Kampala Capital City Authority is proud to host the Future of Cities Forum organized under the umbrella of the World Future Council (WFC) – a voice for the rights of future generations.
The Future of Cities Forum – FCF is an annual, international, urban development conference hosted on a revolving basis in different cities around the world. The 1st International Conference was organized in 2011 in Delhi India, 2012 in Burji Arab Dubai, 2013 Hamburg Germany. The Forum will take place from 1st to 3rd October, 2014, at Speak Resort Hotel – Munyonyo.
Uganda becomes the first country in Africa to host this forum with a theme – “Making the case for regenerative urban development: A guiding framework for an urbanising Africa”. The sub-themes include:
Planning our Cities
This theme will focus on the impact of rapid urbanization in many cities, which challenge city officials with public space management and variety of transport issues such as traffic congestion, air pollution and mobility. In the face of these challenges, there is a growing clamor for cities to be more sustainable and green. In order for cities to be transformed to more livable and sustainable spaces, there must be a paradigm shift in how cities are managed and designed: from being planned around motorized transport to being designed around people and their behavior.
Powering our cities
The participants will focus on renewable energy as a key ingredient in the regenerative development of human settlements. In this context, the opportunities for smaller communities to generate the energy they consume locally and even become energy exporters to neighbouring towns and cities are increasingly becoming a reality.
Water and Sanitation
Participants will focus on strategies for clean and adequate water supplies. Water scarcity and poor water quality can gravely affect human health, especially in rapidly growing urban centres. Cities, directly and indirectly, use vast quantities of water which end up as wastewater.
Sanitation is the foundation of human health, dignity and development. Although an improvement of water and sanitation has been observed over the past decade in some countries, there are problems that persist in Africa. Sustainable sanitation improves not only surface water quality but more importantly, quality of groundwater. Discharges of non-treated or insufficiently treated wastewater, municipal and industrial, remain a major pressure factor. The conference will focus attention to this serious challenge and come up with practical solutions on how to radically increase access to basic sanitation in ways that reflects the principles of economic efficiency, social equity and environmental sustainability.
Financing cities
African cities have for a long time relied on transfers from their central governments to finance investment in urban infrastructure. Local finances have not yet reached a substantial enough level to influence fiscal choices and usually serve only as an adjustment variable when balancing City budgets.
Most often, resources have not increased proportionately with the City expanded jurisdictions and in most cases, City administrations must resign themselves to tailoring service levels to available resources. With such constraints, financing urban regenerative investments seems a far-fetched and way out of reach for most Cities. This session’s discussions will revolve around the identifying challenges and opportunities for raising financing for City investments including exploring innovative financing mechanisms to close the gap.
Delegates: The forum delegates shall include; mayors, city planners, urban development technical experts, scientists, development partners and representatives of civil society and the private sector, to discuss key challenges for future urban development not only on a global scale but essentially for the African region.
This forum is intended to provide a strategic option for sharing sustainable solutions and best practices in regional urban regeneration.
The wave of urbanization is a global phenomenon and there is no doubt that the proportion of the human population living in urban areas is increasing worldwide. Currently, Africa has the highest rate of urban population growth of about 4.0 percent per year.
As the urban population continues to grow, the pressure mounted on public service delivery systems has strained the current infrastructural capacity, consequently compromising the quality of service delivery.
Cities should continue to provide opportunities for its citizens to improve their quality of life and an environment for them to realize their full human potential.
Planning and investment in urban development especially cities, is thus not an option but a paramount obligation by governments and local authorities to ensure quality and equitable service delivery.
Being able to imagine a future different from the present reality is essential to breaking free from unsustainable development.
A list of sponsors for the event includes; Stanbic bank, Huawei, Post Bank, Housing Finance, Umeme, NSSF, Ministry of Local Government , National Planning Authority, Uganda Investment Authority, Bunyonyi Safari, GIZ, World Bank and Njumba Properties, among others.