Cities experiencing the fastest growth are struggling to adapt to growth and industrialisation, stifling under the weight of pollution, congestion, and urban poverty. Urban settings magnify global challenges such as climate change, water and food security, and resource shortages, but they also provide avenues for tackling them.
It is essential to recognise the transformative nature of urban centres in spatial, temporal, sectoral terms, and the interaction between conflicting or converging demands triggering these changes. Simultaneously there is a need to acknowledge the radical transformation in the tools required to capture changes resulting from human activities, environmental conditions, and market forces. There is a need to develop and deploy methods and techniques for addressing the ever-changing demands of cities with its many stakeholders- governments, civil society, diverse communities and enhance the capacities of all involved in the city building process. The resulting planning and design ecosystem so developed, seeks answers based on evidence and research, using state of the art technology and hopes to create more just and liveable cities for all.
Urban innovations are the core drivers for promoting the envisaged economic, and social development of cities. They encompass solutions that are scalable, replicable and can be adapted to a variety of urban environments with new technologies.
The Urban Innovation Conference aims to bring together academicians, researchers, practitioners, government, and civic society for collaborating and sharing ideas on cutting edge urban innovation theory and practice to foster knowledge creation.
