forward looking policy guidance to foster high level dialogue and support innovation in urban governance.
This partnership is being formalized through a memorandum of understanding, and today we have representatives of two organizations here with us who will brief you about the initiative and give you more guidance.
First, let me just introduce the speakers and the people that you see in the podium.
We have Executive Director of Human Habitat, Ana Caldia Rosbk with us, and Professor Jeffrey Sachs Al B University and Director of Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
We also have seated with him.
On the left is Myosin Galdin.
On the far right, you have Maurita Rodas.
And the next to Mauzo we have van Sicko, who are representing Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
Let me first, ladies and gentlemen, give the floor to the Executive Director of Habitat for a few words, Alas.
Thank you, Katherina.
I'm very honored and pleased to have the space to communicate to you that UN Habitat and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network with Professor Jeffrey Sachs, we have signed a memorandum of understanding.
We are collaborating, cooperating together.
I think will be this is a very strategic initiative for UN Habitat.
As we face as we move on this road map in facing the housing crisis, as we are moving from 50% urbanized planet to 70% urbanized planet in two decades, as we have the deadline in 2030 of the sustainable development goals, all the pressures of climate challenge that we are facing right now and the pressures of rebuilding and reconstructing reconstructing the losses by disasters, by conflicts.
We need to build.
We are losing.
We are receiving people into cities.
If you look at specific geographies like Africa, we're talking about young people specifically, and we're talking about cities that are already facing so many challenges.
Of course, with a roof and you cannot connect the basic services, and you cannot connect people to the basic opportunities.
But if we look at cities as a whole, cities as our collective shelter, we can see that all the challenges that cities are facing just the day before yesterday, We experienced that here.
I think the information that I got, the data that I got, is that it rained here in Bangu 400 times more the annual average in one single day.
We all realized that we needed to be resilient and we needed to review our plans and we needed to adapt.
For me, This is a critical a classical illustration that we all here, president of the Word forum understood clearly, and this is what we have to think for the world, for the cities that we are facing because as we speak, cities are being flooded.
Cities are suffering from landslides, from fires, you name it, right, being affected by issues of safety and security by uhuh cities are really at the front line.
So what's going to happen in the future? How can we imagine and what are the innovations needed for the future? So we need a space where we can think, where we can come together, where we can reflect, where we can bring up, you know, minds that have been engaged, that are engaging in researching, in discussing in dialogue.
You have to bring minds that are engaged in changing the practice.
In changing the policy to be here with us and help us, you know, as UN Habit as part of the UN system to think, what is it? What is the future of cities? What we expect? What are our aspirations? What are the young people's aspirations? What are the women's aspirations so that we can prepare? We can prepare understanding that scenarios might differ.
And this is where I think we have to innovate as we inhabit that, thinking about the future with scenarios and thinking about the broader realities that we are facing now in terms of the very complex geopolitical context that we have at the moment.
So We are still exploring the practicalities of our partnership and there are many ideas on the table.
Certainly, the Word Forum is one important mechanism, and in two years from now, we're going to have the next Word A Forum in Mexico.
Certainly, our knowledge products such as the World Cities Report could be a practical mean of collaboration, but we're reviewing the New Urban Agenda We are supporting an open ended work group housing.
So UCAT is now part of major important intergovernmental processes.
We meet every year in New York at the high level political forum to review the SDGs.
This year, we are reviewing the SDG 11.
We meet every at cops.
So there are many mechanisms where that we can use, you know, to be pragmatic, to be practical, and to make sure that whatever is discussed, whatever happens within this partnership initiative gets over to you.
But yeah, these are my main words, a little bit from the heart, not scripted, but yeah, thank you, Cathal.
Thank you very much, Executive Director for the words.
And now I also would like to invite Professor Jeffrey Sachs to say a few opening remarks.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Let me say how excited I am for our partnership and how grateful and how thrilled we are to be working together with you Ana Claudia and all all kudos for this wonderful world urban forum that you have underway.
And I have to say, it was very clever of UN habitat and of our host country and city to make a little flood a couple of days ago to show how adaptive, resilient, dynamic, successful you are because everything just moved forward very, very well, and this is a remarkable gathering.
The Sustainable Development Solutions Network operates under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General.
It was launched 14 years ago with Ban Ki Moon, and it's been very active and dynamic with the Secretary-General António Guterres.
And we will have a new Secretary-General as of January one, 2027, and we look forward to the new partnership that will come with that as well.
The SDSN as we call it, has more than 2000 universities around the world that are members covering about 170 countries.
We promise to be at all 193 UN member states and Palestine, which I count on being the 194th UN member state soon, so that we're represented everywhere in the world.
But our coverage is well over 90% of the world population of our member institutions.
The urban agenda is the world agenda.
This is the point.
The success of the cities means the success of the world.
The success of the world depends on the success of the cities.
We're going to be 70% urbanized by 2050.
We'll have another 2 billion people joining cities in the next quarter century.
It with a big differentiation around the world because S San Africa, South Asia are going to be the places of the biggest increases of population, and the cities need to be green, digital, hospitable, productive, safe places to live and thrive and raise families in the future.
And that is our goal of this partnership.
We know that certain challenges are common to every city in the world, whether it's the climate adaptation or the technological changes in an AI era, the changes of mobility, electrification.
These are common challenges.
We know that there are very differentiated challenges in different parts of the world, also, in terms of income levels, organization of financial systems, access to financing, creation of jobs, sector of jobs, service sector urgencies in health and education, conflict zones, and so forth.
So the analytical challenge is to identify the core future trends, but also to make the distinctions across the world that are extremely important and pertinent.
Let me just say that we still have a very strong agenda up to 2030 with the sustainable development goals, but we're really moving into the post 2030 discussions by next year.
And the urban challenges will be central to the post 2030 agenda, and I'm convinced that our partnership on the future of cities can play a big role in helping to define also the agenda that will stretch to the year 2050 and that UN Habitat will be leading.
I'm really excited about contributing to the World Cities Report for 2028 because the World Cities Report is such an important flagship of yours and such a successful, important document for mayors and urban specialists and civil society all over the world.
So I hope we can really contribute actively to this.
Let me conclude by saying that I'm surrounded also not only with the honor of being with Anna Claudia, but by long term colleagues of mine and great leaders in this space.
Ivan Sumkov, who I will turn the mic over moment or we'll turn the micro over to we'll say some words.
He has helped to organize this partnership and to co chair it.
Ismail Sara Geldin is a legend for all of us because he's been leading efforts for sustainable development in many, many capacities and is a polymath and renaissance figure of our time.
And so we're extremely thrilled.
Mauricio Rodas the the is a great urban leader who was a pioneering and very successful mayor of Quito, Ecuador and is now professor of urban studies and a very great innovator at University of Pennsylvania and has been leading a global commission a global effort to bring new innovative financing to cities.
So very important work.
And we just heard, as we were coming in some successes at the Inter American Development Bank and some breakthroughs for urban financing that Mauricio's commission has helped to bring about.
So I'm also thrilled with my colleagues being here to help launch this partnership.
Thank you very much, Professor Sarks, for your introductory remarks.
And as you have heard, ladies and gentlemen, I also give the floor to Ivan Slinkv for a few remarks.
Thank you so much.
And thank you to the Executive Director, Anna Claude and to Professor Jeffrey Sachs for the opportunity to work together on this exciting partnership on the future of cities.
Anna Claude asked us to work on an advisory group for UN Habitat, we precisely focused it on the future of cities because we believe that UN habitat and the world actually needs this long term planning, long term thinking.
And so we have created an initiative that uh actually works not just on the urgent, but also on the long term important goals and solutions that go beyond, let's say, solving the immediate problems, but that would have impact for the years and hopefully even further.
So we have focused our work actually on short term, midterm, and long term planning, short term being 2030, which coincides also with the SDGs, midterm 2050, and the long term aspirational, which is 2,174 years from now.
Any decision that we make in a city would have impact for centuries, you know, any city that we see today that has been planned, you know, centuries ago, and Baco is a great example.
You know, people have to live with that forever eventually.
And so that's why it's important to make the right decision today and to make our cities future proof.
This is why we feel like a platform like this, our partnership on the future of cities is actually important to establish because it gives us an opportunity to engage with some of the thought leaders, some of the experts in the space and to involve them into the decision making and into the work of U habitat.
At the same time, we're engaging with some of the leading companies in the private sector, some of the leading universities that are developing knowledge in this area, and also creating actionable strategies.
It's not just about the theory.
It's not just about pointing at the problems, but it's about providing tangible solutions that would have long term impact on our work.
This is why a partnership like this between UN habitat and UNSDSN is fundamental.
To give you a few more details about this, we've actually identified systematic working group, urban futures and design innovation, leadership and governors, which Maurice Arles is one of the leaders, housing, land, inclusivity, mobilities and mobility and green infrastructure, digital urbanism and connectivity, climate and heritage resilience.
Through those six working groups, we will actually engage with leaders, with practitioners, with experts to deliver very tangible reports that would ideally have impact and would be implemented.
We are also working on the Future Cities report that would be presented at the next world urban Forum 14.
In Mexico, as I mentioned earlier, which we see will be kind of the most important document that we plan to present in the next two years in addition to all the conference, all the meetings, all the thematic reports and expert gatherings and action plans that we'll create.
We plan to create high level convenience of global dialogues and also to provide strategic advisor to a programs.
At the same time, we'll create public knowledge initiatives and global dissemination of our work.
So here, it's an opportunity to invite many of you who are with us or those of you who are listening to this presentation afterwards to engage with this initiative.
You inhabit a partnership on the future of City and to partner with us with whatever possible way.
Future of City requires everyone to take action and provides a space for everyone to participate in this.
So we really hope Many of you will be part of this as founding partners, as strategic partners, CDs and institutions who will participate in our initiative.
So this is just the beginning of our conversation.
I'm really excited to start our work, which will progress in the next months and years.
And thank you for being here, and thank you for the opportunity to work together on this exciting new partnership.
Thanks.
And I would like to give the word to Mauricio Os, former mayor of Quito.
He's a part of the governance in leadership working group, and also as a former mayor, part of the mayor's Circle, we plan to engage many mayors to work with us.
So Mauricio, thank you for being with us.
Thank you so much, Ian.
Thank you, Anna Claudia, Jeff.
I am really delighted to be part of this initiative.
I had the pleasure of being the mayor of Quito when we hosted Habit of three in 2016, and now we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of the new urban agenda.
So I think this is a great opportunity to reflect on how the new urban agenda has been implemented and how it will be implemented in the future.
So that's why the future of Cities initiative becomes so relevant.
Our cities worldwide are experiencing so many challenges, but they are the drivers of the world.
That's where innovation is happening the most.
And of course, I am biased, but I am convinced that mayors have an amazing capacity to change the world from the ground.
They are all about delivering.
They are the closest governmental entity to citizens, and therefore, they can bring a unique perspective on how effective policy making should be delivered at the global scale.
That's why I am honored to be part of this initiative and particularly to bring mayors and former mayors to it in order to be part of a broader partnership that is being created through the future of cities initiative, bringing different perspectives to change the world through cities.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much, Maurisio for these remarks.
And I also would like now to invite Mr.
Ismail ardaln who is the Founding Director of Gda Alexandrina and the new Library of Alexandria.
And he currently serves on many advisory boards and committees for many academic research, scientific and international organizations.
So you have the floor.
Thank you very much.
I'd like also to add just as additional background.
I was originally trained as an architect engineer, specialized in city and urban planning.
Then I drifted into Jeff's domain of economics and ended up at the World Bank, where I was in charge also of the urban projects of the World Bank at one point and the first vice president of the bank to introduce sustainable development sustainable development to the World Bank.
I'm now very proud to be the co chair of the Misai Punjabi International Center, an international organization based here in Baku, named after the great national poet of Azerbijan.
I'm very proud to be able to say that, yes, we not only support all these initiatives, but we want to partner with them.
And our network is quite extensive and we want to be there to support this work that is being done because I share all the analysis that was made earlier this morning and now.
I would add just one thing that hasn't been sufficiently named, but I think will be named later on is that in many parts of the developing world, there are magnificent culture and heritage, legacies of historic cities that tend to be overtaken by informal settlements and slums and other things of that nature.
And therefore, the kind of work that we do should find ways, creative ways of maintaining and renewing and adapting that legacy to future generations so that we are not deprived of it, many of which incidentally are on the world heritage list as well.
So I think all of us are very eager to work under the leadership of Ana Lou and Jeff and colleagues, and we very much want to be participants and supporters and partners in this great initiative, and we're very happy that this is taking place this launch is taking place here in question.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And I think that we can allow maybe we're a little bit pressed for time, but I would like to allow one or two questions to be asked to the participants.
If you would like to ask a question, please do raise your hand and introduce yourself and the media outlet that you are representing.
And who do you address that question to? It seems that yes, everything is clear and there are no questions.
There is one.
Yeah.
Can we give the mic? Good.
Can you please keep the mic on this? Good afternoon, everyone.
I'm Joseph Siri from A African News Agency.
And I did get his name, the guy in the middle.
Yeah.
He spoke about the working group.
Ivan Sum Ivan Sm.
So I would like to know what as we are working on the working groups, I would like to know where is the position of the media or what plans are there for the media in that working group.
Thank you.
That's a great question.
Well, the role of media, I think, is everywhere.
You know, I think media should be omnipresent in a way, you know, because all of this work has to be disseminated.
So we do hope to engage with many different stakeholders because, you know, a lot of this research would have to be published.
A lot of this research has disseminated in the next months and years.
So we certainly hope to engage as much as possible in working with media and with other stakeholders.
So we have a website called future cities.org, which will be a place where we will be convening a lot of the work.
So, you know, I invite you to follow that and to also reach out to us directly in case you would like to learn more or in case you would like to partner with us.
You know, this is a great time to actually open it up for partnerships.
So anyone who is interested in working with us on this exciting initiative on you inhabit that partnership on the future city is welcome to contact us, and we would love to engage you in every possible way in the work of our initiative.
Thank you very much.
I would like to thank all the participants of this press briefing for the participation.
We are closing it now, and I would like also to announce that the daily briefing where we will update you about the particular parts of the program will start a bit later.
But thank you very much for your participation.
Thank you for your questions, and we'll see you a bit later in the press center.
Thank you.