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Cities
Alliance was a strong participant at the recently
concluded World Conference on the Development of
Cities, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The conference was
generally adjudged highly successful, one that
dramatically exceeded the expectations of all of the
organizers. Over 7000 participants attended,
comprising primarily mayors, city councillors,
public policy managers, academics, community leaders
and all government and private sector actors with
experience in urban democratic participation and in
local urban development. Cities Alliance delegation
was led by Giorgio Romano Schutte, Project Manager
of the São Paulo office.
Organised by a strong partnership comprising the
Porto Alegre City Hall, the Brazilian Ministry of
Cities, the City Hall of Rome (Italy), the State
Government of Rio Grande do Sul, the National
Confederation of Cities (Brazil), the United Nations
Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), UN-HABITAT, the Inter-American Development Bank
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Left to right; Celso Carvalho, Director
for Urban Land Regulation at the
Ministry of Cities with Giorgio Romano
Schutte, CA São Paulo Project Manager.
Courtesy: Mariana Kara Jose/Cities
Alliance. |
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(IDB), the World Bank and Cities Alliance, the
conference focused on four main themes: Right to the
City; Governance and Democracy in Cities; Analysis
of Local Development in Cities; and Sustainability
and the Network-City.
Five hundred presentations on these themes were made
over a four-day period. Cities Alliance partnered
with mayors, the World Bank and UN-HABITAT to
organise workshops which shared lessons and
knowledge on topics relevant to the themes,
including Capacity Building & Innovative Tools to
Promote LED & Transparency; Urban Regularisation;
Cities as Engines of Growth in Latin America; Local
Economic Development in the Philippines; Overcoming
Political Barriers to Inter-municipal Collaboration;
City Networking in the Philippines. The Cities
Alliance partners also offered a three-hour training
session on Tools for Promoting Economic Development
as well as on processes for accessing Cities
Alliance grant funding.
The Porto Alegre conference also became the platform
for the launch of two Cities Alliance initiatives,
the publication A vez dos Alagados (Alagados -
The Story of Integrated Slum Upgrading in Salvador,
Bahia) and the ongoing Youth Essay
Competition on urbanisation: "The City of your
Dream" , a global initiative of World Bank, the
Cities Alliance and the Government of Norway. Three
World Bank publications were also launched as
Portuguese summaries of recently published Economic
and Sector Works (ESWs): "Porto Alegre Participatory
Budgeting," "City Strategy for Brazil' and Inputs to
a "São Paulo Strategy"
Summarising the success of the coherence of effort
of Cities Alliance members at the conference,
Jennifer Sara, Sector Manager Sustainable
Development, the World Bank Latin America and
Caribbean region, said, "this was an important event
and the World Bank and CA teams were successfully
able to share some of our work while also make
contacts and learn from other agencies and
colleagues from Brazil and beyond."
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