Innovating Urban Resilience
Financing Strategies and Smart Solutions for Cities Worldwide
📍12th World Urban Forum, Cairo, Egypt – Multipurpose room 03
🗓 November 5, 2024, at 5:00 pm local time (UTC+2)
In its upcoming World Urban Forum event, the City Diplomacy Lab will collaborate with the five UN Regional Economic Commissions (UNECE, UNECLAC, UNECA, UNESCWA, and UNESCAP) to enhance awareness and understanding of financial resources and smart instruments available to municipalities and local authorities across the world to build urban resilience. These resources encompass digital innovation and financing strategies that can strengthen local economic resilience in cities around the world, especially in the face of internal and external stresses and crises.
The session will open with a panel discussion involving global-level experts and practitioners in the field of sustainable urban development, innovation, and finance. The panel will be followed by brief presentations from five cities, one from each UN region, on their current resilience ambitions.
Panel members will comment on the cases, providing insights, suggestions, and recommendations for moving forward with designing bankable urban resilience projects.
This hybrid networking event is being organized within the framework of the United Nations Global Development Account (UNDA) project entitled Supporting Member States in Urban Economic Resilience, whose goal is to strengthen the capacity of cities to mitigate, recover, adapt, and transform toward sustainability in the face of a wide array of shocks and stresses.
Program
Opening remarks
- Dr. Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi, Founding Director, City Diplomacy Lab
- Ms. Fiona Littlejohn, Economic Affairs Officer, Human Settlements Unit, UNECLAC
Panel of Experts
- Dr. Viswanathan Srinivasan, Chief Executive Officer, Tamil Nadu Green Climate Company, Department of Environment, Climate Change and Forest, Government of Tamil Nadu
- Prof. Cynthia Goytia, Professor of Urban Economics, University Torcuato di Tella, Argentina
- Mr. Ko Takeuchi, Senior Specialist on Urban Development and Disaster Risk Management, World Bank
- Mr. Emre Oguzoncul, Principal, Climate Strategy & Delivery, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)
- Dr. Maysoun Ibrahim, Founding President, Palestinian Syndicate for Information Sciences and Technology (Online)
UNDA16 Cities Testimonies
- Eng. Ahmad Malkawi, City Manager, Amman, Jordan
- Hon. Jacob Mafume, Mayor of Harare, Zimbabwe
- Ms. Lucila García, Director, Agency for Cooperation, Investment and Foreign Trade (ACICE), City of Santa Fe, Argentina (Online)
- Ms. Sonja Dragović, Researcher in urbanism and public policy, KANA/ko ako ne arhitekt, Podgorica, Montenegro
- Dr. Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi, Founding Director, City Diplomacy Lab (Moderator)
