Sheikh Hamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan to inaugurate global forum on sustainable cities in Abu Dhabi

The two-day event begins tomorrow at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi.

Held from April 7-8 on the theme "Sustainability: Our Vision, Our Future", Global City 2009 will highlight Abu Dhabi's emerging role as a leader in sustainability and the increasing significance of the Middle East to the sustainability debate. It is the first time that Global City has been staged outside France since the event made its debut in 2005.

This year's Global City welcomes more than 100 leading international experts as speakers and forum participants, including ministers, mayors and civic leaders, academics, CEOs, strategists and intellectuals, and more than 400 delegates from the UAE, the region and around the world.

Frederic Theux, President of Reed Exhibitions Middle East, organiser of Global City, said:

"In just over four years, Global City has become an internationally respected public-private platform for sharing best practice on the future development of our cities."

"With its exceptional mix of quality speakers and its diverse and engaging agenda, this year's Global City will generate a tremendous volume of creative insights and practical solutions relevant to the ongoing challenge of realizing better-planned urban environments which embrace quality of life and genuine sustainability," Theux added.

"There will also be important insights to be had from staging Global City for the first time in the Middle East, a region which is facing so many unique sustainability challenges, from managing its extreme climate to population growth, to rapid economic expansion and energy consumption. Abu Dhabi has much to contribute in this area and once again will prove its worth as a great host city of world-class events," stated Theux.

Global City is being held in partnership with the Department of Municipal Affairs, the Abu Dhabi Council for Economic Development (ADCED) and the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council (UPC). Abu Dhabi-based Aldar Properties and Sorouh Real Estate are platinum sponsors of Global City 2009.

Frederic Theux said, "Reed Exhibitions would like to acknowledge the outstanding support of the Abu Dhabi government, which reflects the UAE's commitment to addressing the sustainability challenge and its eagerness to play a central role in the global sustainability debate."

Global City will feature five plenary sessions including an opening keynote address by Richard Florida, founder of the Creative Class Group. Florida will speak on "The Creative Economy and the Spiky World".

Other keynotes over the two-day event include sessions by Oh Se-hoon, Mayor of Seoul; Patrick Devedjian, the French minister responsible for the country's Economic Stimulus Plan; HE Falah Al Ahbabi, General Manager, Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council; and Saskia Sassen, Robert S.Lynd, Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, New York.

Global City will feature a 'Mayors' Panel' on April 7, which will invite civic leaders from cities as far afield as Edinburgh and Beijing to discuss present-day and long-term factors in successful city planning.

They will then be joined by leaders from 40 other cities at the closed-door Leaders' Summit, an occasion co-organised by City on the Move Institute, a PSA Peugeot Citroën Foundation and supported by the Forum for Urban Management, France.

Other sessions at Global City will discuss a panoply of topics, including the impact of globalization, inner city development, the contribution of immigrant communities to urban success, strategies in public transport, and the significance of technology, city branding and design.

Reed Exhibitions will also hold specialized workshops on the entrepreneurial opportunities inherent in sustainability. The workshops, conducted by Cisco, Siemens, EUROCITIES, Lord Cultural Services and EPAD (La Defense, Paris), among others, will provide participants a platform for networking and information sharing.