World Cities Summit - World Cities Summit 2008

World Cities Summit 2008

The first World Cities Summit, which took place in Singapore from 23 to 25 June 2008, focused on the theme of “Liveable and Vibrant Cities”. The inaugural summit in June 2008 brought together 800 senior delegates. These include leaders, government ministers, city mayors, senior government officials, officials from international organisations, business leaders, academics from the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East, policy makers and the civil society.

Among the issues examined there were the effective governance, urban planning, infrastructural development, environmental sustainability, climate change, quality of life and economic competitiveness.

Speakers who attended include Haruhiko Kuroda, President of the Asian Development Bank; Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme; Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore; Peter Rowe, professor of architecture and urban design at Harvard University; and the mayors of cities such as Melbourne, Yokohama, Bogota and Wellington, among others. There was also an exhibition to promote business links between the public and private sectors.

The summit was organised by Singapore’s Ministry of National Development, the Singapore Civil Service College and the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. The World Bank, Asian Development Bank, United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific are involved as strategic partners. The summit was held in conjunction with the East Asia Summit Conference on Liveable Cities, as well as the Singapore International Water Week 2008, a water industry conference and trade show.

With increasing urbanisation and half the world’s population already living in cities, the liveability of urban centres has attracted considerable attention in recent years, especially given the increasing awareness of environmental sustainability issues and resource scarcity. There are now several “World's Most Liveable Cities” type rankings, such as the Mercer Quality of Living Survey and The Economist's World's Most Liveable Cities, which undertake international comparisons based on living conditions and quality of life. The Economist’s “liveability ranking”, for example, looks at more than 130 cities and measures them against five sets of criteria: infrastructure, culture and environment, healthcare, education and stability.

Initiatives such as the World Mayor Award seek to highlight what can be done to improve the well-being of cities and communities through good leadership. And the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit, also known as the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, saw representatives from the world’s largest cities and businesses gathering in New York in 2007 to discuss the reduction of carbon emissions in urban areas, where three-quarters of global energy consumption occurs.