Infrastructure & Urban Development Industry Partners are select member companies of the World Economic Forum that are actively involved in leading the Forum's mission at the industry level. Partnership brings visibility and insight to strategic decision-making on the most important industry and cross-industry related issues and the opportunity to engage in actions of global corporate citizenship. Industry Partners within this community have privileged access to ideas, projects, and stakeholders that actively focus on the most relevant and critical industry issues and challenges.

The Infrastrucutre & Urban Development Community is divided into the Engineering and Construction sector and the Real Estate and Urban Development sector. The Engineering and Construction community frames multistakeholder projects along four modules: Energy, Infrastructure, The Built Environment, and Engineering and Construction Corporate Global Citizenship. While, Industry Partners of the Real Estate and Urban Development community represent a powerful cross section of leading private sector companies who shape the world’s real estate market – ranging from investors, lenders, and brokers; full service developers and consultancies; to design, engineering and construction firms.

The World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council for Infrastructure and Urban Development is a team of 15 experts and industry leaders from around the globe dedicated to exploring and identifying transformational models for infrastructure and urban development.

“Urban Anthologies: Learning from our Cities” is a user-friendly toolkit that has been developed by the Global Agenda Council to empower mayors, urban leaders, and private sector decision-makers with the information to create enabling environments for transformation at the city and community level. It is a prototype in its current state, intended to elicit feedback and generate momentum.The tool highlights not only the physical outcomes of the projects, but most importantly the catalytic and enabling factors that made these transformations possible.

Highlights

Collaboration with The Energy Industry - One of the largest Forum Industry Partner groups, the Energy community has broad representation from leading oil & gas, electricity, and alternative energy companies. Focus areas for 2011 include: The New Energy Architecture, Accelerating the Energy Efficiency Agenda, and Scaling up Renewables. The Smart Grids Initiative will continue as a Dialogue Series. Engineering and Construction Industry Partners have the opportunity to selectively engage in these workstreams, including participation in the biannual Energy Strategy Meeting with energy industry strategy heads and senior government leaders.

Charting the Water Future initiative - Aims to raise awareness, develop metrics and catalyse PPP projects to solve the impending water crisis infrastructure that is environmentally and socially desirable.

Industry partners shape the Real Estate & Urban Development community agenda through activities designed to promote insight and impact on the most crucial and strategic issues facing the sector. Activities focus on promoting interaction between leaders within the sector, with business leaders in relevant related sectors (Financial Services, Investors Community, Engineering & Construction), experts, and key public officials.

Collaboration with the Financial Services and Investors Industries – Participation and active engagement in projects initiatied by the Financial Services and Investors Communities, including:

• Rethinking Financial Innovations
• Globalization of Alternative Investments 
• The future of Long-term investing
• Redefining the Emerging Market Opportunity

Infrastructure Development and Finance - The infrastructure focus in 2009 and 2010 had been on maximizing the effectiveness of fiscal stimuli on infrastructure and on attracting private capital into the infrastructure asset class. In 2011 the focus of the initiative will be on driving a shared understanding and vision of the economic competitiveness impacts of infrastructure investments and in implementing infrastructure investment strategies based on that shared vision.

Global Building Retrofit Market – Development of a comprehensive report that (1) illuminates drivers of successful regional markets; (2) recommends standards for tracking financial performance of retrofits to show impact on long-term asset value; and (3) proposes an optimal energy efficiency financing structure to jump start less-active markets. Created a coalition of institutions including Habitat for Humanity, Rockefeller Foundation, UN-HABITAT and the World Bank to explore critical linkages between housing and the economy, business, health, and the environment and to highlight best practices in public private partnerships, resulting in the development of “Housing for All” knowledge capture cards and workshops in Brazil, Tanzania, India and the United States.

Projects and Initiatives

Strategic Infrastructure - The Forum’s Strategic Infrastructure initiative focuses on facilitating a dialogue between governments, private sector, and civil society on arriving at a shared understanding on the types of infrastructure investments required to foster economic competitiveness. 

The Engineering and Construction Industry as Corporate Global Citizen  - The Disaster Resource Partnership (DRP) is an international alliance of Engineering & Construction (E&C) Community companies supported by the World Economic Forum. Its objective is to develop a cross-sector, professional, and accountable humanitarian response to disasters that has the ability to scale up to meet growing demands.

Drivers of the Future Global Real Estate Financial Markets – A dialogue series based on the work lead by the international experts of the Industry Agenda Council on Real estate to address emergent issues on new sources of capital and investment structure, policy and regulators impediments, and appropriate data and analytical mechanism.

Retrofit Finance & Investing : A cross-industry project that aims to scale-up the global building retrofit market by examining drivers of successful markets and significant financing roadblocks. It brings together stakeholders from the Real Estate, financial Services, Energy, and Engineering & Construction Communities.

Future of Urban Development – A cross-industry project to explore themes and innovations to tackles challenges of urban migration, changing demographics, and metropolitan governance and provide « faster-better-cheaper » infrastructure. The project will give special attention to developing regions.

Click here to view our report on Urban Anthologies, made in collaboration with MIT.