Focus – Fascination – Future: Designing tomorrow's cities

The world wants cities. Some 180,000 people clamour for cities every day, since this is precisely the number of people by which municipal populations are growing worldwide every 24 hours. In 25 years cities will be home to two billion more people or around two thirds of all humankind. Cities will also be decisive in determining our success in achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals and substantially reducing poverty. Cities are growing especially quickly in developing and transition countries. Urban attraction is not just about the greater economic opportunities on offer here, but about the know-how cities pool and the innovations they inspire, generating the ideal enabling environment for progress. However, the rising numbers of people are creating ever more challenges for city planners and administrators and placing urban decision-makers and municipal actors under increasing pressure to act. Political and administrative steering capacity is not able to keep pace with the dynamics of urban development. The upshot is an increase in conflict potential and the erosion of traditional structures, turning cities into hot spots.

In the years ahead, international interest will focus to an ever greater extent on urban development. The follow-on event to the UN Habitat II Conference (Istanbul, 1996) is scheduled to take place in Vancouver, Canada, in 2006. In May 2005 political decision-makers from around 400 major and mega cities will come together at the world congress “Metropolis 2005“ in Berlin. Under the motto, “Better city, better life“, the organisers of the Shanghai-based EXPO 2010 have also put the city theme on the international agenda.

With more than 30 years of expertise in the field of urban development, the GTZ is continuing to advance international dialogue. At this very minute, development experts are currently promoting integrated solutions to urban challenges in over 100 projects and thus helping to improve general framework conditions. In the year 2005, the GTZ will be placing special attention on the city theme. In publications, discussion rounds and international conferences, it will bring qualified international experts together in the hope of giving yet more impetus to the search for tomorrow’s city. Against this backdrop, around 400 national and international city experts have been invited to Eschborn to take part in specialist talks as part of the June 2005 Eschborn Dialogue.

• URBANET – Network for Regionalization, Decentralization and Municipal Development
  Network for GTZ staff, associated professionals and researchers in the field of regionalisation, decentralisation and municipal and urban development.
  www.gtz.de/urbanet/
• Metropolis – 8th World Congress 2005 in Berlin
  www.metropolis2005.org/
• Cities Alliance – Cities without Slums
  www.citiesalliance.org/
• UN-HABITAT – United Nations Human Settlements Programme
  www.unhabitat.org/
• EXPO 2010 in Shanghai: Better city, better life
  www.expo2010china.com/expo/english/eu/index.html