Regional Conference

Shanghai International Convention Center

Linking Cities to Finance: Overcoming bottlenecks to financing strategic urban infrastructure investments

This event will bring together national and international development finance institutions, private financial institutions, city governments, national/ provincial governments and private sector investors to discuss bottlenecks in accessing finance for strategic urban infrastructure.

The conference serves as a meeting point for the exchange of views from key actors in the field seeking to help remove such bottlenecks for cities seeking to access alternate sources of urban infrastructure financing. The event takes a wide perspective on reviewing urban infrastructure financing, PPP arrangements, sub-sovereign loans and other modalities.

About 200 people are expected to attend this event from:

1. Mid-sized Asian cities as well as provincial/ state and national agencies.
2. Multi- and bi-lateral financing institutions and other development agencies;
3. Major private sector financiers;
4. Urban development practitioners, and researchers in the region.

Conference sessions will offer forums to exchange perspectives from key actors on the topic together with presentations of specific case studies from Asia and other parts of the world. The intent is to help identify and remove these bottlenecks as cities seek sources for financing their urban infrastructure investments. These sessions will take a broad perspective on private financing that goes beyond PPP arrangements.

The Cities Development Initiative for Asia (CDIA) is a regional partnership program supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the governments of Germany, Sweden and Spain assisting medium sized Asian cities in bridging the gap between their development plans and access to funding for financing their strategic urban infrastructure.  While initial cooperation focused on linking cities to multilateral and bilateral development funding sources, increasing energies are going into identifying areas for private sector financing through Public and other modalities.

The conference is being co-organized by CDIA, Capacity Building International (InWEnt) and the Municipal Government of Shanghai. If you are interested to participate or wish further information, please email conference@cdia.asia or contact CDIA by telephone at +631-2342 ext. 221

www.cdia.asia

28 June – 1 July World Cities Summit Singapore. CDIA is a supporting partner of the World Cities Summit. This premier event brings together leaders and policy makers with leading experts in their fields to identify innovative solutions to the most pressing challenges facing cities today. The inaugural Summit in June 2008 brought together more than 800 delegates including leaders, mayors, policy makers and the civil society. To build on its success, the Summit this year will offer a high-level and strategic platform comprising plenary sessions, technical workshops and an exhibition.

The theme for the World Cities Summit 2010 is Livable and Sustainable Cities for the Future. It will be a four-day event focusing on leadership and governance, eco-friendly and liveable cities, and harmonious and sustainable communities. Through the exchange of ideas and knowledge, cities can learn from each other to identify practical, scalable and replicable solutions to the challenges they face.

The Summit will comprise high-level plenary sessions by world-renowned leaders, policy makers, visionaries, and futurists. They will deal with cross-cutting issues around the interplay of people, policies, markets and technologies facing cities today, with specific emphasis on the three broad themes of Leadership and Governance for Vibrant and Livable Cities, Building Sustainable and Eco-friendly Cities and Fostering Harmonious and Sustainable Communities. Complemented by high-level expert panel discussions, delegates would be able to review today’s achievements as well as explore tomorrow’s possibilities.

Speakers and participants will examine exemplary city models and solutions, as well as deliberate on strategies for addressing major developmental challenges. Delegates will have ample opportunities to interact through the various workshops and networking events. Specially designed study tours will cover areas of urban planning, public housing and transportation, infrastructure, energy-efficient built environment, landscape and urban biodiversity management, waste management and sustainable development in Singapore.

Event details and programme can be found on the website: www.worldcities.com.sg

A green economy must be environmentally and monetarily sustainable. Paying for green technologies, jobs, buildings, cars, and infrastructure will require innovations in how we see, use and exchange money and credit. A dual crisis — of the environment and of the banking system — provides us with a ‘magic moment’: to enable sustainability in cities and regions, plus provide adequate financing for those local governments to utilize new technologies and transition to a cleaner and greener urban age.

Sustainable cities are home to green consumers, triple bottom line green businesses, entrepreneurial nonprofits and government agencies. Financing for the best initiatives is delayed and inadequate. Unconnected pieces and spigots left over from the carbon-based economy are corrosive legacies, and their investment practices do not suit the sustainable city’s financial needs. We must think anew about credit, money, banking, ratings and investment. For more information on the event and a copy of the program, you may visit the event website at: http://www.nyas.org/Events/Detail.aspx?cid=2ecbfc47-95f7-4b9f-bcac-59cf41182e52

5 November, Manila, Philippines.

The focus of this particular stakeholders’ forum is to bring together a range of key stakeholders within the CDIA field of operations to discuss aspects surrounding potential CDIA partnerships for outreach in the region with the intention to scale-up select activities. In conjunction with this, the 4th CDIA Programme Review Committee meeting will be held subsequent to this event on the 6th of November, 2009 so as to effectively integrate the output from the stakeholders’ forum into their consideration.

Program

Registration form

Hotel booking

The goal of the event is to raise awareness of resource-efficient and socially responsible urban development and to promote networking activity and partnerships. The event is being held at: GTZ – Haus, Reichpietschufer 20 (City map); 10785 Berlin Tiergarten. You may register for this event here: http://www.APW@gtz.de

In doing so, the toolkit adds value to this process through:

• Using a rational and systematic approach to prioritisation with a broad base of criteria to form a basis for objective decision‐making and selection of projects with a positive developmental outcome
• Analyzing the impact of projects on the local government budget and identifying the financing gap to ensure that requirements of potential financiers are recognised in an early stage but also that available resources are used as effectively as possible; and
• Guiding users through a programming exercise to include the projects in an investment plan that matches the fiscal space of the municipality

Currently, the CDIA program is supporting a growing number of cities in undertaking more effective investment planning/ programming and pre-feasibility/ project structuring for urban infrastructure and to subsequently link these cities and their investment proposals to investment financiers that are looking for well-formulated investment projects. This toolkit is but one contribution to help cities with this task.

It is expected that the toolkit will soon be available online for use by city administrations.