Newsletter June 2014
Top Story
Basic Services for All in an Urbanizing World is UCLG’s third Global Report on Local Democracy and Decentralization (GOLD III). The three year study by UCLG highlights the urgent need to provide basic services the planet’s cities, whose population is set to grow by one and a half billion people over the next 15 years.
The conviction that sustainable urbanization must be at the core of the development agenda has been the general trend at the three-day UN ECOSOC Integration Segment in New York. The call for new partnerships with civil society and the need to utilise the transformative potential of cities.
Main Stories
The 2014 UCLG Executive Bureau will be taking place from the 17th to 19th June in Liverpool, United Kingdom by invitation from the Mayor of Liverpool, Mr. Joe Anderson, on the occasion of the International Festival of Business organized in the city of Liverpool throughout the months of June and July. The Spring Executive Bureau 2014 is held this year in conjunction with the International Festival for Business (IFB) organised by Liverpool.
UCLG has produced a tool for local and regional governments to contribute to the post-2015 Agenda and the New Urban Agenda of Habitat III in 2016. This tool is designed to initiate a dialogue among sub-national governments and their partners around the new Urban Agenda, which should lead towards an advocacy strategy.
As part of the global debate on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, the UN launched in April 2014 a new round of global consultations on the “means of implementation” Six themes have been proposed to the consultation: Localizing the post-2015 agenda; Participatory Monitoring for Accountability; Partnerships with Civil Society; Engaging with the Private Sector.
A winner has been chosen for the poster competition launched by UCLG to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the World Organization. The poster from the designer Marcal Prats has won by a majority vote of the jury. The general public also participated in choosing the winning piece, having voted for the posters that they liked best via the UCLG website.
Members of the Global Taskforce gathered at the UN Headquarters in New York for the Integration Segment of ECOSOC 2014 have released their joint messages "Towards achieving Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements and localizing the Post-2015 Agenda", on the eve of the debates with Member States.
Local governments have an important role to play in disaster risk reduction (DRR), as well as in raising awareness and consciousness among their citizens. For that reason, the Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction will count with the participation of UCLG, and ICLEI.
The session Dialogue for Water and Cities: Moving forward with the Instanbul Water Consensus took place on the 8 April 2014 in the framework of the 7 World Urban Forum in Medellín Colombia. This gathering was animportant step forward in the promotion of IWC.
Abuja (Nigeria) hosted on 13-16 May 2014 the 5th Africa Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (AfRP5). UCLG participated in the meeting that brought together diverse stakeholders, from national and local governments, regional intergovernmental organizations, bilateral and multilateral donors.
Cities Alliance has launched a call for proposals for the 2014 edition of Catalytic Fund (CATF), a Cities Alliance funding instrument which provides grant support for innovative projects that strengthen and promote the role of cities in poverty reduction: ‘Know your city: Information for transformation’.
UCLG Sections & members
The 11th Metropolis World Congress in Hyderabad is expecting more than 2000 delegates from over 100 international cities and elected and public officials from over 100 Indian tier one and tier two cities. Be part of it and join us now!
In a letter sent to new members of the European Parliament, CEMR president and Mayor of Almere (The Netherlands), Annemarie Jorritsma, reacted to the European election results. “The result and the low percentage of voters show that the EU should have the ambition to close the gap with the citizens. Municipalities and regions.
Assoc. Prof. Nail YILMAZ, lecturer at Marmara University, delivered a talk on “ Social Structure, Municipalities and the Urban Transformation”, at the UCLG-MEWA Headquarters in Sultanahmet, Istanbul on 21 May 2014. In his conference YILMAZ expressed that the urban transformation has become an essentiality in Turkey.
CEMR calls on Europe's local and regional government to help their Serbian and Bosnian counterparts affected by the recent floods. This call comes in response to an urgent appeal from two of our member associations, namely the SKGO and the SOGFBIH, asking for mobilisation.
The United Cities of Local Governments of Africa (UCLG-A) has done a fantastic job in broadening and deepening the networks of cities of Africa and creating global awareness of the role of local authorities as partners in development. Vice-President Danny Faure said this while officially opening the 10th executive committee meeting of the UCLG-Africa.
COMMITTEES, WORKING GROUPS, COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE & FORA
EThekwini Municipality through its Imagine Durban Project and its Municipal Institute of Learning (MILE) and KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) are partnering with UCLG Committee on Urban Strategic Planning and UCLG Africa to host this learning exchange "Creating & Maintaining Vibrant & People-Centered Public Spaces", 4-6 June 2014 in Durban, South Africa.
The programme of Pilot Cities will be developed between 1 April and 31 December 2014 and makes part of the process to elaborate the new Agenda 21 for culture. The process was initiated by the Committee on Culture in 2013 in Lille-Métropole, Buenos Aires and Rabat and will continue in 2014.
Blog
The cities of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Montpellier, France, are working with IBM to make data-driven decisions to rapidly transform the way they provide water, transportation and emergency management. These and other cities around the world are increasingly using data to make better decisions and allocate resources.
Suez Environnement, partenaire de CGLU, la SAFEGE, l’Ecole des Ponts ParisTech et Sciences Po ont le plaisir d’informer de la tenue d’une Conférence sur les Villes sobres, les 2 et 3 juillet 2014, dans les locaux de Sciences Po Paris. L'industrie de la ville, souvent considérée comme une activité peu innovante se trouve peut-être à l'aube d'une transformation.
José Uilton has seen a lot of things change along Luís Carlos Berrini Avenue since he took over a bar here 17 years ago. Most of the squatter settlements, known in Brazil as favelas, have been cleared out. Meanwhile, luxury high rises have gone up, making this one of the most expensive areas in São Paulo.
Lorena Zárate, President of Habitat International Coalition (HIC) outlines the multiple challenges facing the rapid growth of urban populations and how a multistakeholder framework entitled the "right to the city" could provide a comprehensive approach to support the sustainable cities and human settlements.
Events
June 04, 2014
June 04, 2014
June 05, 2014
June 09, 2014
June 11, 2014
June 17, 2014
June 17, 2014
June 19, 2014
June 23, 2014
