SURGE is a Global Umbrella Program that supports projects in developing countries focused on green, resilient and inclusive urban and regional development. SURGE’s currently has three global programs and one regional program, implemented through its multi-donor Anchor Trust Fund:
The Urban Review and Technical Assistance global program aims to deliver diagnostics to identify key challenges cities face and supporting their efforts to identify priority investments for sustainable urbanization . It leverages years of experience and lessons from previous urban partnership programs (Sustainable Urban Development program, SUD-I and SUD-II) in the urban development sphere, already resulting in a strong activity portfolio in Angola, Costa Rica, Madagascar, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, Romania, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Middle East and North Africa Region, and more. . As the city engagements complete their upstream data and diagnostics work—also referred to as Urbanization Reviews (see resources page for available URs)—they move into building cities’ knowledge and capacity to identify investment projects that aim to deliver dynamic, inclusive, and sustainable cities.
Beyond regional and city-level activities, SURGE also supports global level analysis to help develop solutions to urbanization challenges worldwide, for example through deep dive studies such as the Pancakes-to-Pyramids activity.
City Planning Labs (CPL) Global is a World Bank-led advisory service that collaborates with city governments to harness the power of data and create more liveable, resilient, and inclusive cities. Starting as a regional pilot in 2017, CPL successfully demonstrated how strong data ecosystems can break inter-agency data silos, better prioritize investments, and enhance citizen engagement through its first cohort of pilot cities in Indonesia. In 2022, as a resounding endorsement of the pilot’s success, CPL received support from the Swiss Confederation State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) to scale up globally, under the World Bank’s SURGE Trust Fund.
CPL’s point of departure is the strong belief that data is the new infrastructure for cities worldwide. Often, city governments collect, process, and store data without being able to leverage it for efficient, inclusive, and resilient city management. Such a gap is partly due to information silos and primarily technology-centered smart city paradigms that are unsupported by robust data governance. CPL takes an evidence-based, modular approach that links people and institutions with data and systems, working collaboratively with cities to help operationalize more competent and sustainable urban management. A cornerstone of this approach is establishing a strong Municipal Spatial Data Infrastructure, or MSDI. CPL’s modular design emphasizes that the key is to be agile and meet the city government where they are excited and willing to start while developing a roadmap to address gaps.
CPL has developed a set of toolkits and resources for World Bank task teams and partnering cities, offering practical solutions along with technical assistance. Through SECO’s funding, this approach will be applied in cities across the globe while expanding analytical work and R&D as well as sharing knowledge and best practices.
The Global Smart City Partnership Program (GSCP) started in 2018, supported by the Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) and the Korea-World Bank Partnership Facility (KWPF). In 2022, MOLIT joined the SURGE Umbrella with a contribution preferenced towards smart city development. The program aims to help World Bank Group teams and cities in developing countries make the best use of data and technologies for improving city planning, management, and service delivery, by providing technical and operational support by global smart city experts and facilitating global knowledge sharing, peer-learning and networking.
Building on the rich implementation experience, results, and lessons, the third phase of GSCP aims to scale and sustain the impact of smart city interventions by better connecting upstream strategic smart city planning with downstream project design, promoting a system of systems’ thinking for developing interconnected information and operational systems, and building institutional and human capacity for digital transformation. The program is structured in three components:
The Europe and Central Asia Cities & Climate Change Program. The ECA Cities and Climate Change (ECA C&CC) Program is a World Bank program that aims to support countries in Europe and Central Asia to address urban climate change mitigation and adaptation challenges – thereby facilitating alignment of the Bank’s urban operations with the Paris Agreement. In December 2022, the Sustainable Urban and Regional Development (SURGE) Umbrella Program received a preferenced contribution from the Government of Austria. The Program will be implemented between 2023 and 2027 with a possibility of extension. The program consists of two components which cover the following activities:
