Over the next week, leaders from around the world will take part in an historic summit on the future of cities, the third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development – Habitat III.
For more than a year, the Luc Hoffmann Institute’s Urban Footprint Reduction Project has been working with WWF’s Earth Hour City Challenge, ICLEI, Mistra Urban Futures, Aarhus University, the University of Lund and many other academic partners to identify different transition pathways for different types of cities.
In one of the few academic projects represented at the summit, we have analyzed ICLEI’s Carbonn database of self-reported, voluntary footprint reduction commitments, inventories and actions and have developed tools for comparative performance analysis. We also studied the actions and plans that cities have proposed to develop their profiles and typify them.
Following this work we have determined nine transition pathways for nine fundamental city types, ranking action categories according to first, second and third priorities based on city’s size, economy, social, political and historical context. In the coming phase of the project we will be actively refining these transition pathways through interaction with partner cities.
We are actively seeking input into this work and encourage cities to contact us to learn more about this project.
To learn more about Habitat III and the role of, and challenge to, science in shaping the New Urban Agenda in today’s rapidly changing world see this article in the Guardian that talks about our project
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/oct/16/science-cities-and-innovation-in-the-human-age