Bassel Omara
Member of the International Working Group of Experts at UNICITI - Toulouse, Occitanie, France
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Dubai,Dubai,United Arab Emirates
UNICITI
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UNICITI is an international consultancy and think tank. It brings in-house designed future oriented approaches to help Asian cities become sustainable, climate resilient, economically competitive, socially inclusive and culturally vibrant by reactivating the potential of their unique cultural and natural assets. Its interventions include an integrated urban planning and design; climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies; urban cultural and natural heritage regeneration; building decision makers' and urban practitioners' knowledge and capacity; and placemaking rooted in community led initiatives. Asian cities represent over half of the world's urban population. They showcase 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, cultural practices. Asian cities no longer cope with the demand pressure on basic infrastructure services. Increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events further affect cities' capacity to deliver and offer quality of life. Poorest citizens are most vulnerable and affected. Sustainability is hence a critical need to survive and thrive in urban spaces. The solution lies in uniqueness. Urban planning aligned with natural local conditions, bond between citizens and their city through connecting to shared cultural and natural assets, competitiveness resulting from human scale cohesive spaces all increase quality of life and make a city attractive to businesses and visitors. UNICITI thrives to bring uniqueness back to Asian cities. UNICITI Founder, Olga Chepelianskaia, covered over 40 countries and worked with seven leading international institutions such as ADB, CDIA, ISOCARP, Rockefeller Foundation, UNDP, UNECE, UNEP and UNESCAP.