Cities are tackling climate change issues while needing more investment in developing adequate urban resilience strategies and capacities to implement and create sustainable urban infrastructure. In many cases, underinvestment and mismanagement of urban development result from inadequate dialogue among residents, planners, policymakers, and decision-makers, including financial institutions.

This year, ISOCARP is thrilled to combine the 59th World Planning Congress (WPC59) with the 5th Urban Economy Forum (UEF5). ISOCARP, a society of professional planners contributing to knowledge creation, and UEF, a unique platform to disseminate knowledge through establishing dialogue among key stakeholders, bring together their knowledge and expertise to deliver a congress, inspiring and taking actual actions to prepare cities for climate change and making them an attractive destination for investment in sustainable and resilient urban infrastructure.

As the General Rapporteur team, we invite you to join the in-person Congress in Toronto, Canada, 10-13 October 2023 and a Virtual Pre-congress, 20-21 September 2023 , bringing together multiple stakeholders, professional planners, policymakers, city leaders, government, academia, financial institutions, entrepreneurs, and civil societies to explore and discuss opportunities "For Climate Action, Urban Finance" to support "Climate-responsive Planning for Equitable Places & Communities".

Our congress is a unique platform for exploring case-study examples as potential models of sustainable planning projects applied in practice, and workable components of sustainable urban finance, including bottom-up community initiatives. We invite you to discuss the most effective ways of closing the current implementation gap in financing cities to make them more resilient and comfortable for everyone.

We encourage you to investigate how to acknowledge community values and find synergies and relevant solutions for attracting climate finance and transforming it into locally demanded social, economic, and environmental value for city residents, not leaving anyone behind.

We call for deciding jointly to leverage multi-disciplinary, multi-sector, multi-level collaboration, and cross-border planning for better urban governance, balancing public and private, global and local urban development needs.

We want to motivate governments and financial institutions to invest wisely by combining evidence with the foresight and vision for transforming cities and communities into economically prosperous, healthy, environmentally friendly, socially just, inclusive, and resilient places.

Let us start to interact with technologies to explore new technologies not historically linked to planning practice and urban finance and expose innovative linkages and synergistic opportunities of using big data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

By joining us, you will be inspired and capable of starting real Climate Actions to attract stable Urban Finance. 

Welcome to join the congress,
General Rapporteur Team 

	Julio Carrillo, AICP, LEED AP ND	Madina Junussova, PhD