The URBAN FUTURE global conference will take place in Vienna, Austria from February 28 through March 2, 2018. Vienna, according to various rankings, is one of the most sustainable cities in the word.
The URBAN FUTURE global conference is the World’s largest meeting point of CityChangers: committed people that actually drive change to make cities more sustainable. You will meet mayors, architects, mobility experts, city planners, scientists, sustainability managers, representatives from Start-Ups, environmentalists, innovation experts and many more.
What unites them? Their COMMITMENT, INNOVATION and PASSION in implementing their ideas for sustainable, liveable cities.
The event will be a hot spot for some 3,000 participants from 400 cities and more than 200 speakers from the fields of mobility, urban planning, communication and resource preservation.
Over the course of the last years, the UFGC has become an international meeting place for CityChangers. CityChangers are people who sustainable alter the face of our cities with their ideas and dedication. From mayors, architects, urban planners, NGO representatives, companies, start-up founders to all those who come up with brilliant ideas improving many a resident’s life: They all value and actively engage in open and critical exchange at the URBAN FUTURE. Their goal: Learning from others’ personal experiences and using them to accelerate sustainable developments in their own cities and structures
Partners include, among others, World Bank Group, EUROCITIES, Covenant of Mayors, LSE Cities, MyClimate, and WWF.
The following CityChangers have already confirmed:
- Gabriella Gomez Mont, founder of the Laboratorio para la Cuidad, an experimental think tank in Mexico City. In her city laboratory, she researches future scenarios in the fields of mobility, social matters and public spaces in one of the planet’s largest mega-cities in a creative way.
- Saskia Beer, a Dutch architect, entrepreneur and founder of ZO!City and TransformCity® adopted an outdated office area in Amsterdam and brought it back to life with in an innovative, community-based manner.
- Edoardo Croci – previously Milan’s environmental councillor – led the initiation and implementation of a range of measures making Milan a more sustainable city. They included the introduction of an electronic toll system, a bike-sharing system, two new underground lines as well as energy efficiency measures in public buildings.
- Gil Friend, Chief Sustainability Officer at the City of Palo Alto and founder of Natural Logic, is the face behind the sustainability activities at Palo Alto at Silicon Valley.
- Daniel Termont, Mayor of Gent in Belgium: The visionary mayor constantly invests in his city’s sustainable development. Car-free since 1997, Gent has transformed from a grey industrial into a vibrant, open and liveable city, providing an example for many European cities.
- Amalia Zepou, Initiator of SynAthina – an innovative online platform to provide the framework and instruments for civic initiatives to present themselves and connect with each other.
The blog www.citychangers.org has also gone online, portraying CityChangers and telling their stories from all over the world.