Click here to download the workshop report, the summary or the booklet.

A workshop for exchange of experiences and improved CDS cooperation was organized jointly by UCLGA, SALGA and Johannesburg in July 2007. Apart from cities of different size from nine african countries, six local governments associations participated in the event, as well as regional donor agencies, such as USAID, World Bank and GTZ.

Participating cities and towns were engaged in a 2-month preparation process of the workshop. The specific call for “non-capitals” brought cities of varying sizes to the table, who were invited prepare CDS proposals jointly with other cities, and with their local governments associations. The associations were very interested in increasing their services to assist municipalities and to raise their involvement in CDS processes for nation-wide replication and scale-up. This methodology proved quite effective. The cities and associations were grouped by country to assess the lessons learned in city planning and poverty reduction and institutional networking in relation to their national contexts and conditions.

There was a focus discussion on successes in poverty reduction through national housing policies, based on the practices of Johannesburg and Ministry of Housing in South Africa.

See video:

Click here to download the workshop report, or the booklet (English / Spanish)

A three-day workshop for the sharing of experiences was organized in May 2007, in close cooperation with the City of Rosario and FLACMA (UCLG’s Latin American section). The event gathered cities committed to an active role in the program from five countries:
Argentina: Rosario, San Miguel de Tucumán, Buenos Aires;
Brazil: Guarulhos, Petropolis, Sao Paolo;
Colombia: Medellín, Bucaramanga, San Juan de Pasto;
Mexico: Durango;
Chile: “Ciudad Sur”, a municipal association surrounding Santiago;
Peru: Lima, Villa El Salvador.
In addition, the national associations of Argentina and Colombia involved in the organization of the activities.

A focus was the exchange of local governments’ experience on public service delivery, housing, participation, environment and local cooperation practices with national governments (in particular Argentina and Brazil).

Here is what Mr. Tapia, Secretary General of FLACMA, had to say about CDS.

CityFuture – City Development Strategies and UCLG

United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) is working within the umbrella of Cities Alliance to promote and support City Development Strategies (CDS) through our CityFuture Program.

The aim of CityFuture is to motivate cities and local governments to incorporate the Millennium Development Goals into their local development strategies and share the diversity of planning experiences through our learning network.

The program helps local governments and their associations in Latin America and Africa to formulate and implement City Development Strategies. Cities, national associations of local governments and/or the regional sections of UCLG are the main implementing partners at the city and country level. In this regard, the associations have become critical vehicles, using their progressively built-up skills to ensure adequate development of municipalities and their legal environments.

Global experience has shown that the CDS approach is appropriate for local governments to improve their development path and link strategic urban planning and the efforts for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

UCLG supports cities that are committed to improving their development path by applying the CDS approach and building empirical knowledge between local governments and their partners at local, national and international levels. The cities and associations examine the opportunities for cooperation on city development and many of them are committed to strengthening their CDS process. In order to support such efforts, the Cities Alliance can grant support in the range of US$50.000 – US$500.000.

Primary focus is geared towards sharing of expertise by supporting city-to-city exchange of best practice and mentoring. These locally rooted processes are facilitated by the CityFuture program. Cities formulate their CDS processes together with their communities to ensure that development effectively reaches the people. In the spirit of “Each One Teach One“, it is critical that those who have made inroads into and gained from effective development methods and approaches share that knowledge with their continental peers.

How can you contribute? The Program will be adjusted according to early feedback from the regions. Please inform about your approach and ideas by contacting us. We encourage comments and feedback at any time!

Do you want to know more about CityFuture? see: cds_brochure.pdf

What is the purpose of this blog?

Somewhere in the backyards of the congress center in Sao Paolo we have caught up a simple, yet fascinating idea by the mayor of Tagui (the Philippines). The idea was to create a “discovery channel” solely for urban issues. News  from cities – for cities! The idea of the Cities Alliance Network (CAN) was born. Digging deeper into the idea, we learned that; a)  the honorable mayor is very serious about it, and b) he had prepared and presented a first concept of the idea already (city_channel.pdf). Coming back to the office, we wanted to know what our colleagues thought about the idea, and everybody was positive, you know, that positive “yeah right – good luck” way of telling you you’ll never make it. 

So what?

As we are no media experts, nor have the capacity and resources, let alone a spare TV channel  around, we though we give it a small try, step by step. As our Chinese colleague Lynn just said “big things are composed of many small ones”.Thanks Lynn! 5 hours later a small step was born, a blog called: URBAN DEVELOPMENT NETWORK.

 Ok, so what exactly?

Ok, here is the idea. Everybody can add content, whether a highly official political city strategy, or just some thoughts on why city x rocks and city y doesn’t. This is the place for cities and their citizens to share what is important for them, because most likely that is important to other citizens as well. We hope to migrate this blog to our website soon in order to be more visible, remember we are just starting. If you like to post, you can either send your draft to info@cities-localgovernments.org, or register an account at wordpress and we will grant you an author access – so you can post from your computer.

Welcome to the Urban Development Blog, a space of exchange and direct participation of cities, citizens and city partners around the world. We will create a global brand with a global reach, but locally run and adapted to the local audience. The Blog will enable cities to focus on good news for a change, to give hope and generate momentum needed to implement projects successfully. The Blog is intended to be a first step towards a new city-driven news channel for edutainment and exchange.

best,

your UCLG CDS team

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