Congress Title	Tall and Green: Typology for a Sustainable Urban Future
Date	3rd – 5th March 2008
Venue	Grand Hyatt, Dubai

We are entering a new, vital stage in the development of humanity. Whilst the world is slowly waking up to the realities of the major effects of climate change, there are too-few bodies internationally reacting quickly enough to embrace the changes that are needed to avoid catastrophic results globally. Many are asking; is it already too late?

The built environment as a global entity is the largest single contributor to this situation – the creation and occupation of built form and the determining of the relationship between man and inhabitation; predetermining relationships with transport, infrastructure and quality of life. Cities are the battleground for this fight against catastrophe. On one side of the world we have the rapid urbanization of predominantly rural populations in developing countries; on the other side we have changing social demographics (longer life expectancy, increased number of single people households etc) requiring massive increases in housing in developed countries. We stand at a crossroads in this urban development – do cities accommodate the growth in further urban / suburban spread, or become denser, more concentrated entities, reducing loss of green belt and offering more efficiency in infrastructure provision, transport usage and energy consumption?

The tall building has a crucial role to play in this debate on the urban future. Itself the historical epitome of energy and consumption excess, the typology has the opportunity to re-invent itself as a model for denser, more sustainable cities; concentrated centers of work and life activity. Additionally, the financial and professional investment in each tall building project gives the typology an opportunity to push the agenda for sustainable design, experimental technologies and the real need for post-occupancy monitoring, for the benefit of the built realm as a whole.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – the world’s leading international body in the field of tall buildings – is at the forefront of this push for a more sustainable built form. The 8th World Congress will bring this debate to the very epicenter of urban construction activity globally – Dubai – in order to find answers to the questions posed above.