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World Cities Summit >
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Smart Cities
Smart Cities
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies offer to revolutionise urban life. Access to quality data can drive impactful decision making and human-centric solutions. However, a balance between technological advancement and creating value for communities must be struck to ensure desirable and equitable outcomes for residents.
Plenary I: How can AI enable our cities to be even smarter?
Artificial Intelligence is emerging as the invisible architect of our urban future. This offers unprecedented opportunities to enhance city planning, resource management, and public municipal services through data-driven insights that improve quality of life for residents, our resilience to the effects of climate change and support economic growth.
This plenary delves into the potential of AI-centric solutions and data-rich environments in transforming urban environments.
Plenary II: Can smart cities love humans?
Smart solutions can make cities more efficient and responsive, improving residents’ quality of life. However, these solutions require consideration of complex challenges such as resource demands, cybersecurity concerns and ensuring inclusivity.
This plenary explores how cities can harness technology whilst ensuring human-centricity, to achieve enabling and equitable outcomes for all.
UNDP Session - Circular Pathways for Cities: Policy, Digital, and Systems Enablers for Urban Transitions
Led by United Nations Development Programme
Cities account for the majority of global resource consumption, waste generation, and greenhouse gas emissions, while also driving economic growth, innovation, and service delivery. As urbanisation accelerates and intensifies resource and infrastructure pressures, linear models are increasingly unable to meet cities’ social, economic, and environmental needs. Cities must shift towards circular models that
redesign resource use, value creation and service delivery across urban systems.
This session explores how digital innovation, policy design, and systems thinking can serve as structural enablers for circular transitions in cities. Drawing on UNDP’s Regional Strategic Framework for Circular Economy, it will demonstrate how embedding circular principles early in the design of policies, programmes, and investments, supported by digital and data-driven tools, can help cities move beyond
isolated pilots toward integrated, scalable, and adaptive circular solutions. The discussion will spotlight the importance of aligning governance structures, financing mechanisms, and behavioural incentives to unlock system-wide urban transformation.
URA Masterclass – Navigating Underground Infrastructure Challenges
Led by Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore
As cities around the world grapple with increasingly congested subterranean spaces within the road reserves, this session explores the practical challenges of coordinating underground major infrastructure projects within these confined environments. Drawing on Singapore’s experience, we will examine the complexities that arise when various utilities compete for limited space in urban areas.
The session will highlight the Singapore’s experience of managing diverse stakeholder expectations, balancing conflicting priorities, and navigating technical challenges when coordinating infrastructure in a congested space. The discussion will focus on how to optimize the use of underground space and address common issues faced across different contexts, including adoption of current technology to address some of the key underground mapping challenges for legacy utilities.