| Contact: |
For inquires regarding registration, travel, hotel,
visa, and logistics,
please email info@promosciences.com
For inquires regarding papers, submissions, and the Symposium Program,
please email urbansymposium@worldbank.org |
| Summary: |
The topic for the 5th Urban Research Symposium is Cities
and Climate Change: Responding to the Urgent Agenda. At a
time when climate change is a major priority for the international
community, this Symposium aims at pushing forward the research agenda
on climate change from a city’s perspective. Specifically, the
main questions will be structured around the impacts of city and urban
growth on climate change; measuring and anticipating the consequences
of climate change on urban quality of life, city assets, and local
and national economies; and assessing alternatives to increase the
resilience of cities and related costs and incentives required for
successful implementation.
The Symposium is structured around five broad research clusters
which represent the most relevant issues faced by cities and peri-urban
areas on climate change.
Cluster 1: Science and Indicators of Climate Change
and Related Impacts: Understanding and measuring how cities impact,
and are impacted by, climate change.
Cluster 2: Infrastructure, Built Environment,
and Energy Efficiency: Planning efficiently and effectively to increase
the resilience of cities.
Cluster 3: Role of Institutions, Governance, and
Urban Planning: Improving management, coordination, and planning
of cities to meet climate change challenges.
Cluster 4: Incentive policies, economics and finance:
Understanding how and why cities respond to climate change.
Cluster 5: Social aspects of climate change: Understanding
and reducing vulnerability of urban populations to climate change.
There will be three methods in which research will be presented
and shared at the Symposium. First, a background paper on each cluster
summarizing the current literature and, more importantly, identifying
the knowledge gaps, will be commissioned. Second, commissioned research
on specific topics will be undertaken through direct funding from
our partners. Third, an open call for papers will be distributed
through the Bank, its partners, major research journals and listservs.
It is expected that 50-60 papers will be selected from the proposals
submitted from the call for papers. Adaptation and mitigation will
be given equal priority in the selection of proposals. Researchers
from developing countries whose papers are accepted will be given
priority in the allocation of funding for travel to the Symposium.
Authors of papers that do not make the final set will be invited
to make their presentation in the form of posters.
Two publications are expected to be produced following the Symposium.
The first publication will include the ten most relevant and cutting-edge
research papers directed towards academics and researchers. The
second will be a handbook aimed at decision makers of no more than
40 short papers on the practical applications of dealing with the
challenge of climate change in cities. These papers will have a
strong emphasis on policy implications, mitigation and adaptation
strategies, and new options for financing climate change-related
policies and technologies.
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