The Asian Development Bank (ADB), through the Central and West Asia Regional Department (CWRD), Pakistan Resident Mission (PRM), and the Urban Climate Change Resilience Trust Fund (UCCRTF) hosted the Resilience Accelerator (RA) Workshop in Singapore on 10–12 December. The RA incorporated topics such as sustainable transport, housing, green architecture, renewable energy, and sustainable tourism to help cities in Pakistan formulate development roadmaps. 

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Close to 60 participants from 6 ADB-funded project cities in Pakistan participated in the three-day workshop. Participants included senior government government officials from the Provincial Government of Punjab: Mr. Said Anjum, Secretary; Mr. Kanzal Shauzab, Parliamentary Secretary; and Mr. Naveed Ahmad Chaudhry, Parliamentary Member. 

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The workshop was organized to share experiences, lessons learned, areas of improvement, and good practices among the Punjab Intermediate Cities Improvement Investment Project (PICIIP) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Intermediate Cities Improvement Project (KPICIP) cities in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces in Pakistan, as well as to discuss and identify new projects with possible ADB and UCCRTF financing. 

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The design of the workshop facilitated interactive discussions between the city and provincial representatives to support alignment of plans and development strategies across levels of governance. City participants were also given the opportunity to have one-on-one discussions with technical experts on transport, renewable energy, tourism, planned unit development, flood early warning systems, water recycling, and parks development. The schedule of the workshop was seen as timely since both PICIIP and KPICIP cities are in the process of preparing detailed engineering designs, providing an opportunity to include their learnings from the activity.

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Singapore was selected as a venue and case study in order for the participants to learn more about urban development sectors through small-scale solutions and leapfrog technologies, and integrate these in upcoming ADB and UCCRTF-funded projects. Site visits were arranged to Singapore’s housing, water and sanitation, transport, and waste-to-energy facilities to expose participants to innovative urban solutions. In particular, participants visited the Housing Development Board (HDB) and the model units for their public housing units; Public Utilities Board (or PUB, the common designation for Singapore’s national water agency) NEWater Visitor to learn about the city-state’s water recycling program; Land Transport Authority Mobility Gallery to understand how they plan, design, and build the country’s transport system; and the National Environment Agency (NEA) Tuas Incineration Plant. International experts were also on hand to provide insights on best practices from other countries.

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Additionally, city teams ran a series of workshop sessions where a multidisciplinary team composed of urban experts, facilitators, and rapporteurs guided each group in formulating their short-medium and long term city resilience vision and roadmap. In the final session, the city teams presented their outputs, where they received feedback from the urban experts, ADB staff, and fellow city participants.

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As a next step, UCCRTF will provide continued support to the cities to see how the learnings from the RA workshop can be incorporated into existing and upcoming interventions.