Rapid, unplanned urbanisation rarely announces itself with a single crisis — it shows up slowly, as rising unemployment, spreading informal housing, and a growing gap between what a city needs and what it can measure. This training course from the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy gives urban professionals the tools to close that gap by building and operating local urban observatories.

Growing urbanisation and the rapid expansion of large cities have produced real problems: fewer job opportunities, poverty, and dense, unplanned settlements. That has made it urgent to establish urban observatories inside each city’s geographic information centre, with the goal of collecting, analysing and putting urban development data to work in line with global observatory standards and indicators. Controlling urban growth economically and environmentally is one of the hardest tasks any local administration faces, whether at the level of setting policy or carrying out decisions on the ground — which is exactly why this course exists.

Course Objectives

• Build practical experience managing the problems that come with urbanisation.
• Develop the capacity to tackle the challenges urbanisation creates head-on.
• Study leading practices from established urban observatories.
• Apply a scientific, evidence-based approach to municipal management.

Who Should Attend

• Managers and owners of urban development establishments.
• Staff working across engineering departments.
• Heads of municipalities and districts seeking to modernise their operations.
• Architects and engineers responsible for implementing urban plans.

Module 1: What Urban Observatories Are and Why They Exist

• Defining urban observatories and reviewing international experience with them

Module 2: How Urban Observatories Operate Within a City

• The mechanisms cities use to run their observatories effectively

Module 3: Applying Observatory Experience to Municipal Management

• Why this experience matters for how municipalities are run across cities