Shanghai sizzles as a livable city!

The second Livable Cities think tank meeting took place at the start of September in Shanghai. Shanghai is an impressive, buzzing, booming city that seems to be infectious in energizing people – and it certainly worked for the think tank! The meeting progressed at a really rapid place – so much so that it was sometimes difficult to keep up in taking notes and following the thread of the ideas being exchanged!

We were lucky that Patrick Kung as head of Philips China took some time out of his busy schedule to explain the Philips strategy in China to kick start the morning.

The morning session was spent defining the four key elements of a livable city – resilience, diversity, inclusiveness and authenticity – and linking key words to each of the themes. There were some interesting discussions around freedom and right to the city, security, is a sustainable city resilient? The team also discussed China’s strong and public commitment to sustainability. The afternoon session kicked off with the Urban Planning Advisory Team presenting the results of their project which had been briefed by the think tank.

Finally, the last 3 hours were spent critically reviewing key city indicators to work out what is not being measured when analyzing a Livable City and then deciding what the further workplan would be.

The think tank would like to develop self-assessment tools for cities to assess themselves as a livable city – without adding indicators (using existing and relevant ones along their four themes) but through helping cities realize where they are and where they would like to be to have high levels of livability. And when they have the tools they’d like to test drive them with policy makers in different developing countries.  This is just a very short summary of a very rich, intense discussion which no doubt will take exciting and unexpected directions the next time that they meet!