Cities have been driving creativity and economic development opportunities. They create a dynamic environment and high economies of scale that today are critical to addressing major world challenges such as poverty, climate change, natural resources depletion and more.
Over 50% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, which is expected to increase to 66% by 2050. Asian cities represent 53% of the world urban population. Asian cities have unique and diverse cultures, languages, history, landscapes and architecture. However, in the process of fast urbanisation, rapid and often unplanned infrastructure development takes place at the expense of the city’s unique assets: landscape, water bodies, built heritage, human scale, cultural particularities reflecting in a unique design and architectural features. More people are seeking economic opportunities in cities while these run out of an adequate service delivery infrastructure offer. At the same time, climate change has highly exacerbated the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, which severely affects Asian cities, in particular, their most vulnerable populations. Sustainability has become a critical need to survive and thrive in urban spaces, yet it can hardly be achieved without turning back to the city’s spatial assets.
The solution lies in uniqueness. Urban planning aligning with the natural landscape, the bond between citizens and their city through connecting to common cultural and natural assets, competitiveness resulting from human scale cohesive spaces all increase the quality of life and make a city attractive to businesses and visitors. UNICITI is a community of practitioners striving to revive and expand this invaluable uniqueness of Asian cities.