The CTBUH Sri Lanka conference on ‘Future Cities: Addressing Carbon, Climate and societal Crises’ was held recently at Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall. 

It was able to yet again successfully gather many prominent tall building professionals in Sri Lanka in the form of structural engineers, building services engineers, architects, academics, researchers, developers, builders, specialist material suppliers, and also some young prospective future tall building leaders in the form of postgraduate and undergraduate students from leading universities
in Sri Lanka. 

The audience included well over 60 participants who joined physically and over 100 participants who joined virtually. The conference was initiated with a welcome address by Eng. Shiromal Fernando, the country representative of CTBUH where he focused the audience attention into the topic of the evening the Future City. 
In addition to this he highlighted on the immerging skyline of Sri Lanka and the port city development that can transform the conventional monocentric city to polycentric cities. Further, he started off the workshop by giving an insightful introduction to green integrated cities and the need for greener construction for a
sustainable future. 

The first Key note Speaker of the conference was by the honorable chief guest Prof. Ranjith Dissanayake on ‘Future Plans for Sustainable cities
in Si Lanka’. 

During his key note speech he discussed on the visible transformation at various parts of the country and how the green initiative can transform the society to work as one and create a country we love to live in. 
In addition to this, he also educated the audience on the national projects that are initiated to planting of trees, road safety improvements and river conservation. Professionals of the industry were joined as key note speakers for the event who joined physically and virtually for the event such as Arct. Dan Amarasekere, Prof. Wije Ariyarathna, Prof. Sarath Kotagama, Prof. Priyan Dias, Prof. Priyan Mendis and Yamuna Jayaratne.

This was followed by a panel discussion carried out by Arct. Niroda Gunadasa , Eng. Dilina Hettiarachchi, Eng. Udayanga Alwis, Eng. Tharindu Samarasinghe and Arct. Thilini Liyanage on the topic of ‘New Urban form for the New Normal’ where the discussion was risen on the changes occurred due to the pandemic. During the panel discussion questions by audience members present physically and virtually were addressed by
panel members. 

Tokens of appreciation were handed over to the key note speakers by Shiromal Fernando and the panelists received tokens of appreciation by Ruwan De Silva. The participants physically present were then invited to the Port City visit in the arranged transportation and the virtual participants obtained the live stream of the visit. Yamuna provided the introduction of the port city
at the gallery.