Organized by UN-Habitat together with the Polish Ministry of Development Funds and Regional Policy and the Katowice City Office, the World Urban Forum (WUF11) will take place in Katowice (Poland) under the theme Transforming our Cities for a Better Urban Future from June 26 to 30, 2022. The WUF is a global conference on urbanization which brings together a wide range of stakeholders to discuss major urban challenges facing the world today.
Next week, the Institut Paris Region will take part in the eleventh session of the World Urban Forum with Cécile Diguet, Director of Urban Policies and Urban Development, Éric Huybrechts, Manager of European and International Affairs, Paul Lecroart, senior planning expert and Antoine Troccaz, involved in a number of events (listed below).
Sunday, June 26, 2022
Habitat Professionals Forum, General Assembly | 16:00-17:30
Habitat Professionals Forum, dinner
Monday, June 27, 2022
European Metropolitan Authorities Forum. Metropolitan solutions to contemporary challenges with
Éric Huybrechts, speaker | 15:00-16:30
International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA Europe). Reconnecting with Nature. Landscape architects at the forefront of sustainable and creative urban transformation with Cécile Diguet, speaker | 16:00-17:30
Cities have become the focus of sustainability issues as they are major consumers and distributors of goods and services. They have an ecological impact much beyond their geographic locations. Calls for humankind to reconnect with nature to forward sustainability and resilience cannot be ignored anymore. Therefore, we have to re-connect with nature in our social and ecological systems, to the urban landscapes, to fight against environmental crises in our cities. There is an urgent need to transform our cities towards a more intact and resilient urban nature for a better future of our citizens. Interventions that respond to certain everyday needs of people in their public spaces can have multiple catalysing benefits for urban communities. Besides the tangible improvement of the environment, socio-ecological design, innovation practices in public spaces strengthen community cohesion, awareness of the common good, and finally the motivation towards further engagement in spatial transformation processes.
Landscape Architects together with associated disciplines can make the difference. We understand nature and public space as a real-world laboratory where we interact with citizens and in transdisciplinary contexts. Therefore we invite neighbouring disciplines, academics, citizens and public officials to our networking event.
METREX: Accelerating on Greening the Metropolitan City with Paul Lecroart, speaker | 16:15-17:45
METREX believes that Metropolitan Regions and Areas are best in place to address the challenges we face. Grounded in realistic and practical solutions, they demonstrate situational leadership on pressing issues that can accelerate the journey to finding tailored solutions. This event will show concrete projects on policy instruments, new energies, accessible public spaces, applied circular economy approaches and hands-on tools and urban regeneration. We will discuss the principles and how to tailor them to other situations, whether situated in Europe or elsewhere. Paul Lecroart, Senior Urbanist at the Institut Paris Region, leader of METREX-Eurocities Expert Group From Roads to Streets will focus on exemplar cases to redevelop major car infrastructure into public places, from all over Europe and beyond.
Urban Library. Memories Of Cities by Éric Huybrechts, speaker | 16:30-17:30
A new release on the protection of historical centers of Algiers, Beijing, Beirut, Bordeaux, Brest, Caravan Oases of Mauritania, Casablanca, Damascus, Hanoi, Istanbul, Jordan, Kyoto, Lebanon, Luang Prabang, Montreal, Mostar, Mumbai, Palestine, Paris, Porto Novo, Saint-Louis (Senegal), Samarkand, Shanghai, Tripoli, Tunis and Ukraine.
Gentrification, urban gaps, colonial cities, epidemics, metropolitan heritage, world heritage, urban planning tools, regulations, know-how, tourism, heritage professionals, plural identities, cooperation, reconstruction, climate change.
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
MEMORANDUMGame. Metropolitan Heritage Education Tool for Metro Inter-Scalar Linkage Patterns of Inclusion with
Éric Huybrechts (speaker) | 9:00-12:00
MEMORANDUMGame proposes a board game experience based on Metropolitan Cartography methodology to implement the role of cultural and natural heritages in planning, designing and managing the 21st-century Metropolis. It is the occasion to compare different perspectives according to a shared background of operational knowledge of the metropolitan heritage. The game would be the field of joint investigation to interpret the metropolitan heritage's dynamics to demonstrate how the ability to territorialise the SDGs is a prerequisite in the professional, academic and government to generate heritage awareness in different contexts. It tries to bring together all the metropolitan agents' perspectives to explore metropolitan heritage in physical, social, political, and economic dimensions.
World Urban Campaign General Assembly, Éric Huybrechts (member) | 9:00-12:00
Voices from Cities. Megacity's solutions facing climate change with Éric Huybrechts moderator and Cécile Diguet, speaker | 12:30-14:00
The scale and the complexity of megacities make them more vulnerable but powerful to take their responsibility in the climate change challenge. This event will address the big shift in planning megacities to face climate change. A dialogue between megacities: Bogota, Buenos Aires, Delhi, Istanbul, Madrid, and Paris. A dialogue with international organizations and networks: UN-Habitat, OECD, Metropolis, C40, IFLA, MTPA, Metrex. This event was organized in partnership with Territorial Planning Agencies global network (MTPA).
The main objective of this event is to launch an initiative between megacities that have the following objectives: - to share experiences and good practices between megacities - to discuss innovative solutions on strategic planning at the scale of megacities - to strengthen the mobilization of megacities to make a big shift in territorial planning. Due to the high level of responsibilities of megacities to provide solutions facing contemporary challenges, this share of experiences in a permanent working group will foster innovation to support the big shift in the planning of megacities.
World Urban Campaign: The City We Need Now! with Éric Huybrechts, speaker | 16:00-18:00
The City We Need Now! is an advocacy campaign led by UN-Habitat and the +200 partner organizations of the World Urban Campaign to call for urgent action as the world is off-track to achieve the SDGs by 2030. This session will try to explain actions areas towards the implementation of the New Urban Agenda and address gaps in SDGs achievements. Participants in the room will be encouraged to share their views in the ten action areas of The City We Need Now! Campaign ie Health and well-being; peace and safety; climate adaptation and resilience; inclusion and gender equality; economic opportunities for all; culture and identity; local governance; urban planning and design; housing, services and mobility, and leaning and innovation.
Metropolitan heritage (Heritopolis): mobilising cultural and natural heritage at the metropolitan scale with
Éric Huybrechts, speaker | 16:30-18:00
This event will highlight the importance of the metropolitan scale through a blend of presenters from different partner organisations, world regions and career stages. They will provide insights from their experience and results from the recent Heritopolis survey of participating metropolises undertaken mainly by early stage researchers: introduction of this networking event with David Simon; The metropolis as heritage and new questions attached to the change of scale with Antonella Contin; Explanation of the partnership between UN-Habitat’s MetroHUB, ICOMOS, ICROM, Metropolis, the MTPA and UNESCO supporting the Heritopolis initiative by Jordi Vaquer (Metropolis) and Jihon Kim (UNESCO); The strategic importance of such an integrated approach as outlined above, including the explicit inclusion of cultural and natural heritage as priorities within the SDGs and NUA by Eric Huybrechts; Results from the survey of metropolitan areas in the worldwide Heritopolis network, using examples to highlight the diversity of (a) organisations active in this arena, (b) the extent to which the SDGs and NUA are being actively engaged with and monitoring of progress is being measured, and (c) of how coherent policies can and do make a positive difference by Claus-Peter Echter and David Simon; Preliminary lessons and suggestions of good practice by Joanna Sanetra-Szeliga and the Conclusion: How researchers and local governments can join the Heritopolis initiative and MetroHUB by Remy Sietchiping.
ISOCARP dinner, Éric Huybrechts, board member
French delegation dinner
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Press Conference Centre. Habitat Professional Forum: Launch of the Roadmap to Just Recovery with
Éric Huybrechts, member | 10:15-11:15
PFVT French Pavilion, roundtable. Urban park systems in Paris Region: making room for everyone with
Cécile Diguet, speaker | 16:00-
Professionals roundtable with Cécile Diguet, Paul Lecroart and Éric Huybrechts | 16:00-18:00
Professionals from more than 24 built environment international associations will gather at this roundtable convened by the Habitat Professional Forum. The event will focus on four strategic topics discussed through the lens of WUF11’s key dialogue themes: How can professionals contribute to a just and restorative pandemic recovery? How can professionals reinforce urban action to accelerate SDGs achievement through the NUA? How can professionals better foster engagement in SDGs localization through partnerships with local governments? How can professionals improve their own approaches to provide better professional community fit for purpose globally?
PFVT French Pavilion. Temporary urban planning in the Paris region: making room for everyone in the world
with Cécile Diguet, speaker and Paul Lecroart, speaker| 16:00-
Temporary urban planning has been developing in France for the last ten years, optimizing the use of vacant land by inventing unexpected and often poetic places. This pitch presents the advantages of this new practice, which is now part of the tools of urban development.
Metropolitan and Territorial Planning Agencies Global Network (annual meeting), Éric Huybrechts, member | 17:15-
World Urban Campaign dinner
