Main Theme – Sustainable Housing and Finance

The main theme of the 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 can be an effective strategy to improve the environmental, social and economic outcomes for towns and neighbourhoods to achieve SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities). In addition, it should be affordable, people-centered and inclusive while promoting less waste, energy efficient, more re-use and recycling together with lower life-cycle environmental impacts and costs. 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 slashing the emission of greenhouse gases.

Sub-themes

The summit has 4 sub-themes:

1. Housing and Finance – We need to gain a better understanding of the workforce housing and how this contributes to the 15-minute community.. We also need to explore new and innovative approaches to sustainable housing and examine 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.6 Based on capacity, towns and small cities require support to access these financial housing tools.

2. UN SDGs Cities Initiative - Monitoring Achievement and Building Capacity for Innovation – To measure progress towards realizing the SDGs, we need to undertake appropriate data collection, analysis and performance. This will also support town-to-town learning through transparency and accountability. More specifically, we 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. We 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.

3. Town-level Sustainability – In general, how can the localization of SDGs be achieved to make towns and small cities sustainable, prosperous and liveable. How can local businesses become partners in driving the achievement of the SDGS. How do we 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.

4. Climate change challenges and opportunities - To promote climate action we 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 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 change7. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement call for financial assistance for climate change adaption especially for developing countries who are most vulnerable.

The summit will be held virtually due to the current pandemic.