This year, FIDIC and its newly relaunched sustainability development committee are proudly supporting World Cities Day, as part of UN-Habitats Urban October series of initiatives.
Today 55% of the world’s population live in cities and towns and the number is growing every day. The United Nation’s Agenda for Sustainable Development, and Sustainable Development Goal 11, “To make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”, puts sustainable urbanisation at the forefront of the global agenda for development.
In the transition to a new sustainable urban normality, local communities play an ever-important role in supporting government stimulus packages for employment creation, securing delivery of essential services, ensuring a green-economic transformation, providing adequate shelter and public space as well as contributing to the re-establishment of local value chains.
World Cities Day 2020 seeks to promote the above, the global interest in urbanisation and generate international cooperation to address the many challenges faced in urbanisation and in doing so contribute and promote sustainable urban development. The theme for this year, ‘Valuing our Communities and Cities’, is key given the critical role communities have played and continue to play during Covid-19, as well as in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. The initiative plans to raise awareness of the benefits and potential value of investing in our cities and the key messages centre around economic, social, environmental and innovation value.
“As we start to see significant recovery and economic rebuild from the impact of Covid around the world, the scale of infrastructure investment needed in our cities and the legacy of this for future generations means it is critical that we take this opportunity to address critical challenges to create and ensure long term sustainability, productivity, resilience and high quality outcomes for communities and the environment and as an industry we have a significant role to play in this.” Tracey Ryan chair of the FIDIC Sustainable Development Committee and managing director of Aurecon – New Zealand
The day also provides an opportunity to celebrate the important contributions of engineers and engineering to cities, communities and modern life and we strongly urge all FIDIC member associations to support it.
This year the Global Observance of World Cities Day will be hosted for the first time in Africa, by the government of Kenya, featuring high-level attendance from across the world. The event can be viewed on 31 October at https://urbanoctober.unhabitat.org/register-for-wcd-2020.
Join FIDIC in celebrating and supporting this important day by submitting or joining a planned event on the following link https://urbanoctober.unhabitat.org/post-your-event or by raising awareness of this important initiative.
