Managing Water for the City of the Future

Global CityWater Futures Summit

Learning Alliances for Change
Delft, The Netherlands, 7-10 October 2009

About the Summit

Click here to download the Summit brochure.

What is your City's Water Future?
Around the world urban areas are facing enormous challenges from population growth and climate change. The problems are universal but especially acute in the less developed countries. More frequent droughts and floods along with sea level rise and degrading infrastructure are causing us to re-think the ways that we plan for and provide water in our towns and cities.

Recent technological advancements and economic and institutional arrangements are opening up opportunities for implementing innovative, more affordable, integrated solutions. We invite you to the Global CityWater Futures Summit to chart your City's water future in the direction you want to go.

The Global CityWater Futures Summit will bring together water managers, urban planners, regulators, NGOs, donor agencies, as well as policy makers from SWITCH cities and other cities/towns around the world to discuss and share ideas and experiences with a global network of scientists and their cities path to a sustainable "WaterCity of the Future".

Science Meets Practice
The Summit will bring together over 50 science experts from around the world with practitioners from cities in Africa, Europe, South America, Asia, the Middle East as well as donor groups and international organisations to join forces in accelerating change toward a more sustainable water City of the Future.

Over a 3 day period participants will be inspired by keynote speakers and interact and exchange ideas through a series of interactive events including workshops and an innovation marketplace. An outcome of the workshop will be a series of briefing notes, globally authored by the participants, to influence policy by highlighting successes and targeting key impediments to progress towards sustainable urban water management.

Focus Areas

Creation of integrated urban water plans that are part of the cities strategic planning process includes adoption of sustainability indicators, resilience to climate change retention/creation of peri-urban agriculture and use of decision-making tools that integrate water, sanitation, drainage, energy, planning and economics.
Use of "Learning Alliances for people at the city level to work together to create cross-disciplinary and organisational plans, drive a supportive science agenda. and measure their progress to a more sustainable situation.
Mainstreaming demonstrations into common practice. Sharing experiences and overcoming bureaucratic hurdles. Knowing where and when to start transitioning existing institutional, economic, technological and social systems.