Director/a: Justo García Navarro Doctor Arquitecto - UPM; Vocal del Comité Hábitat Español Secretario/a: Ana de Guzmán Báez Arquitecto - UPM; Grupo de investigación sostenibilidad en la construcción y en la industrial Para mayor informacion, aqui06 - Buenas prácticas para mejorar las condiciones de vida. Programa Hábitat de Naciones Unidas
Fecha: Del 05 al 06 de julio de 2010
Why is this most important? Besides the obvious factors for the Gulf, one of the biggest benefits is that this will give a chance for Gulf Youth to participate and be active. For each World Urban Forum, there is a World Urban Youth Assembly that precedes it. Here is the UN HABITAT press release, closing the 2010 World Urban Forum.
The Fifth Session of the World Urban Forum drew to a close in Rio de Janeiro on Friday with speakers hailing it as the most successful one ever staged.
According to available statistics, some 13,718 participants from 150 countries around the world attended the Session. Secretary of State Mrs. Hilary Clinton of the United States was full of praises for the Forum saying it was a unique venue where people from different backgrounds shared ideas on how to cope with the challenges of urbanization.
Mrs. Clinton who addressed the closing ceremony via a video message said the work of UN-HABITAT in addressing urbanization challenges was crucial adding that there was a greater need to foster private public partnerships in addressing those challenges.
In her speech, UN-HABITAT Executive Director Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka challenged the Forum participants to think long and hard on the kind of future they wanted to leave behind for the generations to come.
“How will our world look in just two generations to come when it is projected that 70 percent of humanity will be living in towns and cities? What percentage will continue to live in abject poverty? How much dirtier will cities make our planet? As we also learned this week, the means to bridge the urban divide are not lacking. We must, however, muster the political will to make our cities fit for our children, and the time to act is now!,” she said.
Mrs. Tibaijuka who leaves UN-HABITAT later this year at the end of a her second term at the helm, said she was walking away with her head high having managed to give the agency a footing, as requested of her by the former UN Secretary General Mr. Kofi Annan when he first appointed her to the post.
In his address, Brazil’s Minister for Cities Mr. Marcio Fortes said the success of the meeting could be gauged in the fact that most of the time, the meeting rooms were turning away some participants because of being fully packed.
During the occasion, the government of Bahrain, the hosts of the Sixth Session of the World Urban Forum in 2012, gave a presentation highlighting what delegates at the meeting are to be offered.
UN HABITAT now has a facebook fanpage. Its a great place for people to meet and discuss urban issues in the city. Check out their discussion topics and updates.
World Habitat Day is October 5th, 2009, designated by the United Nations. According to the UN Programme on Human Settlements:
The United Nations has designated the first Monday of October every year as World Habitat Day. The idea is to reflect on the state of our towns and cities and the basic right of all to adequate shelter. It is also intended to remind the world of its collective responsibility for the future of the human habitat.
The theme for this year’s World Habitat Day is Planning our urban future. Tell us what problems your city faces and how you would plan for a better urban future .
I am now serving as a guest contributer for the website Migrant Rights. Here is a recent post I wrote:
Although attempting to throw a bone by letting it known that this policy is not a total ban, the dehumanization and apartheid of workers in the UAE only becomes more obvious in the following ludicrous concession:
Shraim said it was not a total ban, adding that laborers were “allowed to use the mall’s rear entrance closest to Carrefour during the day and early evening”.
Whereas outdoor shopping areas can occur on public streets, the advent of the mall culture in the Gulf countries has brought with it and increasing privatization of social areas of congregation—and with it greater exclusivity on who gets in and who remains outside.
I first read about the notion of geographies of exclusion and hierarchies of entitlement in reference to the banning of lower income citizens in certain enclaves of Bangalore, India however I believe the same observations can be drawn from this scenario.
Much scholarly research has also been done on in Western cities, particularly the United States, on analyzing how the spatial make-up of cities and municipal governance either divides and fractures cities or unites them.A city of exclusion bars certain segments of its residents from a right to use certain amenities, partaking in certain processes or entering certain areas. In short, a city of exclusion marginalizes certain city dwellers, and this subsequent segmentation of society is manifested in distinct geographies.
The main question this recent development beckons is whether their quest to build modern, skyscraper cities are Gulf countries deliberately creating rules that prevent the very laborers who built these enclaves from being able to access them in their leisure time?
So what makes a city inclusive? The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) is the UN’s responsible branch for the promotion of “socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all”.
UN HABITAT has a deliberate agenda committed to augmenting cities’ capacity for greater inclusion. According to this initiative, an inclusive city is:
It is a place where everyone, regardless of their economic means, gender, race, ethnicity or religion, is enabled and empowered to fully participate in the social, economic and political opportunities that cities have to offer.
How can we change the direction of cities in the Gulf, with large foreign labor populations to make these urban areas less demarcated by the haves and have-nots? How can we change this “tale of two cities” story?What can be done to counteract these socio-spatial divisions?
This article highlights an urgent and unable to be neglected need by local governments in the Gulf to assess their obligations to low-skilled foreign nationals, who although not citizens, often form the bulk of urban residents. It also demonstrates that much work is yet to be done on the Gulf countries’ participation and best practices in projects that take into consideration the international sustainable urban social development goals as demarcated in the UN HABITAT agenda."
Most reports – official, academic, journalistic – on the slum population of the world foresee a relentless increase in these agglomerations of human misery. For three decades the UN has overestimated the future population of the world's megacities: in 1975, the UN Population Fund forecast a 2000 population of 19.7 million for Kolkata (it was 13.1). Jakarta was to reach 16.9 million (it had 11.1). Mexico City 31.6 million (18.1), Cairo 16.4 million (10.4).
The most recent UN/H
abitat document, The Challenge of Slums in 2003, sees the doubling by 2030 of the 1 billion slum dwellers of today. Asia will have at least five cities with more than 20 million by 2025 – Jakarta, Dhaka, Karachi, Shanghai and Mumbai. Mike Davis, in his splendid polemic, Planet of Slums, evokes a plausibly scary world in which hundreds of millions of young urban unemployed, prey to fundamentalism – Muslim and Christian – are potential recruits in drug wars, mafias, and political militias.
Given this apocalyptic consensus, it is surprising that the government of India's urban poverty report of 2009 (pdf) claims a mere 25% of people in cities live in slums, against The Challenge of Slums estimate of 60%. In June 2009, the president of India declared there would be a "slum-free India" in the next five years.
It is natural for governments to play down slum populations, just as non-government organisations working with the urban poor will seek to inflate the figures to impress donors. But why such wide variations?"...(for full article, click here)
From UN HABITAT. Bahrain is really taking the active lead on mainstreaming the Gulf countries into the United Nations community. Bahrain, 7 Jun 09: UN-HABITAT's flagship report, the State of the World’s Cities is now available in Arabic, thanks to funding and support provided by the Government of Bahrain. At the launch of the Arabic version of the report in Bahrain on 7 June, Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, said that the Arabic version of the report would assist greatly in making the report accessible to people in the region. The Prime Minister of Bahrain, Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa, presented Mrs. Tibaijuka with the Bahrain Medal of Honour in recognition of her commitment to sustainable human settlements development. Bahrain is currently drawing up a blueprint for urban development that will protect the natural environment and provide schemes for low-income housing. The city, in partnership with UN-HABITAT, is also setting up local urban observatories that will collect and analyse urban indicators. Prime Minister Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa, presents Mrs. Tibaijuka with the Bahrain Medal of Honour.
"Even during the worst financial crisis in eighty years, it is still possible to provide finance for houses for the poor, participants at the 22nd Session of the Governing Council of UN-HABITAT concluded on Monday. 'It is possible to continue providing finances for these people because they have a strong track record worldwide in repaying loans given to them,” said Irene Vance, a leading expert in housing finance.'"...(for full press release, click here)
UN-HABITAT opens office in Kuwait
UN-HABITAT has opened a new office in Kuwait City aimed at supporting the agency’s activities in the region.A ceremony on 11 March was presided over by the UN-HABITAT Director of Regional and Technical Cooperation Division Mr. Daniel Biau and Mr. Ahmed Al-Adsani, Executive Director of the Arab Towns Organisation, on the occasion of the opening of UN-HABITAT Kuwait Office.
Top on the agenda of the office’s activities will be to offer support to local authorities and stakeholders to promote sustainable urban development and active implementation of the Habitat Agenda at the city level. In doing that, the office will closely cooperate with the Arab Towns Organisation and its subsidiaries. It will also partner with the Kuwaiti Government to respond to current and future urban development challenge when requested by the government...(for full press release, click here)
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