Urban Future

About one garbage truck worth of plastic is released into the sea every minute - it's choking the planet! 🚛🌎   Food packaging represents more than just a receptacle; it's an advertisement, source of information, and tool for protecting what's inside.    That makes it so hard to replace. But we should. 🔄   In our latest article, we delve into what can be - and is being - done to improve food packaging, including:  🔹 how removing labelling can cut food waste 🔹 the agro-food residues replacing plastic, and  🔹 what businesses have to gain by switching to sustainable (or refillable) alternatives.   Check out this CityChangers.org story here: 👉 https://lnkd.in/dWxFYzgz

How do cities with restricted natural resources provide food security? 🌿💧   The island of Singapore peaks at just 734.3km². With a 100% urbanised citizenship and very little room for agricultural land, it relies heavily on imported food.    Always a precarious position to be in, concerns for food shortages heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We definitely faced some food supply chain challenges," says Christopher Leow. "It was a wake-up call for us.”    The city has been quick to mobilise, even funding innovative new ways to grow locally, like circular food systems. But Chris represents a significant ground-up movement from hobbyists, community gardens, and schools.    Question is, how? 🤔   Chris set up the Freestyle Farmer to help newcomers develop the knowledge and confidence to grow solo. Not only as a means to put food on the table, but cutting household costs - which for imported food are considerable.    His advice for anyone interested in urban farming in general, is simple: just start.  👉🏾 Learn how now at https://lnkd.in/duYQWqjc

What happens when cars are banned for a day? 🚫 Every week, Colombia's capital city of Bogotá closes 75 miles of streets to cars from 7:00 am to 2:00 pm on Sundays and holidays throughout the year. This bold move aims to give space back to cyclists, pedestrians, and skaters through its iconic Ciclovía. Since a one-day protest in 1974 against cars, the car free day continued with over 1.5 million people participating every Sunday. Not only has it promoted more active travel amongst people in the city, but also improves air quality and brings down noise pollution. During Ciclovía, the number of tiny, harmful particles in the city's air is 13 times lower than on a regular weekday and in line with WHO recommendations. Plus, noise levels are seven times lower. This is the power of local action 💪 Join us at #WUF12 to drive more local actions and initiatives for a sustainable urban future. 🔗 wuf.unhabitat.org/wuf12 👉 World Urban Forum (source: https://loom.ly/y0zXRB8 - Instituto Distrital de Recreación y Deporte) #SustainableCities #SustainableDevelopment #SDG11

How truly public are our public spaces? 🏙️ In this episode, we take a look at the rise of ‘defensive urbanism’ in our cities and ask what it would take to stop designing people out of public space and start designing them back in. Take Folkets Park in Copenhagen, for example. Instead of resorting to hostile architecture, they designed a welcoming space for their diverse community.    It’s not just about ordering a swing or benches on the internet; it’s about a deep commitment to connecting with the people who call the area home. As Kenneth A. Balfelt, the visual artist behind the project, puts it: "We defined that we took the job to create more love and community. And not for the commercial aspect of it.“ 💬 Curious to learn more? 🎧 Tune in to the CityChangers.org Podcast: 🩷 https://lnkd.in/dbsuThYi 💚

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✨UNVEILING ✨ 4 TRACKS FOR EUROPE'S BETTER-CITIES EVENT! Let us give you a taste of what Urban Future in Łódź has to offer. Between May 21-23, 2025, we’ll share countless inspiring stories on transforming cities for the better. They will be based on the following four main themes 👇 🩷 1. Urban Regeneration 🩷 2. Sustainable Business 🩷 3. Retrofitting Buildings 🩷 4. Driving Change ➡ https://lnkd.in/d98xBf9A DO YOU 🫵 WANT TO BE PART OF IT? Awesome! Share with us: 💛 projects, places or people to highlight, 💛 experiences or great stories to tell, 💛 networks of change-makers to get involved, 💛 events to be combined as a side events or field trips. Reach out to hello@urban-future.org or use this form: ➡ https://lnkd.in/dSsdquSF Let’s collaborate for a massive impact in Łódź in May! 💪🏽 Are you in? #UF25 | The Better-Cities Event 🇵🇱 Łódź, Poland 📅 May 21-23, 2025 Anna Wierzbicka, PhD, Maciej Riemer, Adam Pustelnik, Daria Woszczyk, Jakub Paduch, Magdalena Martin - Walczak, Invest in Lodz (Central Poland). OFF Piotrkowska Center, Design Lab Group Eurocities, C40 Cities, All Things Urban, BABLE Smart Cities, CITIES FORUM, Cities Northern Netherlands, CityChangers.org, Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance, Deutscher Städtetag, ICLEI Europe, oikos International, RMIT Europe, Solar Impulse Foundation, Zuko - Reclaim the streets, Łódź Design Festival, PLGBC Polish Green Building Council, Inner Development Goals Sendzimir Foundation, Gerald Babel-Sutter, Mathis Hampel, Cornelia Forsthuber, Noémi Volkmar, Elke Babel-Sutter, Jacqueline Laure, Lisa Marie Gatterbauer, Karl Dickinson

🌊🐄 Floating cows? - Yes, that’s a thing in #Rotterdam. It could almost be a chapter from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: self-milking cows that live on water and eat beery leftovers, enjoy a cool sea breeze and time in their very own playground. This is life on Floating Farm Rotterdam. The cows' job is to educate city dwellers about where food comes from, to provide fresh, healthy produce, and - get this! - to help the city reduce its carbon emissions. 🥛🧀 They have some help. Minke van Wingerden helps run the farm and explains how it makes efficient use of space and improves urban food security by producing foodstuff closer to consumers. And it's not only the cows who are happy about it! Rotterdam's floating farm has become a hub for the local community too. For some of them, it's home from home. “I love the stories people like to share on the terrace," Minke says. "Food brings people together.” If you've attended the Field Trip at #UF24 you've already experienced it on your own. If not, catch up on the full story on CityChangers.org: 🐮 https://lnkd.in/dZdHwYbp 🐮 Gemeente Rotterdam - Stadsontwikkeling Rotterdam Partners Brenda Kamphuis De Rotterdam Tours l Events l Trams l DMC I 💚🎓♻️

Excited to announce the release of the MAKING-CITY toolkit – a practical resource that I wrote, based on six years of collaborative research from the MAKING-CITY EU project! 🏙️☀️ This toolkit is designed to support cities and stakeholders in creating Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) by focusing on three key areas: the PED concept; stakeholder & citizen engagement; and business models & finance. To make it even more accessible, LGI Sustainable Innovation has developed the PED Hero Assistant, an AI chatbot that provides tailored responses based on the project's learnings. 🌱⚡ 👉 Explore the toolkit and chatbot https://lnkd.in/e7Y89qfp A huge thank you to Cecilia Sanz Montalvillo for coordinating the project, Alina Giesler for her fantastic graphic design, Thomas Judes for developing the chatbot, Virginie Giraud for her valuable guidance and feedback, and to all the project partners for their contributions. 💡If you’re interested in creating a custom chatbot for your project, let’s connect! With multilingual capabilities, stakeholders can engage with your project results in an accessible and interactive manner. POCITYF NEUTRALPATH project ASCEND Project RESPONSE ExPEDite project AtelierH2020 Smart Cities Marketplace New Energy Coalition Open & Agile Smart Cities & Communities (OASC) NetZeroCitiesEU Urban Future CityChangers.org +CityxChange Energy Cities

Proven: food waste = bad for the planet. ❌ The food industry produces so much CO2 that it directly impacts climate change.📈🌎 But not all food can be eaten. What then? We need to find other uses for #foodwaste.    The urban-rural partnership of City Of Guelph and the County of Wellington in Canada have done just that… They’ve developed a system for creating circular meals. Top-quality nosh, grown entirely from local food waste byproducts. Yes! 👏🏼 Products like: ⁃ used grain from a brewery, which feeds flies that become food for fish, which produce fertiliser for a potato farm.  ⁃ Or spent yeast from a local lab that goes into bread at a Guelph bakery.   Cutting waste and costs caused a 50% increase in food security - giving local people better access to the #nutrition they need. 🥒🍽️   Barbara Swartzentruber says it's been a success because the city and businesses have learnt to cooperate. She shares her advice for other cities wanting to create a #circular, urban food waste system. 👉🏽 Check it out on CityChangers.org at https://lnkd.in/dwmGKpaR

🌍 We are proud to announce that Design Lab Group is part of the team preparing for next year's Urban Future 2025 in Łódź! Last Friday, we had the pleasure of participating in the #UF25 kick-off event. In the morning, Karolina Taczalska and Mateusz Cyganek joined the workshop, "Old Buildings – New Life: Modern Challenges of Urban Revitalization". The goal was to identify challenges and barriers to large-scale renovation, a central theme of the upcoming Urban Future conference in 2025 in Łódź. Our CEO, Karolina Taczalska, was also one of the speakers during the official kick-off event at Mediateka Memo. Together with Michał Piernikowski, she presented the SARP Łódź Od-Nowa: project—authored by Karolina and Mateusz. Our work focuses on experimenting with co-designing streets, squares, and other urban spaces, where social bonds play a crucial role. We strive to create vibrant, safe, and inclusive cities for all residents. Urban Future is an incredible platform for exchanging ideas on a global scale. We are confident that together, we can make our cities better. In the meantime, we encourage you to visit the Urban Future website to see how they are supporting sustainable urban development. Thank you for an inspiring time Anna Wierzbicka, PhD, Invest in Lodz (Central Poland), Adam Pustelnik, Maciej Riemer, Magdalena Martin - Walczak, Jakub Paduch, Daria Woszczyk, Agata Krawczyk, Michał Piernikowski, Gerald Babel-Sutter, Mathis Hampel, Cornelia Forsthuber, and Lisa Marie Gatterbauer 💚