Today, a majority (~55%) of the world’s population live in cities, with 3 million people moving to cities every week and projections for ~68% of the world’s population to live in cities by 2050. While some studies indicate that living standards can be better in urban areas compared to villages, there are significant societal challenges that are exacerbated by large population growth in urban areas that have constrained resources, such as road networks, public transport, energy, water, waste management, healthcare, and so on. The world’s population is ageing, with the 60+ year olds growing from 12.5% in 2015 to 20% by 2050, with implications for health care, social security, family life and transport. World premature deaths related to air pollution were estimated at 4.2 million people in 2016. The WHO surveyed 4300+ cities and concluded that only 20% of the urban population surveyed live in areas with recommended air quality levels. Air pollution is getting worse, with various causes including a rising numbers of private cars. Urban sprawl also remains a problem, with the effect of increasing car dependency, increasing emissions, more costly local services (e.g., water, energy), and farmland loss affecting food production and reducing biodiversity. Increasing car dependency is likely to increase congestion and transport cost, and reduce quality of life. Population density and transport in urban areas also introduce problems of infectious disease control, as the recent Covid-19 epidemic has demonstrated. These problems will be increasingly compounded by climate change, particularly in emergencies such as floods, fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes that are becoming more frequent and more intense. Interdependencies among food, water, transportation, energy, and health make such emergencies more dangerous for cities, and more stressful for municipalities in terms of preparedness.

2024 International Conference on Transport and Smart Cities(ICoTSC 2024) will be held Barcelona, Spain on September 20-22, 2024. 

We are thankful to all the organizing committee members for their contribution to ICoTSC 2024. Our thanks also go to the authors for their contributions to making ICoTSC 2024 successful.

Sincerely,

Ouri Wolfson

Conference Chair

University of Illinois, Chicago, USA