3rd Collingwood World Summit: Habitat in Towns 2022

The Collingwood World Summit (CWS) is an event that aims to advance the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in towns.

The Town of Collingwood in partnership with the Urban Economy Forum and UN-Habitat is hosting the 3rd annual Collingwood World Summit (CWS3) where town leaders, public and private sector partners, urban activists, academics and civil society will gather to exchange and share best practices pertaining to sustainable development and the advancement of the 2030 Agenda.

WHERE & WHERE?

#CWS3 will be held on October 31 & November 1, 2022, in conjunction with the United Nations’ celebration of World Cities Day.

MAIN THEME

Sustainable Housing and Finance

The theme of this year’s summit is to gain an understanding on how sustainable housing and finance can be a catalyst to achieve the SDGs at the scale of towns and small cities. Sustainable housing is an effective strategy to improve the environmental, social and economic outcomes for towns, small cities and Indigenous communities to achieve SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities). In addition, housing should be affordable, energy efficient, people-centered and inclusive together with lower life-cycle environmental impacts and costs.

In housing finance, a balanced, affordable and stable housing and mortgage markets help foster conditions that provide individuals with more affordable market housing options. Housing finance is sustainable if it enables a large share of the population to fund residential property within an adequate period of time on transparent terms and predictable as well as affordable cash flows, thus creating stable housing markets with a minimum risk of private/corporate failure and public involvement, while reducing the emission of greenhouse gases.

Sub-themes

The summit has 4 sub-themes:

Housing and Finance

The focus will be to gain a better understanding of the workforce housing and how it contributes to the 15-minute community. Innovative approaches to sustainable housing will be explored together with alternatives for home ownership, affordability and financing. In this sub-theme case studies from Canada and other countries will deliberate on national funding and housing options, including how towns and small cities can leverage national housing strategies. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), who is the federal agency leading Canada’s National Housing Strategy, offers both funding opportunities and mortgage loan insurance products to support the construction, purchase and refinancing of rental properties. Based on capacity, towns and small cities require support to access these financial housing tools.

UN-Habitat SDG Cities Imitative - Monitoring Achievement and Building Capacity for Innovation

To measure progress towards realizing the SDGs, there is the need to undertake appropriate data collection, analysis and performance. This will support town-to-town learning through transparency and accountability. More specifically, there is the need to measure where towns and small cities stand on their innovation ecosystem capabilities, including their respective national goals on the achievement of the SDGs. There is the need to analyze how cities make use of innovation ecosystems to operationalize and rethink sustainable development from the ground up as well as facilitate a dialogue between lower and upper levels of government. Towns and small cities can be frontrunners to achieving the SDGs but they require capacity to implement sustainable initiatives.

Town-level Sustainability

This sub-theme will look at how the localization of SDGs can be achieved to make towns and small cities sustainable, prosperous and livable. How local businesses can become partners in driving the achievement of the SDGS and how to ensure that rural areas and towns have sustainable linkages to economic, physical and environmental factors. Lastly, town-level sustainability must be inclusive and involve community participation and good governance.

Climate change challenges and opportunities

Climate action requires the need to mobilize practical approaches for sustainable building in towns that include both building design and construction and town planning and design. Additionally, to combat climate change towns and small cities need to examine the challenges and opportunities (a cost/benefit analysis) for climate resiliency and energy/resource efficiency for effective mitigation and adaptation. Towns and small cities also need to have direct access to climate financing for sustainable development. In this context, climate financing refers to local, national or transnational financing that is drawn from the public, private and/or alternative sources of financing to support mitigation and adaptation actions that will address climate change.