The Urban NEXUS project included the piloting of the approach with the implementation of two projects in Nashik, India and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. These cities took first steps in implementing an Urban NEXUS approach to finding urban solutions that integrate two or more systems, services, policy or operational “silos”, jurisdictions or social behaviors.

In the limited duration of the pilot projects, the Urban NEXUS brought together a wide range of stakeholders who had never before been sitting together at one table, thus generating new “institutional nexus”. They collaboratively designed and implemented innovative solutions and programs for optimizing water, energy and land resources in peri-urban agricultural practices (Nashik), and improving the learning environment at two municipal schools while installing integrated energy efficient technologies, rainwater catchment and vertical food production systems (Dar es Salaam) to demonstrate the benefits of Urban NEXUS thinking to local communities and government officials.

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Demonstrating the Urban NEXUS approach to link water, energy and food resources in schools (01)

Nashik, India: Demonstrating the Urban NEXUS approach to optimize water, energy and land (02)

Vancouver, Canada: Targeting NEXUS food security: Vancouver's Regional Food System Strategy (03)

Hannover, Germany: Kronsberg District - scaling up integrated planning with KUKA (04)

Tianjin, China: A bilateral institutional NEXUS for cutting-edge sustainable metropolitan development (05)

eThekwini, South Africa: Urban NEXUS opportunities at the Mariannhill Landfill Conservancy Plant (06)

Lille Métropole, France: Waste to fuel - biogas powered buses in Lille Metropole (07)

Medellín, Colombia: The Integral Urban Development Project - fighting crime with urban interventions (08)

For this Urban NEXUS study, ICLEI wished to mobilize the insights and perspectives of experts in the field, and thus invited a range of prominent practitioners and researchers to contribute to the study with brief articles, statements or quotes.

These quotes and brief articles are referenced throughout the study report, and are available for free download here (PDF).

The lead-author Jeb Brugmann, and Joanna Flatt, further authored a brief Background Paper on the movement towards integrated planning and management in the public and private sectors since the early 1990s, leading to the Urban NEXUS approach.

We thank all of our kind expert contributors:

• Adrian Atkinson, Freelance consultant and trainer in Sustainable Development
• Robert Crauderueff, President and founder of Crauderueff & Associates, a NYC-based green development planning firm, and co-chairs S.W.I.M.’s green roof working group.
• Marielle Dubbeling, Director, RUAF Foundation (Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security)
• Dr. Uschi Eid, Vice-Chair of the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB)
• Michael Kuhndt, Director of the Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP)
• Dr. Dinesh Kumar, Executive Director of the Institute for Resource Analysis and Policy (IRAP)
• Muna Lakhani, Founder and National Co-ordinator Institute for Zero Waste in Africa
• Hans Mönninghoff, former Deputy Chief Executive of the Lord Mayor of Hannover and Head of the combined Directorate of Economic and Environmental Affairs of the City of Hannover
• Prof. Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, CUSP, Curtin University, Australia
• Jorgen Randers, Professor of climate strategy, Norwegian Business School BI; Member of the Club of Rome and Author of “2052, a global forecast of the next forty years”
• Dr. Mark Roseland, founder of Pando | Sustainable Communities, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Community Development and Professor of Planning in the School of Resource & Environmental Management
• Dr. Christopher Scott, Professor of Water Resources Policy, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and Associate Professor in the School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona
• Rafael Tuts, Coordinator, Urban Planning and Design Branch, United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-Habitat
• Dr. Ren Wang, Assistant Director General, Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department, FAO

Links

The Urban NEXUS on GIZ's URBANET - network in the fields of municipal and urban development, decentralisation and regionalisation

The Water Energy & Food Security NEXUS Resource Platform
www.water-energy-food.org/en/home.html 

Urban-Nexus - coordination and support action funded by the European union
www.urban-nexus.eu