The rapid population growth jointly with obsolete car-oriented urban planning are at the heart of the challenges cities face: increase in the number of private cars, traffic congestion, pollution, time and energy consumption.

Pushing commuters away from private inefficient and polluting means of transport has become an urgent matter. As an alternative, more sustainable transportation (such as public transport or e-sharing facilities)  could make quality of life in urban areas higher.

For more information, you can read the program

To face the challenges regarding water management, it is crucial to share responsibilities across different levels of government. Demographic trends and climate change are some of the main factors affecting access and quality of water in our metropolises. Clean and accessible water is an essential part of the world where we want to live. Therefore, our cities should manage water quality from their sources by applying scientific pollution control and measurement methods to develop resilient and sustainable urban water infrastructure. This requires creating public policies within a context of multi-level governance, which was the basis for the Sustainable Water Management Training Course that took place in Seoul from 23 to 30 June.

Clean, accessible water for all is a basic service and an essential part of the urban development. However, due to bad economics or poor infrastructure, many cities have challenges associated with inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene. Therefore, cities and local governments should be able to manage the water quality from the water sources by applying scientific pollution control and measurement methods with focus on development of resilient and sustainable urban water infrastructures.

This program organized by SHRDC helped participants to learn about Seoul’s water system–Arisu–which is the world's first water system accredited by the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) and other major water resource management related policies of Seoul. Also, three of our members, Shanghai, Jakarta, and Bangkok, shared their experiences in terms of sustainable water management. 

This webinar gathered experts from Madrid, Seoul and the UITP who talked about the problematic of mobility, one of the most emblematic, visible and sensitive examples of how metropolitan governance is applied to the everyday life of citizens. 

Transport and its management have a profound influence on people's access to vital activities of care, work, study and leisure, on family budgets and, consequently, on our quality of life. 

Meeting mobility needs becomes more complex when territorial spaces are expanded and diversified, as is the case in large metropolises, requiring coordination between public administrations of different levels and sizes, as well as between private and even individual initiatives. 

For more information about the session, you can read the news

Video of the session 

In this session the participants were able to have a theoretical background of urban community planning, implementation, and project management. Moreover, through case studies, Chengdu shared community regeneration projects that have been successfully implemented in the urban center, sub-urban center and suburbs, and present how these projects managed to engage citizens before, during and after the design process. In particular: the Micro-Regeneraion East Yulin Rd Community; the Sports Venues Under Flyovers and the Jincheng Community Case

We also heared from a diverse range of perspectives from other parts of the world, such as Ramallah and Amman, acknowledging that the situation is contextual and different in each part of the world. 

For more information, you can read the concept note and watch the recording of the event. 

While scholars, policymakers, and practitioners worldwide were looking for an answer to what our cities need right now, a new coronavirus crisis has quickly spread over the world's cities altering city life almost beyond recognition; not only for being a health crisis but also for having a fundamentally different impact on society, economies, and cities.

Interventions to face COVID-19 pandemic have revealed the weaknesses in the urban planning as well as the urban management of metropolitan spaces. City inhabitants came to realise the importance of proximity to service and the safety of different modes of mobility. The pandemic accelerated digitalization in all areas of our life: work from home, distance learning, banking, and service provision, which urged many developing countries that had insufficient Internet service provision and usage to adopt measures to change the service provision from physical to virtual provision.

This hybrid workshop discussed approaches, models and practices for planning and managing post-pandemic cities. We explored how the crisis has made possible many transformations that were previously unimaginable or difficult to foresee.

The workshop discussed new planning models such as the 15-minute city, the compact city, super blocks, the car-free city, new urbanism concepts or a combination of these, and the effect of the pandemic on the implementation of these concepts that were developed before the crisis but gained momentum during it, and how these models can help shape post-pandemic cities.

The workshops aimed at:

•    Understanding the challenges and opportunities arising from the pandemic life.
•    Introducing new planning concepts to design a Post-Pandemic City. 
•    Exploring the usefulness of such concepts with their emphasis on different sectors.  
•    Discussing the potentials and challenges of new models and concepts.  
•    Developing priorities for efficient urban response and recovery after the Pandemic.

For more information, you can read the news
 

Do not hesitate to contact us for further enquiries at postpandemiccities@gmail.com

The global health crisis has highlighted the role that local governments play in many aspects, as they have largely been in charge of managing the COVID-19 emergency. Furthermore, and due to the changes brought about by the pandemic, we are in the process of rethinking the city in terms of planning, mobility, public space and immediate access to services. Digital technology can help us to rethinking processes, which offers essential new components for the coordination and integration of efforts in urban areas.

Regarding this, we feel the urge to give technical and political city officials a space for sharing their experiences, concerns, and ideas. That urge has impulsed the Metropolis learning forum, which will pave the path for global knowledge sharing. Rather than a one-way conduit for information sharing or a repurposed business conferencing tool, the peer-to-peer will enable discussion between city officials, allowing them to learn from each other while creating a community. 

On the occasion of the celebration of the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day on 17 May, we organised a webinar on the challenges and opportunities of digitalisation in metropolitan spaces. This event gathered city officers from Brussels, Grand Paris, Barcelona (metropolitan area), Córdoba, Toronto, Harare, Nouakchott and Belo Horizonte, who shared their experiences on how their administration is adapting to this new digital reality. 

At the same time, in this event we launched live the Metropolis learning forum on digitalisation, in which members invited to the session have started the debate in all or some of the questions available at the forum. 

For further information, you can read the concept note of this session in english, spanish or french; you can also consult the program of the session.