Launched in May 2010, the Making Cities Resilient Campaign: “My City is getting read!” has raised both awareness and political commitment to disaster risk reduction and resilience.
Photo by Conor Samuel.
Liverpool, United Kingdom, 26 October 2018 – As cities and towns around the world expand daily, Liverpool is hosting a high-level, international event on city resilience.
In the past 20 years, disasters have killed 1.3 million people and left a further 4.4 billion injured, homeless, displaced or in need of emergency assistance. The World Bank has calculated that each year disasters push 26 million into poverty and cost the global economy USD 520 billion.
This year the United Nation’s agency responsible for human settlements and sustainable urbanization, UN-Habitat, along with the cities of Shanghai and Liverpool have chosen: Building sustainable and resilient citiesas the theme for World Cities Day on 31 October.
“While cities are centres of action, decision-making and commerce, they are, by virtue of their concentrations of population, also centres of risk and hazards,” said UN-Habitat Executive Director, Ms. Maimunah Mohd Sharif. “If we don’t take urgent action – we could see future disasters cause suffering and destruction on an unprecedented scale.This year’s World Cities Day is a call to action for all of us to rethink how cities can protect their populations against sudden shocks and long-term stresses.”
During the day-long event, mayors, national and local government experts, representatives from global partnerships and coalitions and academics from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the USA will share their experiences and discuss how to strengthen the resilience of urban populations against threats ranging from hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and fires to disease pandemics, economic crises, conflict and social unrest.
The meeting will discuss the variety of ways in which cities can make themselves resilient. By diversifying their economy, creating opportunities for business, proper planning and engaging the private sector, cities can protect themselves against economic shocks. By ensuring residents of all backgrounds take part in decision making, other cities work towards becoming democratic, sustainable and inclusive. The forum hosts representatives of cities hit by terrible natural disasters or conflict, to share how, during the recovery process, they not only rebuilt the infrastructure but they created stronger communities.
Since being first proposed in the Shanghai Declaration at the end of the 2010 World Expo, and established by the United Nations in 2014, the World Cities Day Global Observation has been held in Shanghai, China; Milan, Italy; Quito, Ecuador; and Guangzhou, China. Since 2014, the Shanghai and Guangzhou municipal governments, with the support of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China, have financed World Cities Day. The primary World Cities Day event will take place in Liverpool; over 15 other cities have also announced their plans to celebrate the day focuses international attention on issues surrounding sustainable urbanization.
“We’re thrilled that Liverpool is hostingWorld Cities Day 2018.Working together with the UN and Shanghai People’s Government.We are proud to have brought this event to Liverpool and to showcase our city to the rest of the world, said the Mayor of Liverpool, Jo Anderson.
“Liverpool can tell an incredible story about its own economic resilience. From immense wealth (with poverty) to decline and now we are booming again with the fastest growing economy outside London. Other cities have their own stories to tell and advice to give about how they have developed their own resilience. That’s why we’re working with the UN to present these urban solutions to each other.”
Note to Media
All media are welcome to attend the event on Wednesday 31 October from 08.30 at St George’s Hall, Liverpool
Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/world-cities-day-2-day-event-liverpool-uk-tickets-49812497521
Barcelona, October 16th 2018
On Saturday 27th October, from 10 to 14h, UN-Habitat and Barcelona City Council will celebrate World Cities Day in the super block of Sant Antoni market, offering a variety of activities for the whole family.
Building on the success of previous editions of Barcelona Resilience Week (2015 & 2016) that fostered dialogue between technical and political representatives, the 2018 edition will push forward action to achieve the vision for sustainable and resilient cities set out in the 2030 Agenda.
UN-Habitat’s focal point for implementing the City Resilience Profile Tool in Dakar – Amadou Lamine Cissé – participated in the regional conference “Climate Change and Resilience: Lessons from West Africa” which took place from the 10thto the 12thSeptember 2018 in Dakar, Senegal.
Photo courtesy of IED Afrique
Informality is an increasingly global urban phenomenon with more than one quarter of the world’s urban population living in informal settlements.
With over half of the population living in urban areas and the numbers increasing daily, cities are facing unprecedented demographic, environmental, economic, social and spatial challenges.
Barcelona City Council continues to take innovative steps to increase its urban resilience, this time through a multi-partner workshop on its forthcoming resilience strategy with participation from international organizations, including UN-Habitat.
Last week the UN-Habitat’s Barcelona office received a delegation from Yakutsk City Council with the objective of reinforcing the ongoing collaboration between the City Resilience Profiling Programme and the far east Russian city.
As the scale and dynamics of human mobility change, resilience in our cities could be compromised if we do not consider the urban perspective.
From the 1st to the 3rd of May, the 2018 Integration Segment of ECOSOC was held in New York under the theme “Innovative communities: leveraging technology and innovation to build sustainable and resilient societies”. There, several stakeholders analysed pathways to build resilience and discussed the importance of engaging different actors from the international arena in doing so.
The Resilient Cities Congress, held in Bonn, Germany, and convened by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability – brought together local government representatives, academia, civil society, journalists and international organizations to advance the resilience agenda and forge synergies for action.
Mayor of Pemba, Mozambique.
From the 16th to 20th April, UN-Habitat’s Barcelona office welcomed the focal points from the four pilot cities implementing the City Resilience Profiling Tool under the Making Cities Sustainable and Resilience Action, financed by the European Commission DEVCO.
YAKKUM Emergency Unit is a unit of the YAKKUM’s (Christian Foundation for Public Health), established in 2001 and based in Yogyakarta. The mandate is to provide emergency responses and promote initiatives to address disaster risk reduction as well as the impact of climate change. We’ve been working with more than 350 community-based organizations across Indonesia including 49 women’s groups and 6 intergenerational groups. We’re not only working on how to build disaster preparedness within the community, but also showcasing that their resilience practices can bring positive impacts in economic and social aspects. (more…)
The fruit of one year of research and a growing demand to track global trends, UN-Habitat’s flagship publication, Trends in Urban Resilience will be the feature of a dedicated session during the World Urban Forum 9 in Kuala Lumpur.
Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Programme for the implementation of the City Resilience Profiling Tool.
His excellency Presidente do Conselho Municipal de Maputo highlighted in his opening address, “Urban resilience must create conditions so that no event of natural or human made origin negatively affects Maputo’s residents, including their basic services. Urban resilience allows nothing to compromise the normal functioning of our city and make everyone feel secure in it”.
A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between UN-Habitat and Displacement Solutions, an organisation working on rights-based land solutions to climate displacement, outlining a framework for collaboration between the two organisations; globally, regionally, nationally, and at city-level.
In the framework of the joint initiative between the European Commission, UNISDR and UN-Habitat, ‘Making Cities More Sustainable and Resilient’, UN-Habitat has initiated a series of training sessions for technicians from the cities of Asunción (Paraguay) and Maputo (Mozambique).
Asunción and Maputo are two of the pilot cities already implementing UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Tool, with Port Vila and Dakar set to receive the training in the future as part of the Tool’s implementation.
Under the theme, Empower Cities, Empower people, the 2017 edition of Smart City Expo World Congress (#SCEWC17) took place this month in Barcelona. UN-Habitat signed an agreement with the event organizers through which the programme will become a strategic partner in this and future editions of the global event.
Executive Director, Dr. Joan Clos
Following dialogues initiated in 2015 between UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Programme (CRPP) and the city of Yakutsk, the Russian city has initiated implementation of UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Tool.
Mayors gathered in Cancun, Mexico, for the Local and Regional Government Summit (22-23 May) have adopted the Declaration of Local and Regional Governments. Along with their partners from national governments, international organizations and risk reduction actors across many sectors, local government representatives sought to give new impetus to risk reduction and resilience efforts at the local level, drawing on renewed global commitments articulated through the Sendai Framework, New Urban Agenda, and among other frameworks. (more…)
Unprecedented momentum for resilience-building is shaping the way we conceive, plan and manage our cities. From local governments to global organizations, resilience is increasingly considered as an essential ingredient and partner to achieving and sustaining development gains. In addition to mapping the diverse landscape of actors working on urban resilience, the report bridges the gap between history, research and practice.
The week-long mission (4-7 April) was part of the city’s collaboration with the Programme to develop a Resilience Action Plan and included various training sessions with UN-Habitat experts.
Barcelona City Council, one of the cities engaged with the programme, also attended this session to explain their own experience building resilience through the CRPP approach and shared the results of their data collection. (more…)
UN Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Programme hosted the exhibition “Where will we go?” in the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site, in Barcelona, Spain. The audio-visual production by renowned photo-journalist Kadir van Lohuizen ran from February 17th through March 17th, 2017 and explored the plight of people permanently displaced as a result of the impact of a changing climate.
The four UN organizations located at the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site – UN-HABITAT’s City Resilience Profiling Programme (UN-HABITAT/CRPP), the GWOPA Secretariat Global Water Operators Partnerships Alliance (UN-HABITAT/GWOPA), the United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility (UNU-GCM) and the WHO Barcelona Office for Health Systems Strengthening (WHO/Europe) with the support of the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site joined the world-wide celebration of the UN´s 70th Anniversary with an event that took place at the site the evening of the 23 October 2015. (more…)
UN-Habitat Executive Director Dr Joan Clos and UfM Deputy Secretary General for Transport and Urban Development Ambassador Yigit Alpogan signed a Memorandum of Understanding to undertake joint actions for an integrated approach to socially and environmentally sustainable urban development. Both parties agreed to find common responses to the pressing challenges facing urban areas in the Mediterranean region and have identified several areas of collaboration with special regard to water management, risk reduction and resilience. (more…)
Building on the success of the Barcelona Resilience Experience in February 2015, UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Programme, the BCN Urban Resilience Partnership, and the City Council of Barcelona hosted the Barcelona Resilience Week, a global platform for discussion and learning between leading cities and companies working to build more resilient communities all over the world. (more…)
