With a booth themed Elevated Thinking Underground: Building a Climate-Resilient, Sustainable Urban Future, the ITA and its committee on underground space, ITACUS, advocated the potential of subterranean urbanism in creating resilient cities with minimised long-term maintenance and operational costs.
For the ITA/ITACUS team, it was a concern how little reference there was to underground urbanism and infrastructure at WUF12. The event logo implied that urbanisation existed from the ground surface up.
In discussions at the booths they visited and in the workshops and groups they attended, the ITA/ITACUS representatives, including ITA past president Jinxiu Jenny Yan, ITACUS chair Antonia Cornaro and ITACUS steering board members Petr Salak and Abidemi Agwor, gave the underground perspective to discussions, presenting ideas and prospects that were new to other group members.
At the UN-Habitat event, which attracted more than 25,000 participants from 182 countries (in-person and online), ITA and ITACUS connected with senior statespeople, policy leaders and friends of ITA.
UN assistant secretary-general Michael Mlynár, who gave a keynote address at WTC2024 in China, visited the ITA booth, and ITA past resident Jinxiu Jenny Yan met China’s Minister Ni Hong, minister of housing and urban-rural development, who was also a guest speaker at WTC2024. In his keynote to the WTC2024 opening ceremony plenary session, he described how China’s investment in underground infrastructure had improved the lives of millions across the country and how his Ministry was facing the challenges of urban and rural social development.
Head of the Egyptian Tunnelling Society, Dr Ashraf Abu Kriahna, and the head of Cairo transport also visited the ITA booth. Cairo Metro is the greatest user of the city’s underground space. Started in the 1980s, the current system of three lines totals more than 80km, of which significant lengths are underground, including under the River Nile, first in open-cut works and then in TBM-bored running tunnels between open-cut stations. Line 4 with long lengths of TBM running tunnels is under construction and Lines 5 and 6 are in the planning and feasibility stages.
The need for stormwater management in the new area of Cairo where the exhibition centre hosting the WUF12 is located, came on Monday afternoon when a torrential and unseasonal rainstorm flooded the wide acres of paved areas. Stormwater had to be swept away before dignitaries arrived for the WUF opening ceremony.
In a video address to the opening ceremony, UN secretary-general António Guterres spoke of the new pact between nations to advance the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and specifically address inequalities and the world’s critical shortage of housing.
President el-Sisi of Egypt and his guests, president of the state of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas and the presidents of Yeman and Sudan, also addressed the opening ceremony.
A highlight of the WUF proceedings was the launch of the UN-Habitat flagship World Cities Report 2024 entitled Cities and Climate Action. The 373-page report provides a far-reaching analysis of the current and expected climate impacts on different regions and cities, as well as the differing vulnerabilities urban populations face as a result of poverty, inequality, ethnicity, gender, disability and other characteristics. The report focuses on the fact that cities are both victims of climate change and among its worst perpetrators and that there is not only a moral imperative to promote low-carbon, sustainable urbanisation, but also a compelling logic with already progressive solutions emerging from cities to strength their collective resilience.
The ITA booth in Cairo was sponsored by Herrenknecht, Sika, Amberg Engineering, HNTB, CREC and sister association ACUUS, Associated Research Centers for the Urban Underground Space. The ITA and ITACUS will attend the next World Urban Forum (WUF13) in Azerbaijan in 2026. To get involved, contact ITACUS chair Antonia Cornaro acornaro@amberg.ch.
