2018•02•06 Kuala Lumpur
The 9th World Urban Forum (WUF 9) will be taking place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from 7-13 February, 2018, at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. As the first global forum on cities since Habitat III, WUF 9 will host a critical conversation on how to effectively implement the New Urban Agenda (NUA) and the roles that all sectors of society must play in this effort.
At WUF9, UNU-IIGH will put the spotlight on key issues of urban health and wellbeing critical to the NUA, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Throughout the WUF, the UNU-IIGH exhibition booth (Booth 129) will display print and digital media relating to health in cities. It will host a set of interactive activities and a Panel Series on urban health and sustainability, featuring global experts from a variety of leading organizations in health, including WHO, ISUH, ICSU and others. Please click here for the extensive agenda of UNU-IIGH events.
In addition, together with Think City and Cardiff University’s Sustainable Places Research Institute, UNU-IIGH will launch two important documents. The first is THRIVE Connect: Linkages in Everyday Life, a folio of photography and text which explores linkages between SDG 11 on Sustainable Cities and Communities and other SDGs—this is the third in the series of THRIVE books that started at the 2016 Urban Thinkers Campus in Kuching. The THRIVE series embraces art as a pathway to new visions of health and of the possibilities inherent in the urban environment, and promotes an ecosocial perspective on the origins of wellbeing. Beginning at the launch at 10am on February 7th, the UNU-IIGH Exhibition Booth will also display the winners of the THRIVE Connect photo contest, which are featured in the book.
The second document is a compilation of case studies by UNU-IIGH’s “Systems Thinking and Place-based Methods for Healthier Malaysian Cities” (or SCHEMA) project. The SCHEMA Case Studies use simple participatory modelling to consider complex issues related to urban health and wellbeing in Malaysia at various scales. They are intended to illustrate the value of systems- and place-based methods as valuable tools for exploration and communication, and to encourage researchers, practitioners, policymakers and other urban stakeholders to adopt such methods in examining their own intractable challenges in cities.
Throughout the WUF, the UNU-IIGH co-founded LAC-Urban Health network will lead a Twitter campaign (#WUF4Health) to raise awareness about urban health and discuss complex issues relating to our wellbeing in cities. We hope you will join in the conversation! Follow us on Twitter at @LACUrbanHealth, @UNU_IIGH and @thriveurban, or on Instagram at @thriveconnect.
We look forward to your participation and camaraderie at WUF9. The UNU-IIGH Exhibition Booth is intended as a gathering point, a venue for debate, and a nexus for health at the Forum. Please join us there!