World Built Environment Forum Dubai 2022: Five key takeaways

At the end of January 2022, senior leaders from over 80 countries across the globe met to discuss The Liveable city: Agile, healthy, resilient. Here we share some of the key takeaways. 

Until the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the course of 21st century urbanisation seemed set. But as populations around the world went into lock down, things seemed less certain. In the age of disruption, cities remain central to global economic growth, but the pandemic has certainly left its mark. The course of emerging societal norms and expectations has been accelerated and, in some cases, diverted. 

Although cited as a policy goal by many cities, the concept of liveability, and how to achieve it, has been variously defined. As the urban century unfolds, the challenge of defining, designing and operating inclusive and liveable places has never been so important. Here are some of key takeaways from the World Built Environment Forum Dubai 2022.

Green finance must be the dominant theme for financing cities going forward 

The first panel discussion examined trends in financing for a more ethical and sustainable built environment. Emma Vigus, Business Development Director, AON, sets the scene: “The nascence of cross-border standards and taxonomies, combined with an often-compelling commercial imperative has created several challenges. These include ethical concerns about green washing, speculation about a bubble, and the rush to deploy new construction methods and materials putting into question whether we are building back better. The need to improve the ethical code of the property and construction sector should not be overlooked. Neither should the challenge of tackling the pressing housing needs of the poorest in society and addressing the eco-credentials of the structures occupied by the comparably affluent.”

Two-thirds of hard financial assets on the planet are property assets. Sean Kidney is CEO of Climate Bonds Initiative. As he explains, the race is on to stop catastrophic climate change, but it is not just about emissions reductions, it also about resilience. Rather than being the signs of a bubble, the reordering of capital towards sustainable projects is a straightforward risk management exercise. Mirjam Staub-Bisang, CEO, BlackRock Switzerland, Senior Advisor to BlackRock Sustainable Investing agrees. “This is here to stay. At Blackrock we strongly support every effort of regulators to contain green washing. One of the biggest problems is that there is no universal understanding of what sustainable finance is. A bigger problem than that is data: providing clarity about those impacts on the environment.” There are new regulatory obligations coming down the line for data and reporting, such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures [1]. The industry must consider how they will gather the data to report on these wider environmental impacts. 

There is growing investor recognition of climate-related material risks and transition risks relating to policy and regulatory change. But there is still some way to go to ensure the credentials of sustainable and ethical projects are globally agreed and recognised. “We have to remember that some ESG investments include best in class coal-fired power stations, so there’s a bit of flaky edging to the definitions. However, in January 2022, 10% of all bonds issues globally were green, which is an extraordinary figure. It gives you sense the way things are shifting” explains Sean Kidney. 

Standards and regulation, applied properly and consistently, are essential for safer and more climate-friendly methods of city building and construction, says Andrew Alli, CEO of SouthBridge Group and formerly CEO, Africa Finance Corporation. Sean Kidney agrees “the US$ 1.7 trillion ESG bond market is growing at 80% a year. The rule sets that are coming into regulation will continue to turbo-charge this market”. The approach to standards is relative to the market, and this is appropriate.  

Smart societies: technology must always be in the service of people 

The session Beyond the smart city: new urban agility looked at how technology can optimise urban performance. Qing Wei is CTO, Microsoft China. He speaks about the digitalisation pyramid, comprising data, information, knowledge and wisdom. “Data is like crude oil, you need to refine that into information. But information needs to drive insight for action and decision-making: that’s knowledge. As technology moves on, DIK will be handled mostly by machines, but then the next stage – wisdom – is where humans need to take the lead.”

Dr Noah Raford, is Futurist-in-Chief, Dubai Future Foundation. He explains that cities are not an optimisation problem, for which there is a solution. Its more an emerging debate and dialogue. The solutions that work best in those contexts are those that help us to understand each other better. When asking: how do we make lives better? Sometimes the answer has been quite low tech.

Qing Wei says that we are on the cusp of a new era of smart societies. At Microsoft, they believe the smart future society will involve a new form of people-machine relationship. It has three components: ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence, and people-centric technology. “Machines are needed to enable and empower us, without replacing us. This is why wisdom is so key.”

The liveable city embraces diversity

In the closing panel discussion of Day 2, we asked the panel: What makes a liveable city? Ann Gray FRICS, RICS President-Elect explains that we’re not really in control of who moves to cities, so we have to plan on all different kinds of people living there. And a healthy city is going to include a lot of different people living there. Yu-Ning Hwang, Chief Planner & Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore agrees. “It’s about bringing people together to spur the exchange of knowledge and innovation, as well as to be a delightful place to live work and play.” 

Jonathan Woetzel is Director and Senior Partner, McKinsey Global Institute. He talks about the incredibly strong returns to diversity when it comes to things like research and development. This is the economic aspect to diversity, but there is also a social argument. The premise of diversity is access – the ability for each and every member of society to call themselves a member of the city. Without the basic rights of a city person, whether it’s to housing or to education or to healthcare it’s very hard to be part of a city. Data is essential to understanding this. 

Housing affordability and availability are fundamental to city resilience

Across the two days, housing was a topic of much focus. Sean Kidney explains: “There’s a direct correlation between the availability of housing in society and the extent to which that society survives severe shocks. Social housing is a climate resilient activity”. Jonathan Woetzel agrees. He explains that simply put, one price does not clear two markets and for every piece of land, there’s a market for investment and there's a market for shelter. “I can guarantee you that if two people are bidding on it, the one with the market for investment will win. So, either we think through how to carve out and create a financial model that allows us to essentially reward very long-term tenure and economic activity with financial returns, or we won't have that shelter.” Yu-Ning Hwang says that underpinning public housing is this concept of affordability, inclusiveness as well as accessibility to public housing and to shelter. Greg Clarke CBE, Global Advisor on Cities, also shares his insight. It does seem the successful cities that have the most affordable housing such as Singapore, Vienna, Hamburg, Shanghai have a high level of public sector participation in the land and in the financing of the housing.

The dense city is our best piece of technology 

According to Jonathan Woetzel, “we should recognise that this amazing technology we’ve developed, which is called ‘cities’, is a revolutionary force.” A city is a set of high frequency interactions that requires drives and enables evolution. In economic terms it’s a process of specialisation. As with any revolutionary force, cities have an impact on the environment around them. Historically, technologies have exceeded our capacity to govern them, so we have to be more conscious. Dense, but not overcrowded cities are required, recognising that we must take into account our footprint.