Abstract
Sharing the experience of an Arab nation that is innovating its urban planning process through tools that facilitate the drafting, assessment, and monitoring of Master Plans and strategic initiatives or programs against the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Palestine, like other developing nations, is facing rapid urbanization with challenges related to land availability, budgeting constraints, environmental and social impacts, which requires urban planners to respond with short, medium, and long term solutions that bring cities closer to a sustainable path. Urban databases are a must to achieve this, but it is important to link them with analysis tools that are practical and systematic, but more importantly, that can translate plans into numbers to make objective and transparent decisions. In response to this challenge, the Ministry of Local Government (MoLG) in Palestine has promoted the adoption of Urban Performance. Urban Performance is a planning tool that models how different projects and plans could impact the future of the urban areas by assessing them with indicators related to the SDGs. The modeling of urban growth scenarios simplifies complex processes by providing data and methods for a comprehensive assessment of different possible urban contexts in relation to the implementation of specific interventions. It is in the interest of the Palestinian Government to share this experience to start the discussion regarding different approaches to sustainable urban planning and the role that technology can play. In order to foster knowledge exchange around the opportunities and challenges that technology brings into sustainable urban planning, the event will be structured as follows: ● Introduction and context - Presentation of the general experience of developing the tool in Palestine - The experience of Nablus / Bethlehem / Gaza urban area, by local officials ● Discussion Panel depicting the perspective of national and local institutions, international organizations, and other experts - Benefits, barriers, prevailing limitations, and expectations ● The potential of urban planning tools to define investment projects ● Q&A and open discussion with the audience Key Objectives By showcasing the experience of developing an urban modeling tool for Palestine, the session will aim to foster a debate around the relevance of integrating innovative methods to inform urban planning decision-making. In a world that will host about 68% of its population in cities by 2050, the decisions that urban planners are taking become of the utmost importance. In order to foster sustainable and livable cities, plans should be based on robust information analysis, of a variety of sectors, and aiming to clear goals. But these can require long time and high capacities in a traditional planning process, which might not always be available, especially in small or middle-size cities. For this reason, the event will point to the possibilities of developing user-friendly technologies to facilitate the planning process and improve its outcomes through the case study of five Palestinian cities. In particular, the event will have the following objectives: - To share the case of a MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) country in innovating its urban planning process by integrating urban growth scenario modeling. - To highlight that despite highly constrained environments - fragile-conflict-affected areas - planning tools can be used to support urban planning and the delivery of services to citizens. In fact, because of the constrained situation, innovation is needed to support urban development. - To exchange experiences regarding innovative methods to inform decision making. - To raise public consciousness regarding the relevance of generating reliable and up to date urban data systems.
