Haris Piplas: "We must work together on urban problems".
According to Oxu.Az, this was stated by Haris Piplas, Director of Integrated Urban Solutions in Switzerland, at an event held in the Azerbaijan pavilion during WUF13.
He emphasized that by combining knowledge and skills from different fields, we can create teams tailored to specific urgent problems.
"In many European cities, the problem is not lack of knowledge or technical capacity. It's the lack of integration and multidisciplinary approach. We still plan cities as in the 19th century - functional, fragmented, and sectoral. Mobility, energy, public space, and architecture are planned separately. But we want to do it differently."
He noted that cities are growing rapidly, some are shrinking, but we live on an already urbanized planet: "Cities are part of both the problem and the solution. About 70% of greenhouse gas emissions come from cities. Our societies are also changing rapidly. We no longer have a 24/7 society; our lifestyles are fundamentally changing every day."
