DAY 2 AT THE SUSTAINABLE CITIES IN ACTION FORUM 2024
Highlights from Day 2 of Sustainable Cities in Action Forum 2024
Live The City: Urban Walk
Participants started their day with a guided tour of Expo City Dubai, exploring its sustainable urban ecosystem built to 15-minute-city principles, and learning how the city serves as an incubator for developing and scaling planetary solutions.
Live The City: Urban Walk | Exploring the thinking, values and design elements behind Expo City Dubai
Design for Life: In Conversation with Architects and Designers
What are the golden rules for sustainable city design? Leading international architects and designers engaged in an animated discussion on the importance of balancing form and function. Panelists contemplated how, by contextualising for culture and geography, urban designers can create cities that are beautiful, functional and respectful of planetary boundaries.
L-r: Daniel Muñoz, MD, Luxury, Architecture & Design, AGi Madrid; Gordon Gill, Founding Partner, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture and Ahmed Bukhash, Director, Urban Planning at Dubai Development Authority
People Make Cities: How Story and Community Shape Space
Urban practitioners pressed the importance of community visibility, consultation and participation in ensuring equitable and inclusive city planning processes. In a far-reaching and thought-provoking analysis, panelists explored actionable opportunities presented by gamification, co-creation and community-mapping, with speakers concluding that impact and affordability need not be mutually exclusive.
Juan Carlos Belloso (speaking), Founder and Director, Future Places, stresses the importance of cultural identity in sustainable placemaking
Visions of Tomorrow: Strategies for Shaping Our Urban Future
An exploration of how business and technology can be levers for urban resilience. Core talking points included the power of stakeholder education and engagement; the urgency of cross-sectoral collaboration; the need to identity and address sectoral interdependencies; and the enabling role of digitisation.
Dr Folayinka Dania (speaking), Chief Resilience Officer for Lagos State, shares the stage with (r-l) Oliver Kraft, Executive VP for Sustainable Communities, Siemens Smart Infrastructure and (see next slide for more)
Optimizing Workplace Well-being: EmiratesGBC Report Launch
Lana Isam AbuQulbain, Technical Engineer, Emirates Green Building Council, presented the findings of the ‘Optimizing Workplace Well-being: A Unified Approach to Green Building Standards and Office Comfort’ report. Launched at Sustainable Cities in Action Forum 2024, this comprehensive report outlines how to create workspaces that are clean and green, while fostering employee productivity and wellbeing.
Lana Isam AbuQulbain presents the findings of the ‘Optimizing Workplace Well-being' report
The Briefing: Monocle Live Podcast Recording
The last in a series of special live editions of Monocle’s ‘The Briefing’ podcast, recorded at Sustainable Cities in Action Forum 2024, with Monocle’s Tom Edwards hosting a discussion on ‘The Living City’. Expert guests traded fascinating reflections on children as powerful advocates of sustainable cities; why systems thinking and institutional empathy can be levers for inclusive urban planning, and how simple fixes are often the most impactful.
Host Tom Edwards asks panelists for their take on 'the living city'
The Power of Pixels for Sustainable Cities
Presentation by Saeed Al Mansoori, Director of Remote Sensing Department, The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) on the application of space technology in sustainable urban development. The AI and GIS (geographic information systems) expert explained how the birds’ eye view of our planet afforded by satellite technology allows us to monitor our urban environments in real time and with exceptional clarity; and how use cases range from traffic management to flood prediction and urban biodiversity health checks.
Saeed Al Mansoori, Director of Remote Sensing Department, The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC)
Introducing Expo City Dubai’s Urban Lab
Magd Zoorob, Senior Vice President Future Technologies, Expo City Dubai, invited businesses innovating in the sustainable cities space to test new technologies in ECD’s Urban Lab. Attendees learned how Expo City’s smart infrastructure, funding and feasibility support, and opportunities for collaboration, offer an enabling environment for innovators to trial and scale sustainable city solutions in spheres such as food, energy, water, mobility, carbon capture and the circular economy.
Magd Zoorob, Senior Vice President Future Technologies, Expo City Dubai
City Building Blocks: SMEs and Industry Innovation for Moving Ahead
From Minecraft to biospherics via Web 3.0, ingenious innovations are fuelling advances in grassroots city design, food waste management, chemical-free services and urban agriculture. SMEs and changemakers reflected on the criticality of foregrounding people not technology; opportunities for mainstreaming innovation; and how to manage regulatory hurdles in the fast-moving tech space.
James Delaney, Founder and Managing Director, BlockWorks, discusses Web 3.0 with Jacqueline Buxton, Co-Founder, Tres Cool (third from left)
Funding Urban Ideas for Cities in Action
In this dedicated finance session, experts from across government, business, banking and tech incubation shared opportunities for navigating sustainable city funding roadblocks. During a frank and lively exchange, panelists explored how flexibility and creative thinking can address challenges such as restrictive loan terms, procurement barriers and risk thresholds.
Sulaiman Abdulla, Director - Administrative Affairs Department, Federal Tax Authority UAE, shares the fiscal perspective during the Funding Urban Ideas for Cities in Action session
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