Track: Living & Inclusion

How can green spaces transform cities into healthier, more inclusive, and biodiverse environments? As urban areas expand, integrating smart lighting, environmental monitoring, and sustainable design becomes key to enhancing quality of life. This roundtable will delve into how green infrastructure can foster urban ecosystem balance, boost physical well-being, and strengthen community connections in the pursuit of greener cities.

This event will explore how the principles and enablers of the International Guidelines on People-Centred Smart Cities, which span from shared prosperity, to data and smart cities services, governance, and regulation, etc., can be applied to foster access to adequate housing and basic services in cities globally.

Launched in March 2025, MICAD is an EU-funded project supporting inclusive metropolitan planning for climate and digital transitions. This session will present its goals, approach, and main outputs—including toolkits and Roadmaps—and invite participants to share feedback to help refine and adapt the project.

This session will discuss the effect of online tools (mis)use on citizen trust and participation in democracy, as well as strategies to counter misinformation and to promote digital media literacy. On the background of the EU Democracy Shield initiative, cities will exchange their experiences and discuss approaches to better respond to threats, and to continue enabling citizen participation in offline and online spaces.

This stage session reveals how standard municipal operations across Europe—from cybersecurity protocols to smart city infrastructure management—actively safeguard digital rights, often without being framed in rights-based language.

This session explores how cities can manage tourism sustainably, using a resilience-based approach and data-driven tools to balance the influx of visitors and its economic benefits with the affordability and livability of their residents. UN-Habitat, UN-Tourism and partner experts will present a new global effort to help cities and territories assess tourism-related risks and their positive and undesirable impacts on the urban system.

This session explores how Digital Citizenship Education (DCE) can be a powerful tool to address youth exclusion and gender inequalities in a connected society. With the involvement of local authorities, CSOs, and youth actors, it will showcase solutions for inclusive digital spaces and empower local action against online violence, discrimination, and democratic disengagement.

This congress session examines the escalating challenges disinformation poses to democratic processes worldwide, with particular focus on the local level. Experts will analyze recent disinformation campaigns that have disrupted local governance, explore technological and policy-based countermeasures being implemented by leading cities.