Panels

More panels and speakers are being added weekly!

​​Challenges & Lessons from New City Builders on the Frontlines

City builders themselves know better than anyone the challenges faced in bringing a new city development to life. New city entrepreneurs are building cities targeting a wide variety of target residents and industries and thus face a multitude of unique technical, financial, economic, social, and political challenges. As many new cities advance into maturity, with residents and investors settling in, their developers offer valuable lessons learned for the new cities ecosystem about their successes and their challenges. 

Speakers include:

​​Digitizing City Services and e-Governance in New Smart Cities

In the 21st century, talented urban residents are increasingly mobile as remote work has taken off. These footloose digital natives are not just looking for job opportunities, they’re also after fun, urban amenities, reliable digital infrastructure, and easy coming and going. How can new cities be built to cater to these preferences? Beyond digital nomads, embedding frontier technology into new cities from the outset can set these cities up to more efficiently deliver services and public goods for all residents/income segments. What are the best practices to do so?

Speakers include:

​Serving the Most Vulnerable in New Cities: Migration, Security, Governance, and Affordability

Many new cities target Africa’s rising middle class. But new cities also present a chance to offer economic opportunity, safety, and stability to the most vulnerable. Existing cities in Africa, as well as the current refugee camp system, often prove wholly inadequate to meet the needs of the poor and the displaced. How can new cities push down the price point to be more accessible to the average person across the continent? What can new cities do to better finance and deploy infrastructure access and public services? Why is the existing refugee camp model inadequate and what role can more permanent settlements play in providing legal certainty and economic rights to refugees?

Speakers include:

​​Unlocking Africa’s Silicon Valley

Description: Africa is increasingly rich in globally competitive talent, but the continent lacks the robust, clustered networks of high-quality educational and financial institutions needed to foster an innovation ecosystem like that of Silicon Valley. How can new cities help kickstart the formation and concentration of talent and innovation ecosystems across Africa?

Speakers include:

​Urban Planning and Design in New Cities

Effective urban planning and design are of critical importance for those that live, work, and play in a city–few things matter more to define the urban experience. New cities are unique in that the built environment is planned from the ground up, in advance of settlement, unlike the vast majority of existing cities. What practices and considerations are key to creating vibrant, safe, enjoyable, and productive new cities? What tools do Africa’s urban planners need to be successful? What mistakes have been made by the new cities of past decades that today’s new cities must avoid repeating?

Speakers include: