The Urban Planning and Disaster Risk Reduction Center at An-Najah National University has completed the first package of the "Cities of Tomorrow" project, entitled (Future Visions).

The project mainly aims to influence decision makers to draw up urban policies and systems that will plan future expansion areas and empty areas in Nablus. So that it is safe and takes into account disaster risk reduction standards.

This package was implemented in the presence of a team from the International Organization of Cities of Tomorrow, with the participation of the Palestinian team and a wide range of representatives of the local community.

The business package was inaugurated by Dr. Saed Al-Khayyat, coordinator of the scientific centers at the university, who emphasized the great role played by these centers in communicating the latest findings of the world in terms of knowledge and science, and even applying it on the ground.

For his part, Prof. Dr. said: Jalal Dabeek, leader of the Palestinian Team for Tomorrow’s Cities and Director of the Urban Planning Center, said that it is time to stop improvising reactions regarding disaster risks in Palestine, and the need to move from a reactionary method to prior action, explaining that this project would push towards making decisions today To reduce the risk of disasters that are likely to occur after thirty years.

In turn, Dr. Jamal Dabeek, an expert in disaster risk modeling, asked important questions, including: What would happen if the earthquake that occurred in 1927 in Nablus were repeated now? And what could happen if the same earthquake was repeated in 2050? What is the extent of the damage that will happen? What is the size of the losses in lives and property?

He reviewed the potential results if planning remained in place as it is now for the coming years, and compared it to the best scenario that could occur and reduce losses if other decisions were taken today that take into account the standards of disaster risk reduction.

While Dr. Karim El-Gohary from University College London reviewed maps of Nablus, especially for the expansion areas under study, pointing out that more than 60% of the areas that will become part of the city in the future are still empty, and here is an opportunity to take readiness.

The main phase of the first business package included holding workshops in two phases. The first was to train the Palestinian team for Cities of Tomorrow and conduct experimental simulations over two consecutive days.

As for the second, it also took place over two days, and included inviting representatives from the local community from several sectors that were carefully selected to represent all segments of society in Nablus, such as the elderly, women, youth, people with disabilities, residents of buildings, representatives of civil society institutions and others. The Palestinian team also had a pioneering experience through He invited a community group of children under the age of twelve, who sat side by side in a workroom next to adults and went through the same process, but with an output commensurate with their age.

Brainstorming and dialogues took place within each community group, and each group had a facilitator and a blogger to document all the observations and opinions that came out of them, and a planner who translated ideas into drawings on maps in order to reach different future visions for areas that had not yet been built, and a group of Options and policies that chart paths for the sustainable development of the city in the future.

Technical information about the risks threatening the expansion areas was collected to be fed into subsequent packages in models that simulate different development visions to reach possible risk scenarios.

This project consists of several packages of work related to social aspects, policy-making and planning, starting with drawing future visions from the perspective of societal groups. These visions have been translated through the preparation of detailed spatial plans according to geographic information systems, followed by the stage of building future scenarios through simulation work. For the state of the studied areas and what they will be like after 30 years, and then exposing them to several potential risks and conducting an assessment of the risks resulting from all possibilities, and coming up with a comparison of urban losses or gains if the current planning situation continues for the next thirty years as it is now or if the modified future scenarios are followed. , which leads to providing a supportive environment for decision-makers, to reach the conclusion that the decisions and policies that are followed today will reap their fruits for the people of tomorrow.

A cornerstone of the Cities of Tomorrow project is the development of a decision support environment (TCDSE) that goes beyond traditional risk models to one that places co-production of knowledge at the heart of risk-informed decision-making.

Last May, Nablus joined the International Cities of Tomorrow system, making it the first Arab city and the fifth country in the world to join this global system.

The cities of tomorrow provide opportunities to bring together different points of view between urban planners and residents, to combine the experience and vision of citizens, and policy actors, and to build effective cooperation relationships with the aim of sparing people the risks of disasters, and working to provide a new integrated approach to planning and decision-making that takes into account the risks that surround it. about the cities of tomorrow.

The importance of these workshops comes due to the massive expansion of the city of Nablus and the increasing number of its population. Numerous risks such as earthquakes, landslides, floods and fires will increase, and thousands of people may be sentenced to suffering for decades from the scourge of risks unless planning is made today for these future threats.