Only one month to go!
The Eleventh Session of the World Urban Forum (WUF11) is getting close. More than 10,000 people are expected in person from 26-30 June in Katowice, Poland for the conference, which is organized and hosted by UN-Habitat, the Government of Poland and the regional government and municipality of Katowice.
This will be a hybrid event and you can participate online in most of the dialogues, roundtables, discussions and opening and closing sessions. Registration for WUF11 – Transforming Our Cities for a Better Urban Future is free and remains open until June 22.
Click HERE to register (even if participating online).
Held every two years, the World Urban Forum is the premier global conference on sustainable urbanization. It brings together people from government, international agencies, civil society, academia and the private sector to discuss and devise innovative policies and solutions to help cities meet present and future challenges. Make sure you are part of the conversation. A background paper on the conference can be viewed here.
Programme updates for an extraordinary forum: focus on urban crises
The crisis in Ukraine has had a devastating impact on the countries in the region and around the world. This includes Poland, which is hosting three million Ukrainian refugees. In Katowice, the influx has been very well managed. Most refugees have moved on and those that stayed are hosted within the community. Furthermore, major challenges in reconstruction within Ukraine lie ahead. This is therefore in many ways an extraordinary World Urban Forum, which will now include an added focus on urban crises response and recovery, with contributions from international experts, leaders and mayors, including hearing voices from Ukrainian cities. This will intersect with discussions on urban recovery and the multiple crises confronting cities around the world – conflict, the climate emergency, the impacts of COVID-19, rapid urbanization and growing inequality. The following specific changes have been made to the programme:
- An extraordinary dialogue, ‘Urban Crisis Response and Recovery’: A high-level event with senior figures from international agencies and national governments, as well as city mayors who will discuss how these multiple crises have affected their communities. The session will reflect on a future with raising urban crises and the role of mayors as both first responders and visionaries in accelerating the transformation towards a better urban future during the recovery.
- A special session on Urban Recovery Frameworks: Considered a key missing piece to national recovery strategies, the session will discuss the core elements of urban recovery frameworks, such as institutional arrangements, policies and financing instruments to enable bottom-up sustainable, inclusive and resilient recovery. It will look at recent experiences in the Middle East and North Africa region and reflect on Ukraine. More integrated assessments are needed looking both at the functionality of physically damaged areas and those hosting the displaced. This will be a high-level event, with participation from the World Bank, the European Commission, the United Nations and national and local governments.
- Special session on rebuilding communities after war and natural disasters. Organized by the Government of Poland, this will discuss the planning of post-crisis reconstruction of urban spaces and population return. It will also look at how to engage social organizations in the reconstruction of cities, with particular attention to the most vulnerable groups. Voices from cities that have experienced conflict and natural disaster will be included. “Building back better”, and possible broader definitions of the term, will also be discussed.
- Urban Crises Track: over 40 events will be curated focusing on urban crises, including events that will support the mobilization around the urban response and recovery in Ukraine.
An outline of the programme can be seen here, with further updates will follow. A description of the different kind of sessions is here.
Urban Expo is taking shape
Urban Expo is always the most popular attraction at every World Urban Forum, and this year’s eleventh session in the gleaming Katowice International Conference Centre is set to be the biggest ever. Applications for spaces are now closed, and we are delighted to have received a record 184 applications from 60 countries. Thank you for the sheer volume and high quality of applications received, and apologies that not everyone can be selected. The 110 selected applicants will be informed shortly. Urban Expo will feature exhibits by civil society, foundations, academia, media, inter-governmental organizations, local, regional, and national governments, the private sector and the United Nations. They will showcase best practice, cutting-edge technology and demonstrations of how cities are finding the answers to the challenges of housing, transport, energy and basic services that so often hinder inclusive and equitable development.
WUF Alumni Network
The first meeting of the World Urban Forum Alumni Network was held on 10-12 May 2022 in Cairo and co-hosted by Abu Dhabi, the host of the previous WUF. The aim was to establish a network of former host cities as a key WUF platform to contribute and accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and UN-Habitat’s New Urban Agenda.
Discussions were informed by presentations on: 1) Why do we continue to host the World Urban Forum and how UN-Habitat can ensure it remains relevant? 2) What can be done better to improve the WUF experience? 3) What happens after hosting the event - how outcomes can be translated into policy in host countries and eventually expanded and replicated and 4) How the alumni network will organize to achieve 1), 2) and 3).
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