Financing Cities of Tomorrow- Localizing City Funding
November 6, 2024 | 17:00 - 18:30
Summary
Regional and local Governments often face needs and responsibilities beyond their capabilities of financing.
Secondary Cities, or cities on the peripheries often struggle to access funding at national level or international
level. This is even more pronounced when cities are located in the borderlands.
Urbanisation and climate change are intertwined challenges. With climate change causing more frequent
disasters, and disaster losses, the tasks facing local Governments is becoming even more challenging, and the
need to build resilient infrastructure even more pressing. Mountain cities are often overlooked in the global
climate voices, but received increased recognition at COP28.
At this Voices from the Cities event you will have the chance to hear about the city of Khorog located in
Tajikistan and the city of Naryn, located in the Kyrgyz Republic. Both are mountain cities, and both borderland
cities, located on the crossroads to Afghanistan and China.
Both cities, were part of the Soviet Union, and much of the Infrastructure in the city, was built and designed for
industrialization and large scale production. Since independence the Government has been working to respond
to many of these challenges, but issues remain. This case study will show how AKDN in partnership with UN
Habitat is helping cities to have more innovative approaches to investment planning. In Khorog and Naryn a
new model of spatial investment planning has helped the local Government to have the tools to prioritise
capital projects, to be able to take into account climate risks and unlock funding needs to build better, safer
and more resilient cities for the inhabitants of tomorrow.
The event will aim to answer the following questions:
- what innovative approaches can cities use to be able to prioritize projects at a local level
- what are the tools local Governments can use to derisk projects and ensure that climate risks can be taken
into account
- how can you incentivize environmentally friendly or green projects in different environments
- what is spatial investment planning and how can this be used by local Governments for a less complex
approach to localised financing
Objectives
• This event will showcase real life examples of the challenges of localizing financing and the challenges faced
by local Government in remote cities in trying to unlock national, regional and international financing
• This event will showcase examples, impacts and lessons learned to apply innovative approaches and
overcome these challenges of localizing financing
•This event will show that localizing financing is not a one size fits all approach but that funding can be
unlocked through different approaches and cities need to be empowered in unique ways
• Bring forward key players (local Mayors) to allow them to be able to share their experiences, learn from each
other and inspire local action
This event will show how will initial investment funding from the Government of Switzerland, planning components can be used to scale up investment in cities