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
What does the future of urbanised territories of medium density look like? “Transforming Peripheries”, the new online magazine – a joint venture of urbanes.land and topos – strives to find answers to this question. It concentrates knowledge about urbanised territories and connects the realms of academics and practitioners across borders, sectors and regions.
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Since the UN announced that the majority of humankind lives in urban areas, we have allowed a single vision to become the dominant answer to future challenges: The idea of the resilient urban body. This reduction misses a large potential of urbanised territories that are not directly ascertainable by a single frame. All over Europe a long history of shared territorial responsibility has fostered co-penetrating rural/urban-realms that have long outgrown the traditional dichotomy of city/countryside. A large segment of Europe’s population lives in these rich conditions – their multifaceted potential for resilient development still has to be unlocked, however.
“Manifold novel expressions of the urban as much as the rural, and mixed and hybrid conditions profit from multiple interdependencies”
Urbanised territories are at the heart of Europe’s industrial production; they are hubs for logistics and data, and simultaneously green lungs and a spatial reserve for sustaining development in the energy and food sector. Manifold novel expressions of the urban as much as the rural, and mixed and hybrid conditions profit from multiple interdependencies. Local identities have often shifted and new modes of production, movement and ownership flourish. Initiatives, both bottom-up and top-down, have emerged across the continent, covertly questioning ideologies of urban promise and countryside plight. They can drive new models of balanced, circular and equal trading, working and living systems and inspire additional ways of comprehensive transition.
Looking from the in – rather than the outside, from the existing and not the expanding – the aim of the joint effort of urbanes.land and topos is to concentrate existing knowledge about these urbanised territories and connect the realms of academics and practitioners across borders, sectors and regions. For one year, this “transforming peripheries” magazine will act as a platform for exchange and connection. It will share best-practice strategies, reflect on what works, and provide levers to influence the spatial development agendas of policy makers, urban planners, business leaders, academics and community groups alike. We encourage and welcome all parties to add, dissent or comment on the magazine. Dynamic exchange, instant reflection and a broad spectrum of different angles are some of the best things an online magazine can offer.
“The aim of the joint effort of urbanes.land and topos is to concentrate existing knowledge about urbanised territories”
Understanding and working with the heterogeneity of urbanised territories requires crossing both disciplinary and institutional boundaries. Finding categories with which to dissect the contributions has proved to be a conflictive task. Still, in order to create a structure of reference, we’ve established four narrative threads that will lead us through this year of continuous discoveries: Character will enable us to look at originality and tradition, at cataclysms for people and society and the active role of inhabitants in transformation processes. Structure will highlight the built and unbuilt dimensions of space and infrastructure on regional and local levels. In Levers we will collect different impulses of transformative approaches and development strategies, while Strategies will illuminate tangible projects, as well as administrative and institutional best-practices.
“The magazine is a spin-off of the 2019 Urban Land Conference in Ulm”
The transforming peripheries magazine is a spin-off of the 2019 Urban Land Conference in Ulm. The research and transfer initiative urbanes.land started out there to connect European knowledge and to transfer some findings to regional stakeholders. To extend and perpetuate this effort, topos now complements the specialists perspective with journalistic proficiency – covering the topics holistically and with love to detail. Idea, conceptualization and roll-out of this magazine have happened in what sometimes seemed to be diverging chapters of public life worldwide. Now, the kick-off coincides with the careful rediscovery of the public realm and reinstating economic functions by individuals, companies and policy-makers. With curiosity and a sense of hope, we and all contributors integrate this challenge among climate resilience, social equality and livability debates that will not stop exerting pressure on regions and cities around the world.
Visit us at https://urbanesland.toposmagazine.com/
How do cities solve critical issues – from security to inclusivity, from urban growth to health, from mobility to climate change? It is the ambition of mayors, influencers, public figures, forward-thinking businessmen and activists that matters. The ambition to drive change and to shape cities for the better. We need city changers on all levels and in all aspects of urban life who really dare to be inconvenient.
40 years ago, scientists started seriously warning about climate change. However, nobody listened, nobody cared and pretty much nothing was done to combat it. So, it seems quite astonishing that it was a passionate 16-year-old Swedish girl who ultimately provided the straw that broke the camel’s back to make this global challenge one of the top priorities of our times. Suddenly it seems obvious not only to millions of teenagers around the globe that we have to make changes. Cities in particular take center stage when it comes to this change: they need to massively reduce emissions, become greener, more inclusive, healthier, and more livable. The only question that remains is how on earth do we get there?
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Do we need stricter regulations, carbon taxes, car-bans, a new economic paradigm? Are we waiting for the convenient salvation through the holy grail – new technological solutions? Or will communities miraculously organize themselves in a different way and suddenly act responsibly towards our planet – just like that? I think the answer is “yes” and “no”.
Let’s face it: We fucked it up. So, it will have to be us – every single human on this planet – who fix it. That means we’ll have to do (many) things differently – and we’ll feel it, especially because we humans are not really too fond of changing our behavior. Because of this, I am convinced that what we need above all is bold and uniting leadership on all levels and in all aspects of (urban) life. We’ll need leadership from mayors as much as we need leadership from businesses, public figures, influencers and from the general public. These will be crucial in both developing a positive vision for our future as well as being role models for how to drive the change.
Dare to enter into inconvenient conversations
It is embarrassing that so many political leaders focus more on their re-election than on critical topics: many fear inconvenient conversations. But without actively starting them, how can cities and societies solve any critical issues like health care, pensions, education or climate change? Leaders must have the courage to enter into such conversations and also reframe the discussions around it. Let’s put it this way: reducing private car use in city centres is not a question for or against cars, but rather about clean air, a higher quality of life and public safety.
Ken Livingston, former Mayor of London, is a great example of a brave leader. He was the driving force behind the well-known congestion charge that affected driving in London. This was implemented mainly as a tool for controlling the growth of traffic in the city’s most congested and most substantially polluted area. Ken was a leader who believed it was the right thing to do for the long-term success of London and its citizens. That’s why he did not get tired of entering such difficult discussions: with citizens, the logistics lobby, taxi drivers, the media, etc. The results were impressive: 30 per cent less cars that entered the zone, fewer traffic jams, 15 per cent lower travelling times with only a minimal effect (-0.5 per cent) on the shops within the zone.
Don’t expect to be loved by everyone
Did you know that in Vienna it’s possible to use public transport for only 1 EUR a day with an annual ticket? Since the municipality reduced prices in 2012 – an initiative led by Maria Vassilakou; Vice Mayor of the Green party – the number of travellers with an annual ticket has almost doubled – from 350,000 to 650,000. That is the bright side of the story – an astonishing success. However, most of the Viennese people won’t remember her for this achievement, but rather for another project: “Mariahilferstrasse”, where she made Europe’s largest shopping street more or less car-free. From then on, she felt like “Vienna’s most hated woman” (quoting her at UFGC18). That must have been difficult to swallow. But Maria had a vision. And she was right in following it, proven by pictures, neighbours and now even by shop owners of Mariahilferstraße.
Start with some easy wins
Erion Veliaj, Mayor of Tirana, knows that his city is probably not one known for the fight for greener and healthier cities. But Erion is on a mission – a mission to make his city a better place to live in. This mission includes a very unusual form of ambassadors – children! He started his revolution with a straightforward but effective method: planting trees for the children’s birthdays. This is a measure that can easily be copied elsewhere by anyone who wants to start making change happen.
Think bigger than your term of office
With his #greenlegacy campaign, Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia and recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, leads by example when it comes to implementing bold actions for climate change. He has invited the whole country to be a part of it: Planting 350 million trees in 12 hours required massive efforts. For a country that’s stricken by poverty, wars and a long list of other problems, this initiative, involving all citizen groups, public employees, politicians and the police, had a very positive effect on its communities.
Thanks to my work with Europe’s largest event for sustainable cities, I’ve met a large number of urban leaders and change makers. What has struck me the most, however, is that the secret ingredient that sets apart the most visionary, passionate and effective leaders from the rest appear to be not so secret after all, and are certainly no rocket science. That being said, I want to stress that it might seem easier than it probably is. I am extremely thankful to be able to meet all these passionate people who take responsibility for their communities, particularly those who take their people on a journey into a brighter future. Go City Changers!
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Gerald Babel-Sutter is a passionate changemaker. As the founder and CEO of the URBAN FUTURE global conference (UFGC), he brings together the world’s most passionate mayors, city planners and urban decision-makers. That is how he has gained comprehensive insights into sustainable urbanism, leadership and urban mobility issues. Babel-Sutter completed his studies at Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Montclair State University, NYU, Columbia University and Harvard Business School in the USA.
The UFGC is Europe’s largest event for sustainable cities. In 2020 it will take place in Lisbon from April 1-3. More information here.
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