Media

Today, one person out of two lives in a city. By 2030, two thousand cities of one million inhabitants will be created and built. Such statistics conjure up the sort of high-speed, time-lapse images of saturated urban spaces teeming with hustling, bustling throngs that would make anyone opt for the contemplative country side or the complacent suburbs. But there is a special group of people who would argue that, in spite of everything, cities are our lifeline to survival.

These people are not planners, nor are they real estate developers, nor visionary architects. They are a core group of globe-trotting key opinion leaders, decision makers, thought-leaders and politicians, coming from a variety of horizons and domains, but who have a single word on their collective lips: sustainability.

In 2010 alone, cities’ sustainability was such a hot topic that it drew these people to such far-flung places as Shanghai (World Expo), Mexico City (United Cities and Local Government Congress) and Melbourne (Green Cities 2010). They go in search of knowledge, debate, exchange; they return with the kind of ideas, contacts and action plans that reinforce their single-minded hope: to formulate a vision for sustainable cities.

For those who take sustainability seriously, Global City 2011, Abu Dhabi, has been on the map since 2005. A two-day conference welcoming over 1000 guests, Global City has become a hallmark on the Abu Dhabi event calendar, thanks largely to the enlightened vision of the Abu Dhabi Council for Economic Development.

Abu Dhabi, itself a regional and, some would say, global pioneer of urban sustainability, seems a fitting home for one of the world’s most dynamic conferences on the subject. This dynamism springs not only from the heavyweight line-up of speakers (like outspoken economist Jacques Attali who will feature in 2011’s program), but also from the thematic spin each yearly conference gives the central theme of urban sustainability. Global City 2011 Abu Dhabi will set its sights on the meaty issues surrounding Visionary Values & City Identity.

The hosts and organizers of Global City 2011, Abu have pin-pointed an important shift in cities, a discovery that provided the inspiration for this year’s theme. Soft values – the quality of the urban realm, community identification, cohesion, social inclusion – are increasingly as important as infrastructure. This shift from hardware to software results in a greater alignment between the image a city must project to attract citizens, visitors and investors, and its core identity. Ultimately, this positively impacts the sustainability of the city’s success and prosperity.

The true value of this becomes apparent once we examine the real manifestations of this identity. City branding, the subject of a masterclass at Global City 2011, Abu Dhabi, investigates six types of city “challenges” in articulating a city’s DNA. How do local values and culture fit into the fast-paced race for cities to draw new talent? How can the diversity of immigration be turned into an opportunity rather than an integrational chore?  International leaders from cities as seemingly divergent as Paris and Kabul, Santa Monica and Mumbai, share their insights, methods and approaches to carving out a true identity in our increasingly globalized world.

In this context, the Global City Leaders Summit, a half-day, invitation-only think-tank in partnership with the OECD, will cover Financing Sustainable Growth, evoking the economic backbone underscoring the debate on identity and values.

Much like the cities that are at the very heart of its inspiration, Global City 2011, Abu Dhabi is itself a sort of melting pot – a unique international space, where public and private partners rub shoulders, sharing experiences, gaining expertise, and taking a few steps together on the winding (but welcoming) road to urban sustainability.