We bring you the latest happenings from the Faith for Cities initiative, launched by WEA Sustainability Center’s co-director, Dr. Chris Elisara. Here is an invitation to join their convenings—specialised gatherings for collaboration and innovation.

• Data Convening │ March 5th, 2024
  We are inviting leaders and organizations working in the overlapping areas of data, cities, and religion to a new initiative promoting intentional collaboration. With practitioners who are willing, we are building a collaborative community that supports a global commons at the intersection of faith, cities, and data that will benefit all the stakeholders working in this space.

• Urban Design Convening │ March 26th, 2024
  We are inviting leaders and organizations working in the overlapping areas of religion and urban design, planning, architecture, landscape architecture, placemaking, public engagement, etc. to a new initiative promoting intentional collaboration. With practitioners who are willing, we are building a collaborative community that supports a global commons at the intersection of faith and urban design that will benefit all the stakeholders working in this space.

• Finance/Developers Convening │ April 9th, 2024
  We are inviting leaders and organizations working in the overlapping areas of religion and faith-consistent finance, project developers that develop and/or finance urban projects to a new initiative promoting intentional collaboration. With practitioners who are willing, we are building a collaborative community that supports a global commons at the intersection of faith and finance/project developers that will benefit all the stakeholders working in this space.

To find out more, click here.

1) In a Bold Move, California’s Governor Issues Ban on Gasoline-Powered Cars as of 2035

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23092020/california-auto-cars-gasoline-electric-vehicles-gavin-newsom

2) 09-21-20 WORLD CHANGING IDEAS  

This is what a zero-emissions city looks like

Oslo has an ambitious goal to cut emissions by 95% by 2030. Here’s how it will do it.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90552168/this-is-what-a-zero-emissions-city-looks-like

3) 08-20-19 WORLD CHANGING IDEAS

How Copenhagen plans to reach carbon-neutral status in just six years

Many cities are aiming for neutrality by 2030 or 2050. The Danish capital plans to be the first carbon-neutral capital in the world and to hit the goal by 2025.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90392020/how-copenhagen-plans-to-reach-carbon-neutral-status-in-just-six-years

4) The Best Summary Of Kenya Renewable Energy (& Dirty Energy) You Can Find

March 30th, 2019 by David Zarembka 

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/30/the-best-summary-of-kenya-renewable-energy-dirty-energy-you-can-find/

Chris Elisara, one of the co-leaders of the Lausanne/WEA Creation Care network, Director of the WEA Creation Care Task Force and a long-time advocate for better urban planning, has been working with a couple of friends to produce what looks like a major film festival on the topic of Better Cities.

This is what Chris had to say on Facebook:

It’s a film festival that tells inspiring stories about making cities, towns, and neighborhoods better. This year it is a virtual festival, so my friends you can watch any of the 80 films from over 26 countries wherever you live in the world. We’ve got great feature films (Jane Sweeney check out City Dreamers!), and amazing short films organized into the following categories (which we give a best film award to): Better Communities, Better Economies for All, Better Environment, Better Transport, Better Planning and Design, Better Technology and Innovation. And this year we have some special categories: Architecture & Cities, Bicycling & Cities, Engineering & Cities, Housing & Cities, Next Generation & Cities, Water & Cities, and World Games & Cities.

The dates are Oct. 8-11, but you have 7 days to watch the films after you’ve logged in to watch your first film.

Here’s the Better Cities Film Festival 2020 website. It looks to us like it would take more than 7 days to work through this list, but who knows? There’s a pandemic on…

FEATURE FILMS

City Dreamers

Detroit 48202: Conversations Along a Postal Route

Dreamhood

MOTHERLOAD

Priced Out

The Great Disconnect

SHORT FILM BLOCKS

Better Communities

• GOOD WHITE PEOPLE: A Short Film About Gentrification, 
• The Liveable Regional Cities in Bangladesh Project 2019, 
• COLOSAL Cerro la Campana, 
• Entangled, 
• Windows, 
• Medellin in Paris, 
• Segregated By Design

Better Economies for All

• Working Cities Wednesday, 
• The Eastpoint Project, 
• GOOD WHITE PEOPLE: A Short Film About Gentrification, 
• Sustainable Development Training – Milan Food Policy, 
• Dehlight

Better Environment

• On the Fenceline: A Fight for Clean Air, 
• Nepal Ecocity Network, 
• There’s a Dinosaur on Oxford Street, 
• Detroit Hives, 
• Degrowth in the Suburbs, 
• Sustainable Development Training – Milan Food Policy, 
• Blue Goes Green: Net Zero Police Station

Better Planning & Design

• Briançon, 
• Living the Historical Center, 
• Urbanizing the Suburbs, 
• Entangled, 
• Utrecht: Planning for People & Bikes, Not for Cars, 
• Medellin in Paris, 
• Living Patrimony, 
• COLOSAL Cerro la Campana, 
• 5 Blocks

Better Technology & Innovation

• The Wilshire Grand Story: Tech Talk, 
• Starting Small: Open Data in Chile, 
• What the Hell is a Bluetooth Sniffer?, 
• GROWTH BELOW, 
• Pushing Zero

Better Transport

• Rhythm’s Gonna Get Ya, 
• The Innovative Way Ghent Removed Cars From The City, 
• Age of Automobility, 
• Gentrification Express: Breaking Down the BQX, 
• ACT LA: The Problem of Public Transit in Los Angeles, 
• Last Stop For Lost Property, 
• Boober, 
• Spokespeople

Architecture & Cities

• Space Needle: A Hidden History, 
• Instruments in the Architecture: Building The Pianodrome, 
• DEAR ESTHER, 
• The Forest Tower

Award Winning films from UNHabitat Better Cities Film Festival @WUF10

• The Eastpoint Project, 
• There’s a Dinosaur on Oxford Street, 
• GROWTH BELOW, 
• Nepal Ecocity Network, 
• Knife Crime – Faith Inspired Awareness Campaign, 
• Briançon, Living the Historical Center, 
• Detroit Hives, 
• Pushing Zero

Bicycling & Cities

• Cycling Towards a Brighter Future, 
• “Hi-Wheel”, 
• There & Then, 
• Age of Automobility, 
• Bike to Dodger Stadium, 
• Boober, 
• The Bicycle Maker, 
• White Bicycle

Engineering & Cities

• Building Greener Cities, 
• Blue Goes Green: Net Zero Police Station

Housing & Cities

• Frances, 
• Piece of the Puzzle, 
• Outside the Sprawl, 
• Regeneration, 
• The People’s Struggle, 
• The Plummery, 
• Living Patrimony, 
• Segregated By Design

Next Generation & Cities

• Literacy for Environmental Justice: Cultivating Youth Leaders in Southeast San Francisco, 
• Rebel Bells, 
• Rainbow Walks: The First Trail, 
• Cycling Towards a Brighter Future, 
• Making our place, 
• The Bicycle Maker, 
• We Watch, We Think

Water & Cities

• #WaterChronicles, …I am Water, 
• By Way Of Canarsie, 
• King of the Manhattan Lap, 
• City Swim, 
• L’EAU EST LA VIE (WATER IS LIFE): FROM STANDING ROCK TO THE SWAMP

World Games & Cities

• The Discarded: A Tale of Two Rios, 
• White Elephants, 
• Vision 2030: Future of SoCal

UN-Habitat has launched a campaign responding to COVID-19 (https://unhabitat.org/un-habitat-covid-19-response-plan).  As part of that campaign it is hosting a special on-line series of Urban Thinkers Campuses (UTC). The WEA Creation Care Task Force, which has developed a relationship with UN-Habitat over many years, is co-hosting the UTC focused on “Community Leaders on the Frontline” on May 14. The WEA’s COVID-19 Task Force (https://covid19.worldea.org), which has an Impoverished Communities working group, will be sharing directly about its work and the lessons it is learning from frontline churches and leaders responding to the pandemic. 

Space is limited, so sign up to participate in these UTC’s. The Christian community has something to learn and something to share in all of these conversations. The most important thing, however, is that we can contribute recommendations and suggestions that can have an impact on policy makers, governments, industry, and civil society, including our own Christian community, through our participation. So let’s participate! Learn more and sign up here https://www.worldurbancampaign.org/urban-thinkers-campus

We also helped form the Urban Shalom Society, which will be sending another delegation to UN-Habitat’s 10^th World Urban Forum (WUF10) in Abu Dhabi Feb. 8-13, 2020.

If you are interested in joining the Urban Shalom Forum’s delegation to WUF10 please go to this link to learn more http://urbanshalomsociety.org/save-the-dates-10th-world-urban-forum-urban-shalom-forum/. To learn more about the LWCCN’s perspective on cities and creation care we suggest reading the Gospel and the Future of Cities: A Call to Action statement developed in response to Habitat III at this link: http://www.weacreationcare.org/the-gospel-the-future-of-cities-a-call-to-action/.

Here’s the story: Eli Birnbaum, a church planter with Jews for Jesus, reports that an effort to discover what was lacking in their urban neighborhood led them to try to do something about the problem of air conditioners dripping onto sidewalks. (As Eli says, if you live in a city, you know what we’re talking about here!). This led to research and creative thinking and… Let’s just let Eli tell the story:

We posted a picture of the board on our neighborhood’s Facebook group and asked people how we could solve the problem. We got over a hundred responses, and with some researching my wife did, we gathered people who were interested in helping and began brainstorming. We got to meet all kinds of people, including activists who were all about environmental and behavioral change. They wanted to teach the rest of the neighborhood how they could help the environment. (Funnily enough, my fellow church member and I were the only ones who weren’t preaching). With everyone’s help, we began to experiment. We created a pipe with holes, dirt, plants, and a bucket, extended the drains from the air conditioners, and watched the plants flourish.

The city got wind of it and funded the project. We gave out twenty of these kits in December, and then another twenty in May. Two major news websites wrote an article about the project, and I even got invited to a morning talk show, which, unfortunately, I couldn’t attend. We regularly get stopped on the street and are known as the “drip plant people.” The community center manager bragged on us in a citywide official meeting, asserting that “citizens like these are what make a difference in the city, and we need more of them.”

https://medium.com/redeemer-city-to-city/planting-goodness-in-your-neighborhood-2edff8978911

Discussing this on a Lausanne chat group, Dave Bookless reminded us that “When Christians take the earth seriously, people take the Gospel seriously.”

If you reside in the UK, Europe, or North America you are invited to attend the joint UN-Habitat Faith-Based Urban Thinkers Campus entitled, Faith and the Path Towards a Better Quality of City Life,at the Royal Geographical Society in London on the 23^rd and 24^th of November 2019, andimmediately prior to attendthe Urban Shalom Forum on Nov. 21-22 which will focus exclusively on Christian perspectives, dialogue, collaboration, and networking pertaining to cities and the future of urban development.  To learn more about the purpose, outcomes, and to register for these free events go to this link:  http://www.weacreationcare.org/usf_utc_london_2019/

If you reside in the Asia region we are also co-hosting UN-Habitat Faith-Based Urban Thinkers Campus in the Philippines on Nov. 29 and 30 at the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture. To learn more about the purpose, outcomes, and to register for this free event go to this link:  https://utc-asia.eventbrite.com.au.

Here’s the full press release.