In the summer of 2022, Helsingborg invites the world to be a part of their H22 City Expo and ‘Urban Future’ will kick off the Expo on June 1 to 3, 2022.
The mid-sized Swedish city of Helsingborg is one of the most innovative and fastest transforming in Europe. A radical reorganisation of their internal structure has enabled them to race forward with innovation and sustainability at full speed. Urban Future is proud to kick off Helsingborg’s H22 City Expo, where the city will showcase its work so far and open up the city as a testbed and platform for collective global action.
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Preparing for the summer of 2022
“We want Helsingborg and the H22 City Expo to be the obvious international meeting place, where actors who work to make cities more sustainable meet and exchange experiences to accelerate this work globally. Therefore, we are incredibly happy that Urban Future sees Helsingborg and H22 City Expo as the natural arena for all ‘CityChangers’ in the summer of 2022”, says Lars Thunberg, Deputy Mayor, City of Helsingborg.
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Helsingborg: Co-creating a city that puts people and planet first
Gerald Babel-Sutter, CEO and Co-founder of Urban Future: “By sheer citizen numbers, Helsingborg will be our smallest ever host city. But at the same time, it will be one of the most innovative! Rarely do you find cities that are able to transform themselves so fast and so radically as is the case with Helsingborg. That’s why we’re so excited to bring the CityChangers community here, as the message for the world is clear: you don’t need to be a big city to drive change successfully! Everywhere in Helsingborg, you can see and feel the passion for driving change and innovation – so what better place could there be to meet and inspire open minds?”
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Urban Future Helsingborg 22 anticipates the participation of international decision-makers, influencers, and change agents who all work tirelessly to make cities more sustainable the world over.
In recent years, the municipality of Helsingborg has completely changed its mindset and way of collaborating with citizens, businesses, innovators, academia and other stakeholders in order to make change happen. Through the massive H22 initiative, Helsingborg is working with like-minded partners near and far.
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Urban Future is building digital bridges
The recent months have proven that digital alternatives cannot replace the energy in a room full of game-changers, the moment when you randomely meet a speaker you’re admiring over a cup of coffee, or when you’re cycling the city’s newest bike lanes with a group of cycling enthusiasts! Urban decision-makers especially need to see, feel, and get inspired by other urban places and neighbourhoods – li ve on-site.
But, in addition to the annual live event, building digital bridges will be a fantastic way to support urbanists from near and far over the upcoming months, where physical meetings are still challenging to organise while the pandemic rages on. Currently, there is a virtual event in the making that will be held by the end of September 2021. This virtual event will premiere a digital home base for the global community of around 50,000 CityChangers. The digital home base will provide the collective know-how and expertise of hundreds of experts – 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, free of charge. Users will also be able to generate and contribute their own content and connect with like-minded change-makers from hundreds of cities.
About ‘Urban Future’
Urban Future is the world’s largest meeting place for CityChangers, people who strive to make their cities more sustainable with passion and commitment. They implement tangible projects, thus vastly improving life in their city. Urban Future brings together our brightest minds, presenting itself as a neutral platform without any political agenda. The conference was co-founded in 2014 by Gerald Babel-Sutter and has taken place in a different European city every year. Since 2014, visitor numbers have tripled. The 2020 edition in Lisbon had to be cancelled due to Covid-19. 2021 will see the first fully-virtual event and will launch a new digital home base for CityChangers around the world.
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For more informatuon about Urban Future Helsingborg 22 click here.
Text Credits: Urban Future, UFGC
The Urban Future Global Conference is Europe’s largest event for sustainable cities. This year, the event will be held in Oslo, the 2019 European Green Capital, from May 22-24. topos will be there, too.
When it comes to creating a sustainable future, cities play a key role. Given the fact that an increasing number of people will live in urban environments, it’s high time to put urgent issues on the agenda and strive to solve urban challenges, such as climate change or social inequalities. This is what city changers aim to do during the conference. The topics change slightly from year to year, taking into account all the discussions that the conference leadership has with stakeholders who share views on the most important issues for the future of cities.
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The four key themes are: Urban Mobility, Built Environment and Architecture, Leadership, Green Business and Innovation.
The conference participants come from the fields of cities and municipalities, business, research, innovation and science, architecture and urban planning, NGOs and start-ups.
Session with topos: design cities for the well-being of citizens
topos editor Anja Koller moderates a session titled “Places vs. Buildings” within the series “What if” on the second day of the conference. She asks the question: how to build and design cities for the well-being of citizens? A noisy, polluted, car-dominated urban space with far too little urban green is, unfortunately, familiar to all of us. It’s difficult to walk there, to bike there, not to mention to stay there. Such spaces are hardly inviting. But it is a fact that the way our cities are shaped, designed and built effects our way of life, how we move from A to B, how we live, our wellbeing and our health. What if we change our perspective and shape cities for the wellbeing of their citizens? How to make a city more livable, sustainable, healthier and more communicative?
Anja’s speakers are:
- Daniel Tobin, co-founder and creative director of UAP, which creates public art programs that humanize our cities by embedding creativity in the hearts and minds of their populace;
- Lior Steinberg, urban planner and co-founder of Humankind, a multidisciplinary collective accelerating the transition towards urban happiness for all;
- Hanna Maria van Zijp, urban planner at LINK arkitektur, who works on projects that involve the development of the “everyday city”;
- Elisabeth Meze, sustainability coordinator for the real estate corporation of the city of Innsbruck, who focuses on citizen participation in housing projects, as well as the intergenerational and intercultural development of parks and common spaces.
The many other exciting topics and lectures of the conference can be found here.
