Enabel: Cocreating Cities - Unlocking Urban Potential

The Belgian Development Agency, Enabel, hosts the conference 'Co-Creating Cities: Leveraging collective potentials to address complex urban challenges' in Brussels on 21 October, 2024. This event will bring together urban planners, policy makers, and practitioners from across the globe to exchange ideas and showcase innovative approaches to urban development. 

The focus will be on how co-creation can serve as a powerful tool for addressing the pressing and multifaceted and intertwined challenges that cities face today, from rapid urbanisation to climate change, population growth to deepening socio-economic inequalities.

As urbanisation accelerates globally—particularly in Africa, where urban populations are projected to double by 2050—cities and territories are experiencing increased pressure on their infrastructure, housing, and services. These urban areas are evolving into highly complex environments that simultaneously present critical challenges and unprecedented opportunities for transformation.

Addressing these challenges requires rethinking traditional top-down approaches to urban planning and governance. This is where co-creation, involving a wide range of stakeholders, emerges as a game-changing approach for inclusive urban development.

Co-creation allows cities to harness the collective intelligence, creativity, and resources of all urban actors. 

It opens the door to more inclusive, adaptable, and sustainable urban solutions, ensuring that the voices of often marginalised groups—such as women, youth, and residents of informal settlements—are not only heard but integrated into the decision-making processes. 

Co-creation is an essential tool for building cities that are equitable and resilient, serving as inclusive hubs of innovation and opportunity. When the diverse perspectives and experiences of all residents are considered, urban planning becomes not just a technical exercise but a social contract. 

Cities Alliance will co-organize a session on Gender-sensitive inclusive spaces, exploring how inclusive urban planning can drive social equity and safety for all citizens, particularly for women, girls, and marginalised groups. The session will highlight our Femmedina programme  in Tunisia, with focus on how women in Tunis’ historic medina were involved in the co-creation of safe, inclusive public spaces. 

This initiative empowered local communities to create urban spaces that reflect the diverse needs and aspirations of all residents. The discussion will further explore how this model can be replicated and adapted in other urban contexts to promote gender-sensitive urban environments.

By engaging communities in every step of the process, from design to implementation, cities can ensure that they are creating environments where everyone can thrive. This participatory model strengthens the social fabric of cities, promotes a sense of shared ownership, and fosters sustainable, innovative, and just urban futures.

Opening session: Unlocking Urban Potential 

Keynote Speaker: Gabriella Gomez-Mont, Founder and CEO of Experimentalista 
 

Panel Discussion: 

• Gabriella Gomez-Mont, Founder and CEO of Experimentalista 
• Jean Van Wetter, Managing Director, Enabel 
• Karolien Vermeiren, Land Use modelling, VITO 
• Khalda El Jack, Urban Researcher at the International Center for Urbanism, KULeuven

Cocreating Urban Futures:  Parallel sessions  

Session 1:  Green Transition  

• The common and the co-Creation of green initiatives, Kurt Custers, Director-Head of Division, Brussels Environment  
• Engaging the private sector for climate responsive urban development, Mattias Piani, Urbanisation Project Manager, Rwanda, Enabel

Session 2:  Inclusive Public Services  

• Co-Creating transitory uses for vacant public buildings, Oscar Bellier, Communa  
• Reinforcing community mobilisation in sanitation. David Hacquin, SANITA Project Manager, Guinea, Enabel  

Session 3:  Gender Sensitive Inclusive Spaces 

• Co-designing gender-sensitive public space in the old city of Tunis, Giulia Maci, Urban Specialist/ Programme Manager Euro-Mediterranean region, Cities Alliance, UNOPS- Brussels  
• Girls make the city: Inclusion and co-creation in the city of Brussels,  Zijkant (tbc)

Session 4:  Cocreation and Social Cohesion in Fragile Environments

• Conflict-induced urban transformations, Karen Buscher, Department of conflict and development studies, Ghent University
• Co-Creation in urban settings in fragile context in Burkina Faso, Idris Djeni, Project Officer, Planification & Urban Management, Enabel