World Urban Forum 11 to be held in Katowice, Poland
The World Urban Forum (WUF) is the premier global conference on sustainable urbanization.
The WUF was established in 2001 by the United Nations to examine one of the most pressing issues facing the world today: rapid urbanisation and its impact on communities, cities, economies, climate change and policies. The first WUF was held in Nairobi, Kenya in 2002 and has been held around the world ever since.
This will be the first time that the WUF, convened by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), will take place in Eastern Europe. Representatives of national, regional and local governments, academics, business people, community leaders, urban planners will be among the thousands of people are expected to attend WUF11 which is co-organized by Poland’s Ministry of Development Funds and Regional Policy and the Municipal Office of Katowice.
The Government of Poland, the City of Katowice, and UN-Habitat are working hard to make the Eleventh World Urban Forum (WUF11), being held from 26 to 30 June 2022, the most accessible World Urban Forum ever. This will enable all participants to engage and participate in events and meetings.
The theme of WUF11, Transforming our Cities for a Better Urban Future, will provide greater insights and clarity on the future of cities based on existing trends, challenges and opportunities, as well as suggest ways cities can be better prepared to address future pandemics and a wide range of other shocks.
The long-term prospects point to a world that will continue to urbanize over the next decade— from 56% of the world’s population living in cities today, to 60% by 2030. Urban areas are the engines which will absorb virtually all the future growth of the world’s population. Every region is expected to become more urbanized in the next ten years. Clearly, this tells us that the future of humanity is undeniably urban, and we must plan our cities well to ensure sustainability, equity and shared prosperity
This raises some key questions about the future of cities: what kind of cities are needed to support the future of humanity? How do we envisage and reimagine the future of cities? What do we want our cities to look like?
The theme of WUF11 will focus on these questions, providing us with the opportunity to anticipate change, course-correct, and become more knowledgeable about the different possibilities that the future of cities offers.
Learn more here: https://wuf.unhabitat.org/