Mark Pelling
Moderator
Launch of the Tomorrow's Cities global synthesis report. The event will bring together partners who have developed and used the Tomorrow's Cities Decision Support Environment (TCDSE) approach for dialogue with the UN-HABITAT community. The TCDSE provides urban decision-makers a mechanism to extend existing inclusive urban planning and risk assessment methods into the future. This is key for addressing the triple challenges of climate risk, rapid urbanization and ongoing urban injustice. The TCDSE has been developed and applied in nine cities: Nairobi (Kenya), Quito (Ecuador), Rapti and Khokana (Nepal), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Cox's Bazar and Chattogram (Bangladesh), Nablus (Palestine) and Istanbul (Turkey). The event will link international policy debate on United Nations Habitat Assembly Resolution 2/9 to create a human settlements resilience framework for early warning, foresight, risk reduction, crisis response, and post-crisis recovery and reconstruction with detailed empirical evidence form these partner cities. Dialogue with the audience will extend this to collectively work to a definition of urban resilience that can encompass the full range of urban visioning tools and approaches that can extend beyond the near-term risk reduction and early warning tools currently available.
Overarching objective is to stimulate debate on the United Nations Habitat Assembly Resolution 2/9 to create a human settlements resilience framework for early warning, foresight, risk reduction, crisis response, and post-crisis recovery and reconstruction. To achieve this secondary objectives that will structure the session are:
1. Revise the definition of urban resilience to move from near- and medium-term to longer-term planning horizons.
2. Reflect on the consequences of rapid urbanization, climate risks and ongoing urban injustice for resilience planning tools.
3. Offer detailed evidence and technical input from nine cities that have co-designed and deployed the TCDSE.
4. Disseminate the TCDSE.
5. Invite city and institutional partners to join the Tomorrow's Cities Community of Practice for shared learning and advocacy on inclusive, risk sensitive urban planning.