Headline: Workshop: The Current Trends in Urban Sustainability Science and Practice

With more than half of the world’s people living in cities, cities are at the core of the challenge of managing trade-offs between immediate human needs and maintaining the capacity of the Earth System to provide goods and services in the long term. After the adoption of the New Urban Agenda at the Habitat III conference in October 2016, politicians and civil society will be left with the difficult task to steer historically unprecedented urbanization trends and to make sure that these do not lead to unacceptable environmental change.  Science should contribute to these efforts in prioritizing solutions to reconcile inclusiveness, productivity, and resilience of cities.  The IASS has initiated a study that aims to review the current trends in urban sustainability research and practice as well as find gaps to be filled in common efforts of society and academia.

This invitation-only workshop at the IASS brings together experts on urbanization, together with representatives of government, city networks, and citizen groups to discuss the current urbanization trends and their implications for environment and society.  It aims to find gaps in our knowledge, related practice, and missing connections between the two. A deliverable of the workshop will be a review paper providing a vision on how to create cities friendly to both people and environment. The paper will be based on the collective intelligence of the workshop participants and the results of the abovementioned IASS study.