The city with a future is green

The city with a future is green. Green is the answer to almost all pressing challenges our growing cities and urban regions are facing. Green makes you healthy, happy, cools, purifies, provides renewable building materials and food, and provides a natural habitat for every kind of human and animal. All over the world, cities are therefore looking for a new balance between nature and culture and the connection between the city and countryside: the Future Green City.

Urban regions face major challenges worldwide. More and more people are coming to cities to live and work. This puts increasing pressure on urban infrastructure. How do we create enough housing for everyone? How do we keep cities accessible? How do we ensure sufficient energy, food, data connections and other amenities? And above all, how do we provide attractive streets and squares as living rooms of the city and parks as communal gardens, where there is room for everyone?

We see the effects of global warming on a daily basis. On the one hand, our cities are the cause of it: the CO2 emissions released to build houses, run cars, and generate energy are huge. How can we ensure that our cities become much more circular and climate-neutral? On the other hand, cities bear the consequences of climate change: in a petrified environment, heat and abundant precipitation can hardly escape. How can green transformations help cope with climate change and keep our cities liveable? How can we strengthen biodiversity? What civil engineering solutions do we need to green a petrified environment? And how will we properly manage our assets so that they continue to work?

It is precisely in our cities that all the talent is present to find answers to the challenges: scientists, administrators, designers, managers, entrepreneurs, active residents. Cities are breeding grouds of innovation. All over the world, we see more and more fine examples of successful interventions: from small alterations in streets and neighbourhoods to large transformation strategies, from tiny forests to forests encircling the city, from façade gardens to contemporary urban parks, from urban wadis to separate sewer systems.

The Future Green City World Congress brings together all these initiators and initiatives to inspire other cities, to exchange knowledge and to forge coalitions that work together to create healthy, green urban environments for us and generations to come.