Michi Kohno, President and CEO, delivered a lecture at “Global Cities Summit”, which took place on May 15th in Toronto, Canada, hosted by Global City Indicator Facilities (GCIF), an institute of the University of Toronto. Michi talked about Japanese approach to the resilience of the cities after the disaster of earthquake and Tsunami in March, 2011.
GCIF was founded in 2008 by the financial support by The World Bank, as an institute to define indicators used to compare cities in the world by The World Band and other international organizations. It also acts as the convening body under Technical Committee of International Standardization Organization (ISO) to establish global standard of city indicators. The first global standard of city indicators was officially released by ISO on the day of the summit as ISO 37120.
The attendants of the summit heard the discussions by the leading visionaries of the world on the global standardization of city indicators on one hand, and on the importance of resilience as a factor of sustainability of cities on the other hand.
GCIF has been reorganized under the newly established Global Cities Institute (GCI), for which Michi is serving as a Senior Fellow.
The presentations of the speakers of the summit can be found in GCIF’s web site.