 Good morning, good evening and good afternoon everyone. I am honored to be joining this Davos agenda for this session Rethinking Cities for a Post-Covid Future. I'm Penny Abby Wardena, the Commissioner for International Affairs in the City of New York and I have the pleasure of moderating today's session and it is going to be an interesting one. Cities have really taken center stage as the world grapples to control and overcome the novel coronavirus. From shoring up our economies to managing healthcare to equity in education, cities have had to step up to get people through these challenging times. In New York City, for example, we are working to ensure that no one goes hungry by providing free grab and go meals and more than 400 fruit hubs throughout the city. Last fall, we were among the only cities to reopen our public schools and have worked tirelessly to ensure that all children who need a laptop or tablet get one for free so that they can continue their education. Throughout it all, we have an eye on recovery and we are using the lessons learned from our experiences at the epicenter of COVID-19 this spring. Mayor Bill de Blasio has created a series of sector advisory councils to guide our efforts to reopen the city's economy covering everything from business to tourism, from education to healthcare. The city has also launched the task force for racial inclusion and equity of which I'm a member to ensure our response and recovery efforts are equitable and leave no one behind. And just yesterday, the mayor announced that the trustees of the city's two largest pension pension funds voted to divest their portfolios from an estimated $4 billion of securities related to fossil fuel companies. The divestment is expected to be one of the largest in the world and signals loud and clear our willingness to lead on climate action. Now more than ever, we need cities to step up and activate around issues of equity and justice. That's why I'm honored to be the co-chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council of cities on cities of tomorrow, which is a multi-stakeholder think tank comprised of city leaders, business executives, civil society and academia. The council is focused on how cities can be redesigned post COVID-19 and build back better, providing that climate, the climate and resilience, social and digital infrastructure and systems to do so, as well as rethinking traditional revenues and financing mechanisms to deliver livable, sustainable and affordable cities. And so I'm excited that in today's session, we will focus on the path forward for cities after this pandemic, which has not only highlighted the shortcomings and public health preparedness, but across a variety of issues, including social equity, inclusive economic growth and sustainability among other things. We will now start the first portion of the session, which will consist of a 30-minute panel discussion that viewers from all around the world can watch live streamed on the forum's website. This panel discussion will be followed by detailed conversation among registered forum members and participants. Now join me in welcoming our panelists today. We have Shridhar Gadi, Founder and Chief Executive of Quantalla, USA. Cohen Van Ustrum, the Founder and Executive, Chief Executive Officer of EDGE, OVG Real Estate in the Netherlands and a fellow Young Global Leader. Jonathan Rekford, the Chief Executive Officer, Habitat for Humanity, USA. And my friend and fellow Council Member, Yann Bapiori, the Mayor of Helsinki in Finland. Now, Mayor, I want to kick it off with you. As a fellow member of the GFC on Cities of Tomorrow and the Mayor of a significant city, can you tell us how the COVID-19 pandemic, what it's taught you and other mayors? It's been an extraordinary year of firsts for, I think, mayors around the world. Thank you, Penny. Good afternoon. It's a great honour joining here you today. I think that the pandemic actually revealed more than it changed. It also highlighted some of the basic elements of a successful city. And then I think that it gave us a clear picture of how one should foster these winning attributes of a successful city. If I start with the first one, it's clear, of course, that the pandemic changed a lot. But I dare to say that, for example, digitalisation and climate change changed more. But what is characteristic for the pandemic is that it actually told us a lot about our cities, of our societies, of our weaknesses, of our strengths. So you could say that it actually revealed quite a lot. It revealed that some cities which were successful already before the pandemic were able to come with a more successful response to the pandemic as well. And it also told us that cities with structural weaknesses, especially in the field of healthcare, housing, segregation, data collection were much more vulnerable. I think one of the outcomes of all of this is that cities today have a better understanding of the winning attributes of a successful city, which I think is very important taking into account that we are facing a lot of a number of other global transformations taking place at the same time. Second, I think that it highlighted some basic elements of a successful city. When I took office as a mayor of Helsinki four years ago, I started by drafting a new strategy for the city. And I named it as the most functional city in the world. I knew from the very beginning that it was not a really media sexy topic, but I was convinced that it was relevant. Today, I think it is, and it could be even a media sexy topic. I think cities which are reliable, predictable, functional, has showed that they manage this crisis much better than other ones. Another lesson learned was that those cities, those societies, those countries, nations which are built on trust, where people trust each other, where people trust the authorities have managed the crisis better. Third, my third point is that you need to understand as a city leader in navigating in this difficult, rapidly changing world that you should all the time seek for a wide reaching systemic approach and systemic change instead of individual projects and programs that you really need a holistic leadership that everything actually counts, that you should base everything you do on facts, evidence, science, and unfortunately that the better connected a city is with other cities, with the private sector, with NGOs, the better possibilities and chances you have to successfully walk through different kind of crisis which we will face even in the future. Amira, that's an excellent point about the partnership needed with the private sector. And I want to also thank you on your leadership around localizing and using the language of the sustainable development goals and using that framework and joining New York City when we launched the Voluntary Local Review back in 2018. But that partnership between cities and of course the private sector has been I think critical in this last year and we've really seen how the partnerships built in the past have been really the foundation of how we've been able to work together in this last year. Now I want to go to Mr. Van Oestrom Cohen. The pandemic has drastically changed the way many of us, if not all of us work. Is this the end of the office as we know it? What permanent effects do you think this arrow will have on our built environment in cities? Would love to hear more from you on that. So let me first say that I think that the jury is still out and especially when it comes to the office market it's clear that in March we were sort of on an adrenaline thinking oh we don't need officers anymore we can do things completely different. Looking back now I think that we all long to go back into the office and work again the way we did. And I think that the whole real estate industry is a little bit at a crossroads because there's a couple of things coming together. The first thing is that we all realize and realize that before the crisis that sustainability and building is something that we really need to address and that it is something where the green deal is happening in Europe the green deal is also starting in the United States and there's a lot of work to be done to really change these buildings from being sort of like 30 40 percent of emissions in the world and make them carbon neutral. The second thing is that we want to make sure if we talk about buildings that we make them healthy and that it's safe for our employees to go back to the office but also for people so it's safe to go into a shopping center safe to go into a church or other places of worshiping and the interesting thing now is that the technology is there and the last couple of years we've seen a lot of development when it comes to censoring when it comes to data analytics and we are able now on a city level but also on a building level to be very precise and measure how sustainable is the building what is the energy management doing. If we measure that then it's a small step to measure CO2 in a room. If you do that on a room then it's a small step to say what does that mean for a virus load in a certain environment in certain space. All these things we can do. I think that we will see in the next couple of years a change in policy. I think that what is now abstract where we're president Biden and the Euro commissioners are saying hey we see a lot of possibilities of moving the real state sector. We will not actually get carrot and sticks approach where you get a reward if you really change your building but you also get a punishment if you don't and so that's going to be an exciting time where the real state industry really has to move a industry that is typically not moving so fast. A lot of owners that are sitting back and waiting for something to happen but this carrot and stick will really change that. There's one thing I'm not so positive about and that is that what we're also seeing is a huge amount of social problems coming our way. Cities are also investment places and what we are seeing with low interest rates is that there's a lot of people that don't see that's let's penny let's take your city that don't see New York as a place to live. I see it as a place where you can invest. You can buy a piece of real estate and you can rent it out for a lot of money and you can make a lot of money you know doing that on a big scale. Now at the same time there's so many people that are starters that just need to live in that city that need to work in that city to have a family family that maybe also you know go out there and need a new place for themselves and there's no no place for that and to bring together when we are on that crossroads this huge amount of work to make our buildings that say healthy and safe on the one side sustainable on the other side while taking into account that we have to change something on this that's a framework of investment and the way that government and private owners of real estate are working together not always working together but at least functioning in the same domain that's going to be the big challenge and that's the one thing on the social part where I may be less optimistic because the technology is there to solve the sustainability part and to save and to solve the the part on the on the health. What will that lead to we think in the next couple of years for example offices will be amazing places to go into we have to seduce our people working for us to come back into the office so the office won't be filled with desks anymore that the work you can do everywhere you can do at home you can do that in a coffee shop somewhere but if you come to the office you come there to communicate to to sit around the coffee machine and to to hang out and have random meetings with people so the fun of work and being in there in the office is going to be a lot bigger than it was in the past. Koens you somehow got me both excited and stressed out with that there's a lot of opportunity but later in the session I want to come back to the the challenges that you talked about with with public health and sort of public good even though sustainability you think is something that we can achieve looking forward. I want to transition to Mr. Gadi you know this is you know an excellent time for technology look at us here right now so it having played a really big role in fighting the pandemic in cities allowing us to work remotely and to be safe for those of us that can it's clearly going to play a crucial role in in building back can you sort of take us through how you see this playing out. Sure thanks Penny hello everyone pandemic accelerated digitization you can see working from home or studying from home getting urban services from home but post pandemic not everything may not be working from home but it will be hybrid people would like to have option to work from home study from home so this is going to be a huge acceleration of digitization at the same time this is going to create challenge in the society with a digital divide all over the world around 50 percent or more people doesn't have good internet and laptop to work or study from home so one how do we solve the digital divide problem so we at Quantilla solve two problems one how do we fight covid then second going forward how cities can help accelerating digitization at the same time helping with reducing the digital divide with fighting with covid before pandemic most of the cities all over the world have done some kind of work on smart cities building command control centers but mostly are none of them have really focused on converting command control centers into covid war room platforms so what we have done is within two weeks of pandemic happening we converted around 29 cities five state governments and couple of countries the city level command control centers into covid war room platforms integrating different sources of data different departments data like health care hospitals police disaster management social welfare by integrating all the sources of data how city administrators can get a situational awareness understanding the covid cases predicting what will happen next availability of hospitals versus demand to pre-plan and predict and serve the society now coming back with acceleration of digitization like water like power i think cities will have to start giving providing free access to internet but several cities with pandemic less and less taxes collected may not have enough funds to digitize the infrastructure and digitize urban services so we have come up with a model called outcome based model you can also call it public private partnerships i'll just give you with one example how we have done it where we solved the acceleration of digitization as well as solving the digital divide problem there is a city called iri in pennsylvania when we met the mayor he said that certain part of the city students were not getting good grades when they have done further study they found out that certain areas of the city kids doesn't have proper internet and they can't do the homework they had to go back to school to do the homework the city mayor said how can you help me to provide the free internet access and accelerate the digitization at the same time city doesn't have to spend so much money so what we have done is we have digitized their lighting converting into led converting into smart lighting and city saving 50 percent of their power savings we could reinvest that money into providing free wi-fi services and once you have a smart pole once you have that infrastructure and you can have a camera then you can have an environmental sensor where you can understand the pollution levels of the city with a camera you can understand crime in that area you can understand traffic in that area so at the end by convoc coming with innovative pricing models innovating outcome models you can provide economical environmental and social benefits to cities thank you thank you um and that was a great example you know it's because i'm going to be transitioning to mr. rexford who leads a habitat for humanity here in the u.s. and something that some people mistakenly talked about was how this pandemic would impact us all equally and it has turned out to be unfortunately completely the opposite it is in fact relieved some of the really long-standing disparities we often talk about here in new york city it really pulled back the curtain on issues that we we knew were there but it really just hit us hard last spring i want to use this time the the forum has has dubbed this period the great reset to ensure that our cities are rebuilt in an inclusive and equitable way how do we actually do that in a way you know i like i love you know cohen talked about the sustainability we've been able to to think about it from a built environment perspective but how do we talk about it too um from impacting the people the citizens in our community thanks penny i obviously you know as a housing organization we think housing is going to be the answer to many things and certainly it's only one piece of the much more complex puzzle but in many ways it's a prerequisite and if we don't solve housing for all of our citizens then all the other things we want in a healthy and sustainable city won't take place i think covet has shined a spotlight on how critical adequate housing is to health and we're seeing all the public health issues as we ask people to shelter in place all over the world how do you do that if you don't have a place in which to shelter so if you care about health you need to care about housing as you said we had a global crisis in affordable housing before covet and virtually every city in the world and this has just been exacerbated and it's exacerbated existing divides i think for those of us who are knowledge workers this has been a deep inconvenience for service and frontline workers this has been a catastrophe and i think we've seen how much equity issues have been exacerbated where now over 90 million people have been forced back into extreme poverty and those numbers are growing really rapidly right now if we think here in the u.s. historically there's been a racial component of that as well as we think about equity and in terms of access to housing and particularly access for some communities so as we think about equity we need to address housing and that's an issue globally as well we believe certainly that the best model in all contexts are mixed income mixed use transit oriented developments so that people can live close to where they work so that lower income families have access to the better schools to better opportunities to pass forward and that's both environmentally better but it's also from a human perspective the best model but that's not how our cities are currently working there's been an increasing economic divide where we've segregated economically which is really impractical and we've seen an explosive increase with low interest rates and the cost of land that has ridden so much faster than incomes so affordability has become a gigantic issue and in many ways most of our major cities as we look at mass rapid urbanization and I think when we talk about knowledge workers being able to live anywhere they want that's true but that's a very small segment of the total population of a city so as we think about investing in more equitable healthier and also economically sustainable cities we've got to figure out a way to house all of our people that's right um this is I think this is going to be the the challenge for the for the coming years um I'm curious I there's a question in the cat in the chat before I get back to everyone else um for Shridhar um it's about technology I think it speaks to um the questions that are cut that are coming up um from the panelists now how can technology and innovation be leveraged to catalyze the establishment of smart cities in this COVID era and beyond while simultaneously addressing the critical challenge of ever expanding informal settlements and her urban housing challenges and the least developed and developing countries that Jonathan just did sort of a brilliant overview of the challenges especially focused on affordable housing what's the role of technology here especially when we're looking at developing countries developing countries like India example so you're seeing the technology role in see the the rule depends on the country if it's if you if you can choose the country I think the question is can this moment be leveraged to catalyze smart cities and in these areas that are having these historical challenges absolutely I think uh pandemic kind of situation definitely will accelerate city administrators to take you know right decisions right policymaking and especially policymaking on data privacy is going to be uh expedited and what we have seen is especially providing urban services to citizens which especially touch the end citizen is really getting expedited okay that's great and there's a question here for the mayor somebody wants has a question that's about the actions on diversity and inclusion you're developing on the future the future city strategies I could maybe link that to the points Mr breakfast elaborated on on just the moment to go I really really much believe in in what he said that housing is a prerequisite for for many other things and I also believe in the thing that what what he mentioned that a mixed housing model is seeking for a for a success when he told that more or less no city in any any place on earth had had really followed this I would like to to tell you that we actually in Helsinki and some other Nordic cities we have and what we have had done is that we have done that for the last 30 or 40 years and we have really managed through this policy to to to create a city without any like ghettos without any really bad surroundings without any really bad neighborhoods and and and of course the the challenge is that that even for us which have been quite successful we have been forced to do this for a very very long time but I mean this shows that this has also been a a a basics for a real inclusive city this has creative trust and trust is then the basic prerequisite also for inclusiveness and and issues like this so so maybe I would like to like underline that everything counts and and the basic prerequisites especially housing and a well-functioning health care system are actually building a basis for several other good things which we are aiming at I think that's a good I'd like to offer Mr. Rockford an opportunity to weigh in you know I'd like to hear about where you're seeing this work being catalyzed in a positive way that perhaps pre-covid it wasn't and so it's giving you reasons for optimism as we're thinking about how we're rethinking and rebuilding a few this future of cities. I'll split it into two contexts I think in the lowest income context we're still early and sadly in the health crisis and so there's probably more pessimism I think in terms of the challenges and especially for families living in informal settlements we got almost a billion people living in informal settlements and the health conditions are extremely high risk so the focus there has been on water and sanitation and improving health conditions so that they can get through the pandemic. I think in higher income context I think the reason for optimism is the awareness is much higher in some ways it got bad enough in our most expensive cities penny you live in one where essentially you know all even middle class families have been priced out of the market and we know that's unsustainable and we and we're starting to see cities take policy changes to move more towards what Helsinki has done which is to say we're going to allocate land we're going to put in some kinds of different requirements but you need both incentives carrot and sticks so I think where there's inclusionary zoning where there are land trusts or other ways or and where there are ways to mitigate the negative sense sides of gentrification so as cities have developed in the high income cities what's happened is low income families and traditionally less developed parts of the city are getting priced out or pushed out and I think they're really creative ways to mitigate the property tax increases for low income homeowners and there are also ways to create permanent affordability so that we can have inclusive growth because growth is a good thing the other side maybe particularly US phenomenon but we've seen in many cities is that there are zoning regulations that essentially have forced out they originally designed to be racially enforced but now they're economically enforced that essentially have kept out low income or moderate income housing and we're starting to see more awareness of the need to increase supply but it really is that that's a changing hearts first and then you can change policy and that's a that's a fair point is the just the awareness that people have of the disparities which has driven this you know desire for for changing the the structural inequity in a way that we haven't really seen in such a long time I want to give Cohen a chance to jump in here because you work with you know local governments you know around the world and I'm just curious you know that Jonathan just talked about characteristics from your perspective what do you think have you seen work either for you or for your industry would love to hear about that well you know what I find so interesting is that there is so many different malls being tried out and if there's one thing where I think the the mayors and the leadership of cities can can better work together I give you one example Berlin Berlin has made a rule that you cannot rent out a space anymore residential space for more than a certain amount of money and it's illegal and literally you can get a huge fine or even go to jail as an owner of a of a house if you rented out for too much money but that is a that is a revolution that's given in earthquake the market is reacting a little bit like oh wow and and they stop building and so it's a policy that is a huge step maybe not completely in the right direction but the interesting thing is it's now being copied by by other cities other cities are looking at it and I think that on the policy framework it is going to be so important that that cities are really going to compare notes and I know that we have the the the c40 in the world economic forum has different places different platforms where where leadership of cities are are coming together but still I think that there's so much more possible that we bring all these together I think that that the Dutch and the Scandinavian cities have great examples on on showing what what characteristics can work not only on the social part but also on the part when it comes to the sustainability also there we see too much experimentation and and as an international real estate company the software is also a little bit difficult to try to comprehend what people are trying out in Berlin and then relative to Amsterdam rather than the Londoner relative to cities like Boston and every time you sort of have to try to find your way and sometimes we try to inform these other cities about you know best practices that are happening at other places but cities too much see each other as competitors there where I think for 99% of their work they have the same issues and they could work together a lot more that was a great point to actually end this first part of our our discussion thank you all so much for for your very honest and candid comments here