The Arab Future Cities Summit is an international gathering of city leaders, Government officials, city developers, academicians and urban service providers and city development experts to share strategies, insights and best practices to implement a smart and sustainable future for the cities of tomorrow. It gives a direction in urban planning and development with an emphasis on effective utilization of resources.
The objective of the summit is to facilitate an international platform to discuss the ways for the transfer of knowledge, know how and to reflect on technological and social innovations and transformations that are arising in cities.
Many municipalities around the world are exploring the Smart City concept as a way to make themselves better places to live, work, and grow. There is a growing consensus that information and communications technology (ICT) will play a critical role in creating sustainable cities of the future.
The concept of Smart Cities is gaining increasingly high importance as a means of making available all the services and applications enabled by ICT to citizens, companies and authorities that are part of a city’s system. It aims to increase citizens’ quality of life and improve the efficiency and quality of the services provided by governing entities and businesses. This perspective requires an integrated vision of a city and of its infrastructures, in all its components, and extends beyond the mere “digitalisation” of information and communication: it has to incorporate a number of dimensions that are not related to technology, e.g., the social and political ones.
Many cities are working on installing municipal wireless networks, implementing e-government initiatives by providing access to city departments and initiatives through websites, integrating public transportation with intelligent transportation systems, or developing ways to cut their carbon footprints and reduce the amount of recyclables consigned to the trash heap.
Across the Middle East and North Africa, large scale state-of-the-art urban centres and cities that are smarter, healthier, greener, and sustainable are rising out of the sands. New cities hold the key to widespread economic and cultural development that will support the delivery of the visionary goals set by governments and MENA is perfectly suited to this, given its rapid economic expansion and diversification - and all with the benefits of green field sites and no overhanging legacies to hold them back.
Today’s property developers cannot afford to ignore these significant advances in city technology. The smart city concept is gaining momentum in the Middle East with major smart cities project under development.
A look at some major projects in the region:
- Qatar has 10 smart city projects under development with Qatar Energy City, Doha International Airport, U City, Doha and Barwa city some of the major projects.
- The King Abdullah Economic City in Jeddah will include an advanced network infrastructure designed to deliver a range of advanced services, supporting residential areas, a seaport, and an industrial zone.
- The King Abdullah Makkah Construction Project, which will take six years to complete will provide Makkah with necessary services for the Haj and Umrah. The project’s infrastructure strategy will have the Grand Mosque as its focal point
- In Riyadh, the Information Technology Communications Complex (ITCC), a $1.65 billion development including research relevant buildings, business technology incubators, and a luxury residential complex, will incorporate a huge fiber-optic cable network to provide super-high speed broadband, serving advanced digital applications to a collection of environmentally friendly, energy-efficient towers.
- Abu Dhabi Masdar city will be the world’s first carbon neutral zero emission city.
The Arab Future Cities Summit will host upto 150 senior level executives from the private and public sectors including Mayors, Ministers, Municipalities, Urban & Infrastructure Developers, Private Investors, Major Construction companies, planning departments, architectural and engineering forms.
The Summit is organised by Expotrade, a global conference and event organizer with its head office based in Melbourne, Australia. Expotrade has delivered some of the largest, most successful B2B industry conferences and events. For almost 10 years, our unique blend of knowledge, experience and flexibility has accomplished an array of consistently top quality events. Today, Expotrade events enjoy such a distinctive edge, they are amongst the best patronized in the calendar.
For more information on the Summit, visit http://www.arabfuturecities.com or call Expotrade on +9714-4542135.
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