Rapid Urbanization requires Rapid Planning? New approaches to supply and disposal infrastructure planning for sustainable cities and regions

Rapid Urbanization requires Rapid Planning – New approaches to supply and disposal infrastructure planning for sustainable cities and regions A city is a complex system. This observation is neither new nor original. However, this complexity is not reflected in organizational charts of city administrations all over the world. Instead, we find clearly cut sectors, “silos”, each encompassing an urban need/ infrastructure. Yet, the interactions between these putatively singular sectors are increasing. The SDGs, the Paris Agreement and the NUA function as benchmarks for many cities bridging across sectors. How can cities successfully harmonize human well-being, socio-economic subsystems, the physical environment and limited natural and financial resources in their planning? 1. “Rapid Planning” (RP) seeks to develop a rapid trans-sectoral urban planning methodology focusing on urban basic infrastructures: energy, water, waste water, solid waste, and urban agriculture. “Breaking of silos” in order to optimally use the synergies between the different infrastructure sectors is considered as lever to accelerate infrastructure planning in rapidly growing cities and to make it more efficient to the benefit of the citizens. Capacity development measures are customized to technical, organizational and governance aspects to “break silo thinking” within cities. RP is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) till 2019. 2. The GIZ-project “Sustainable Development of Metropolitan Regions” aims at developing an orientation frame for the future action within the German development cooperation. The focus is on analyzing metropolitan regions under four aspects: Innovative economic regions - labor and residential markets – the nexus system (inter-sectoral linkages) – governance systems. Our event presents new alliances between cities, researchers and UN-Habitat anchored in: Kigali, Da Nang, Assiut and Frankfurt/ Main (RP). GIZ focuses on Africa and SEA We look forward to a reality check between our international project partners and HABITAT III participants. We aim at establishing a network for interested city representatives and urban innovators for the dissemination of the methodologies developed in these projects.