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The Symbiotic City

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This is the second contribution in our series ‘On the Road to Future Green City’ in which we explore the ingredients we need for a green city with a future. This in the run-up to the Future Green City world congress, Utrecht 23-26 September 2024. The Symbiotic City The voice of nature is loudly heard. The consequences of our devastating impact on biodiversity and climate are all around us. We need a positive vision of the future, beyond the many doomsday scenarios of disappearing species, flooded coastal areas and excessive heat stress in summer. The solution to these problems lies in the Symbiotic City: nature should return to the city and be part of it ...
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IFME supports International Women’s Day (IWD) which is marked annually on March 8. IWD is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality. IWD has occurred for well over a century, with the first IWD gathering in 1911 supported by over a million people. For IWD 2023 and beyond, each of us everywhere can #EmbraceEquity. The IWD 2023 campaign theme seeks to forge worldwide understanding about why equal opportunities aren’t enough! Equity isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. A focus on gender equity needs to be part of every society’s DNA. ...
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On the Road to Future Green City Stadswerk, our Association Member from The Netherlands, are our hosts for our 21st IFME World Congress to be held in Utrecht in 2024. Dr Maarten Loeffen, Director of Stadswerk, introduces the Congress with the first of a series of articles addressing different aspects on the road to Future Green City. How often do we hear that the journey is more important than the actual destination? We take a different view on this in a new eight-part series in Stadswerk magazine. After all, we can only be “on the road” when we have an idea of the look and the layout of that city with a future. That is why we are going to explore that ...
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In the face of extreme weather events, coordinated global action to address climate change is needed Marlene Kanga Dr Kanga is the Non-Executive Director at Standards Australia, Airservices Australia, Sydney Water, and BESydney, and is an ISC Fellow . She was President of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO), 2017-2019, with 100+ national/continental members, representing 30+ million engineers. Dr Marlene Kanga analyzes the increasingly extreme weather events in Australia, underlining the urgency to act on climate and calling for immediate coordinated global action to tackle the most crucial existential challenge of our time. ...
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IFME is an international member of WFEO - World Federation of Engineering Organizations . The Executive of IFME supports the following resolution by WFEO expressing its deep concern about the situation in #Ukraine . The Executive Board of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations approved the following resolution in San José, Costa Rica, on 6 March 2022. The World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) with its members, representing more than 30 million engineers in some 100 countries, expresses its deep concerns about the ongoing war situation in Ukraine. WFEO, as an associate NGO to UNESCO and an NGO in consultative status ...
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IFME Supports International Women's Day Thank you to our IFME representative from IPWEA NZ, Priyani de Silva-Currie, for authoring this post. International Women's Day (IWD) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. At IFME we are committed supporters of empowering women to achieve success. We don't just talk about it; our team embodies this aspiration. Our IFME President Sanne Hieltjes, and World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO) Women's Representative Eveline Kokx, are two examples of world leading women leading ...
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What if Parisians, old and young, could enjoy most things just at their doorstep! By Maurice BARTH: Europe and International Officer, AITF (French Territorial Engineers Association) And Sonia BLOND BUTLEN: Regional President Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes AITF and Treasurer, Association “Dirigeantes et Territoires -DT” The 15-minute City, says Carlos Moreno, Franco-Colombian academic co-author of this concept, “pushes for finding everything essential to life close to home: housing, work, care access, supplies, and learning and leisure activities”. All within at 15 minutes walk or 5 minutes by bike. This concept requires breaking with the fragmented city and ...
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We are now just a week away from the second World Engineering Day , 4 March 2021, a most important celebration for the engineering community. You can see WFEO President's welcome message to this celebration here and check the official WED YouTube Channel . WED 2021 Celebration main event will take place from UNESCO and online, on March 4, 1 PM - 2:30 PM CET/Paris Time (with simultaneous translations in Chinese, English and French). During this online event "Engineering for a Healthy Planet" , UNESCO and WFEO will launch the second UNESCO Engineering Report. Registration is requested to attend online at http://on.unesco.org/Eng04-03 ...
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IPWEA, in association with IFME, presents its newest training equipping asset and finance management professionals with capabilities to achieve financially sustainable service delivery. 1. Professional Certificate in Infrastructure Financial Management This International Course is open for registrations now. 6 module course, delivered over 8 weeks. Delivered Online via videos, live Q&A and discussion groups. Learn Practical skills, linking asset management planning and financial management planning to achieve service objectives. Be mentored by industry-leading subject matter experts and earn CPD. Module 1 commences March ...
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Managing public space – A blind spot of urban planning and design by Eva Duivenvoorden, Thomas Hartmann, Marlies Brinkhuijsen, Ton Hesselmans, Managing public space is a big and important blind spot of urban and regional planning and design. Important, because major transition challenges, such as climate adaptation, energy transition, circular economy, mobility, and governance require substantial changes in public space – both physical and social changes. Big, because managing public space entails enormous budgets and potentials over a long period of time in which management and maintenance take place, which is largely spent operational and sectoral. A more ...
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Resident Centric Worksite Management Helsinki is growing significantly. One of the challenges is that many of the streets in the inner city are starting to need renovating. The City of Helsinki has produced a guide to improving residents’ experiences of street work. This guide is intended to instruct street work planners and contractors on how residents can be taken into consideration in the planning, implementation and development of worksites. It offers researched information and a selection of practical actions to improve the worksite experience. A worksite is an important communication channel in itself. It is easier to accept the disturbances caused ...
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Managing Fleet Performance Downunder By Robert Wilson ADipEng, MBA, GAICD, Cert IV TAA Director Fleet, Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia Performance Measures and their Development Performance management is essential for the on-going management and improvement of plant and vehicle fleets. In essence, performance management is a cyclical process that requires the identification and understanding of objectives, the collection of relevant data, interpretation of information, decision making and management interventions. Management guru Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. This applies to a broad range ...
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John Thomson, IFME President , presented a keynote address to the 2020 Annual Congress of the Swedish Public Works Association (SPWA). The title of the keynote was Changes from a pandemic - Review of municipal issues . The presentation was made in English and presented via Zoom on 15th September 2020. View in our IFME Video Library here: https://www.ifmeworld.org/viewdocument/changes-from-a-pandemic-review-of
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It is sobering to realise that over the past 100 years, humans have burned approximately 1,800 billion barrels of oil, 377 billion tonnes of coal, 150,000 billion m 3 of gas 1 and cut down 46 per cent of all trees on earth 2 . by Jacqueline Balston, Director of Sustainability and David Jenkins, CEO IPWEA Australasia As a result, 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO 2 have been released into the atmosphere since 1751 3 and levels are now higher than at any other time in the past 800,000 years - and rising rapidly. Added to the CO 2 are the emissions of other greenhouse gasses including methane and nitrous oxide. Most of us are now well aware of the effect ...
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The Finnish capital Helsinki saw large amounts of snowfall in 2009–2013 compared to average snowfall. By Ville Alatyppö, City of Helsinki The inner city of Helsinki is located on the seashore on a narrow cape far away from sites where snow could be dumped, and the issue has been resolved by dumping snow into the sea. The emissions caused by this solution have been considerably smaller than they would be from transporting snow to the nearest snow dump. Helsinki’s strategy is to be the most functional city in the world. Even the development of snow logistics is aimed at this very same goal because if snow logistics do not run smoothly in wintertime, ...
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IFME is an International Member of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations. This Webinar will present an overview of the results of the review of the GAPC Framework and explain the key changes that have been made for diversity and inclusion. More information about the Consultation is available in this page . It is organized by the WFEO Committee for Women in Engineering and International Network for Women Engineers and Scientists (INWES) . Webinar details Time: Friday 31st July at 1pm – 2.30pm Paris CET via Zoom. Moderator: Prof. Gong Ke, President, World Federation of Engineering Organisations Speakers: Ms Peggy Oti-Boateng, ...
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Covid-19 and public space in the Netherlands On March 12, 2020 the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte declared an ‘intelligent lockdown’ for the entire country. People were asked to work from home, stay indoors and limit the use of both public transit and public spaces. Construction and maintenance were however allowed to continue. During the first phase of the lockdown, Stadswerk offered municipalities support by taking stock of the means in which the safety of their employees could best be guaranteed while working in public spaces. Also inventoried were the processes which were most essential in the event a severe corona escalation ...
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Never let a good crisis go to waste Article by the President of the International Federation of Municipal Engineering (IFME) on the SARS-COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 will go down in history as the year that the global economies closed down due to a global pandemic, the economic impact and how human society changed is yet to be determined. However, one thing is clear, prior to this year, the impact of a global pandemic was merely considered as a worst-case scenario but in reality, we never really gave it much credence. Well, now we have one and the impact has been devastating. As I write this article on behalf of IFME it is clear that going into ...
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John Thomson, President of the International Federation of Municipal Engineering (IFME) representing the interests of over 300,000 Municipal and Public Works Engineers globally, led the IFME delegation to Beijing, China to undertake its most recent board meeting. The China Municipal Engineering Association (CMEA) most generously hosted the IFME Board meetings in Beijing which took place the last week of October 2019. During the visit the Chinese challenges encountered with rapid urbanisation and providing the necessary infrastructure were explored. IFME was established in the Palais de l’UNESCO, Paris in April 1960, with the purpose of improvement of acquired ...
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Thanks to the Berlage expansion plan of 1908 Bezuidenhout-Oost has many public squares both large and small. This is a true treasure in a densely populated neighbourhood, depending of course upon how they have been designed and how they are being utilized. Regarding this matter a lot has been said and done in the past several years, ultimately resulting in the renovation of the first public square which was officially 'opened' on the 1st of March 2018 by the alderman. Temporary reconstruction of the Silleplein during Spring 2018 Creating work by means of work The motivation or reasoning behind the reconstruction was the need and necessity to replace ...