World Urban Forum
The slide above is from the Dutch National Youth Council’s presentation on youth initiatives and the Millenium Development Goals.
A lot of what happens at WUF3 is edutainment, anything serious is behind the scenes between some of the rather few national delegations in attendance.
WUF3 also overlapped with the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada annual conference and the World Planners Congress.
John Friedmann (sitting 2nd from right on the panel, above), a well known advocate of Cities for Citizens was honoured with a HABITAT award and presented a lecture.
John Friedmann’s vision for sustainable cities based on investing in local, ‘endogenous assets’ jives with what many social scientists, including those in Space and Culture, have argued for the last 2 decades. Rather than pursuing foreign direct investment and trying to lure foreign multinationals with tax breaks, only to see them move on when economic conditions change in favour of another location, Friedmann advocated against such dependency. Local assets offer a return to local investors. These assests are human (quality of life, shelter, heath), civil society (self-organizing attributes and social networks), heritage (everyday spirit and identity), local intelligence and creativity (local talent, ‘living human treasures’), natural resources, location and urban infrastructure (which should be aimed at the majority needs, not the mobility of the well-off). I was also struck by the apparently neglected importance of local memory for socioeconomic development. Climate change and the apparently irreversible decline of some cities, gender, details such as questions of the importance of secure land tenure in allowing households to be successful local economic actors, the role of the private sector and civil society as actors were missing from this tour de l’horizon.