NEWS

         

Last July 24 and 25, the Metropolis Secretary General attended “The Urban Resilience Summit 2017”, in New York City. Octavi de la Varga joined the event organized by 100 Resilient Cities looking for synergies and future opportunities of collaboration with this network, which currently has 22 members in common with Metropolis: Accra, Addis Ababa, Amman, Athens, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Dakar, Durban, Guadalajara, Jakarta, Lisboa, Medellín, Mexico City, Montevideo, Montréal, Porto Alegre, Quito, Ramallah, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Seoul and Toronto.

The event brought together around 500 urban resilient experts from different sectors, some of them from our member metropolises, such as Medellín and Santiago, who shared their strategies to face a wide variety of challenges, ranging from aging infrastructure to crime, landslides, flooding, droughts, volcanic activity, earthquakes, inadequate urban systems, poor air quality and economic inequality, among others.

“It was a practical and inspiring session for the work of Metropolis, especially regarding our new action plan”, reported Octavi de la Varga, making reference to one of the specific objectives of our action line on urban diplomacy and advocacy on metropolitan issues, which is to strengthen the network of external partners, and to better position Metropolis in relation to them.

On the occasion, Octavi de la Varga also had the chance to hold bilateral meetings with two key representatives from 100 Resilient Cities: Bryna Lipper, Chief Resilience Advisor and Senior Vice President, and Jeb Brugmann, Director of Solutions Development & Innovation.