Resilient Design for Sustainable Urbanization: Sustainable Urban Mobility

In celebration of the World Habitat Day 2013, the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat), the Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization, the Center for Resilient Design at New Jersey Institute of Technology, and the American Institute Architects New York join to host a high-level discussion, which will cover key developments in the area of resilient design. In the years leading to the HABITAT III Conference, and the post 2015 development agenda solutions will be sought for the challenges, in an era of ever increasing urbanization and disasters that impact urban areas. This event will bring together high-level experts and representatives from national and local governments, non-governmental organizations, institutes, foundations and industry, who will present case studies from around the world that respond to natural disasters and identify the resilient design challenges and opportunities that cities might face from disasters.

In celebration of World Habitat Day 2013, cities around the world will organize events addressing Sustainable Urban Mobility. As natural disasters often result from expanding settlements in areas of risk around older urban cores, an alternative is a higher density sustainable urbanism supported by urban mobility. Many cities exist in fragile ecosystems and economies that must be understood and protected if urban growth is to be sustained. The conference will be held in the recently restored UN ECOSOC Chamber and address the resilient design challenges and opportunities that cities and regions like ours may face from natural disasters.

The expected objectives  and the outcomes of the meeting are:

• To show the relationship between resilient design and sustainable urbanization and sustainable urban mobility;
• To propose innovations and best practices in the area of resilient design, and urban mobility that can be shared among urbanized and urbanizing areas;
• To highlight the need for policies as well as innovative, replicable solutions, ideas, concepts and approaches that can be used in different contexts for resilient design; and
• To identify resilient design ideas, concepts and approaches that are replicable.

For more information and RSVP please contact Ludivine Cornille at consortiumsu@gmail.com and Francesca de Ferrari at deferrari@un.org.