Annual Meeting of the Board of the Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization ( CSU ), New York. 12 September 2024

Dr. Talal Abu Ghazaleh calls for digital transformation of the world to ensure shared prosperity for all humanity

In his opening statement at the annual meeting of the CSU Board, as its chairman, Dr. Talal Abu Ghazaleh made a strong plea to Board members, participating from across the world by remote means, to work together to digitalize the whole range of urbanization activities, including digital urban planning, digital education and digital health as a step towards the digitalization of the whole world so that all human beings could have easy and affordable access to basic human services and jobs.

He also urged them to work on the reconstruction and development of GAZA which has been destroyed as well as other war-torn countries around the world. He suggested that CSU should develop a sustainable urbanization best practice manual and guide on the basis of its excellent series on Green Cities experiences. He noted that CSU had achieved great success. But it needed to raise its global profile digitally by issuing a monthly newsletter that can be distributed on-line around the world.

Members of the Board welcomed  the ideas  and the guidance given by Dr. Abu Ghazaleh and discussed in detail related and additional suggestions made by other members on issues like  funding and widening the network of the CSU from which new members of the Board could be drawn.

It was agreed that the outgoing and incoming presidents of the CSU will prepare a short summary of the discussion and circulate it among members for follow-up.