Cities 2023 Preface

CITIES International Conference is an annual international conference organized by the Urban and Regional Planning Department of Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS Surabaya). The conference, which debuted in 2005, serves as a platform for academics and practitioners to present, disseminate, and discuss research results in the field of urban and regional planning. Through the efforts of all involved, CITIES has grown from a primarily national conference to one that attracts a diverse, worldwide audience from the Asian, European, Australian, and American continents. The CITIES International Conference in 2023 will take a grand design related to “TECHNOLOGY” and “INFRASTRUCTURE” in planning. Cities are centers of civilization, powerhouses of economic growth and innovation. However, urban planning faces challenges as cities transform into larger areas. One way to tackle this challenge is to embrace new technology trends that can help urban planners to help improve the quality of life in cities. Technology is becoming increasingly important in urban planning as a consequence of urban development, as well as ongoing changes, need to be projected. With this need in mind, CITIES International Conference 2023 is designed to be a meeting place for stakeholders, including academics, researchers, practitioners, and bureaucrats, both within and beyond national boundaries. The conference aims to disseminate research results and practical experiences at local, national, and global levels, and to share insight and recommendations on improving the quality of the city system in the future. This year, the CITIES International Conference 2023 will join the CIV-PLAN Join Conference organized by the Faculty of Civil, Planning, and Earth Engineering. The 1st edition of the CIV-PLAN Join Conference will be held in the city of Surabaya by elaborating on all departments in the faculty, including Civil Engineering, Architecture, Urban and Regional Planning, Geophysics, and Environmental Engineering. The theme raised in the joint conference is “SMART INFRASTRUCTURE FOR BETTER LIVING SOCIETY” which is held on October 25-26, 2023. The CITIES International Conference 2023 has agreed to be a part of the CIV-PLAN Joint Conference sub-event. It is hoped that with a joint conference like this, the CITIES International conference will be better known throughout the world and the cooperation that will be established will increase, especially for the media to exchange knowledge and maybe it will also be able to open relations with departments within the scientific cluster of the faculty of civil engineering, planning, and earth sciences. The CITIES conference has obtained a one-day slot (October 26) from the CIV-PLAN Joint Conference committee. On October 25, CITIES keynote speeches were given during the CIV-PLAN Joint Conference session by Prof. Tan Yigitcanlar (Queensland University of Technology) and Dr. Rulli Pratiwi Setiawan, S.T., M.Sc. (Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember). On the second day, parallel discussion sessions were held for all conference participants. These sessions were divided into three rooms based on the similarity of the sub-themes, including (1) Smart Infrastructure for Urban Development, (2) Sustainable Infrastructure Planning, and (3) Applied Technology for Planning. The committee closely monitored the event at the venue during these parallel discussion sessions. The time allocated for each speaker was 15 minutes, and the question-and- answer (Q&A) session for all presenters was 30 minutes. The Q&A session was carried out by both the moderator and other speakers on the panel. There are around 39 papers presented from various universities in Indonesia and abroad. In total, there were over 150 seminar participants from academic, government, and NGO institutions. Technically, the hybrid implementation of the CITIES conference went very smoothly. The participants’ enthusiasm during the conference remained high until the end of the event, as evident from the active participation during the Q&A session. The only issue during the conference was that some speakers experienced network disruptions due to poor signal conditions. However, this did not dampen our enthusiasm to share knowledge and improve communication between participants and presenters across countries. Overall, the CITIES 2023 conference was successfully held and resulted in fruitful discussion during our plenary and parallel sessions. List of Sponsor and Partner Acknowledgements, Committees, Rundown, Reviewer are available in the pdf.