ICLEI and World Business Council launch city survey

ICLEI, the global cities network, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) have launched a new survey to find out how cities and business can work together on sustainable development.

City leaders and officials who want to contribute to a better understanding of how cities and business can work together are encouraged to complete a short, 10-minute on-line survey compiled by ICLEI and the team behind the Urban Infrastructure Initiative (UII), a World Business Council for Sustainable Development project. US city Philadelphia was the most recent to receive a report on its future development after its collaboration with companies such as Siemens, Schneider Electric, AECOM, UPS and Toyota (see video below).

“UII has two primary aims: to show the role business can play as a solutions provider to cities; and to provide a platform for collaborative strategic engagement between the two, as a key enabler of progress towards urban sustainability,” said Matthew Lynch, Project Director for UII at the WBCSD.

“But our work has highlighted some apparent barriers: a lack of awareness of the strategic input that business can provide; a concern that business input will be biased; the lack of a process by which engagement could occur; and actual–or perceived–restrictions under public procurement rules. We think there’s a shortage of detailed data on these barriers, and their relative importance, so we hope this survey will produce further insight for everyone’s benefit.”

All survey participants will be sent the aggregated findings, allowing them to benchmark their experiences with other cities around the world. The complete survey findings will be presented at the ICLEI Global Town Hall at The Metropolitan Solutions Conference and Expo in Hannover, Germany on 7 April 2014. To start the ICLEI/UII City Leaders’ survey click here.