Smart Financing for Smart Cities: Sharing experiences on financing options for smart urban development

Many cities are embarking on a smart city journey as a way to manage urban challenges and support the delivery of basic services utilizing technology and data to drive inclusivity, accessibility, innovation and resiliency.

Smart solutions can be key enablers for achieving the New Urban Agenda and the success of SDG 11 on sustainable cities and communities. But implementing smart solutions often hinge on innovative and effective financing framework which allows cities to have access to resources.

This highly interactive networking session seeks to support participants to unlock smart solutions investment in cities to address urban challenges.

The event will feature a market place in which participants can present their smart city innovations and challenges to attract financing for these innovations. Using examples of smart urban development, a team of experts will provide ideas to finance smart city solutions for both mature and emerging smart cities.

The networking dialogue will delve into information and experiences on various financial mechanisms supporting smart urban development, including the fundamentals of creditworthiness and municipal finance, and strategies for municipal governments to implement Private-Public Partnerships (PPP) projects.

This session is organized by the Asian Development Bank under its regional technical assistance on Promoting Smart Systems with grant funding from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction. Key inputs from the session will be acknowledged in a publication scheduled to be released at the 2018 World Cities Summit in Singapore.