Urban planning: what’s on the horizon?
Governance, management and policies

Porto Alegre (Brazil), from 30 January to 5 February 2002
Second World Social Forum

Venue of the workshop:
1 February 2002, from 14:00 to 18:00
at the auditorium of the ILEA (Instituto Latino-Americano de Estudos Avançados), UFRGS, campus Vale

1. UNESCO and the WSF

UNESCO, as a laboratory of ideas and experience-sharing for preparing guidelines and policies, contributes to the advancement of knowledge and international scientific and intellectual cooperation. It helps foster dialogue between the spheres of scientific knowledge, empirical knowledge and public action involving the leading actors of contemporary issues in political and civil society alike. This dialogue combines analysis of the underlying historical conditions with concrete proposals for dealing with the problems that affect universal values.

It is natural for UNESCO to participate in the World Social Forum in that it shares the latter's belief in the need to collectively draw up an alternative blueprint for a new social order. With a backbone of realistic strategic action, this common ideal will serve to harness humanity’s longing for a fairer world so that the roads to globalization and human rights might one day converge. During the First World Social Forum, UNESCO launched a debate on democratic governance, a strategic theme that we are now aiming to build into discussions conducive to policy-making for the future.

That initial debate centred on the input of African, Asian, European and Latin American participants in four key areas:

1. the role of the state and social movements in strengthening a democracy’s capacity to offset and manage globalization for the benefit of its citizens;
2. the international regulatory authorities in place and those that needed setting up;
3. the means of introducing governance of the world system based on democratic principles;
4. the role of the United Nations and non-governmental actors, especially NGOs, in such "democratic world governance".

The various reports on that debate (1) have brought out the need for more in-depth analysis of democracy as a complex conflict-management system that gives precedence to politics over economics. Hence the fertile question: how should the theoretical and empirical study of democracy be tackled in the light of the crisis in political representation and the emergence of new forms of citizenship?

This year, the broad strategic theme of "democratic governance" will serve to orient debate on more focused questions situated historically in a specific time and place and within a specific body of problems. The programme that UNESCO is putting forward for the 2002 WSF comprises three themes:

1. Democracy, governance and associated complexities: The challenges of cultural pluralism.
2. Blueprints for the city: Urban governance, management and policy-making.
3. Creating learning societies: Participation, citizenship and governance.

Each theme will be tackled in a separate seminar where the aim is to encourage open discussions on such key WSF issue areas as:

• access to wealth and sustainability;
• social movements, processes and governance

2. Urban Governance in WSF II

Our societies are urban. This is borne out by the facts and supporting demographic and quantitative data, and has been proclaimed by the United Nations Conference on the Human Habitat (Habitat II). In 1996, Istanbul also made a negative assessment of the means and policies practised to control urbanization over recent decades. Towns, which are the motors of development, are also places of social segregation, insecurity and violence that lack the minimum in material conditions (housing, infrastructure, facilities and services) and lose their identity by random growth. The right to live in a properly built dwelling, with dignified and decent living conditions for all, is lacking in practice.

And yet economics do not account for all urban processes or all territorial stakes. And the town does not function merely as a technical machine. It is a complex form at the crossroads of multiple forces, and urban intervention and the practice of town planning demand a different approach that rises to the complexity of the problem, of the social, cultural and political needs involved, and of the conflicts thrown up by current trends.

Urbanization has a programming dimension that used to be called "planning", later "strategic plan" and nowadays "management". In terms of goals, the first two emphasized solutions for the future and the third solutions for the present. Between planning, which is more technical, and management, which is more administrative, strategic plans advocate constant adjustments and the development of so-called social approaches. All involve interactions between actors – mainly decision-makers. Thus, over the last years urbanism gradually moved from technicist or bureaucratic approaches to paradigms of integration and sustainability.

We are currently experiencing another period of history, one manifestation of which is globalization. As a result, the functions of urban spaces are basically financial and economic, and their development answers to these priorities.

The seminar will explore these problems and the elements that constitute them. It proposes to contribute to the current debate that aims to understand and structure change in management, governance and urban policies, in order to attempt to reply to the title question of the seminar : Urban planning: what’s on the horizon ?

This involves the implementation of better means of consultation between actors, organizations and mediating bodies within the political arena itself. We invite you to approach such interactions as social relations and to resituate the problem of urban policies within the domain of politics lato senso. We wish to use the critical mass of reflection and practices of participants from Africa, Latin America and Europe as the basis for our debate. The aim is to improve technical practices and decision-making mechanisms in order to achieve a form of development that is more just and of urban governance that functions more democratically (2).

Achieving a system of public regulation that is capable of doing democratically whatever is needed to reduce inequalities and consolidate social cohesion in towns presupposes at least five conditions:

-the consolidation of citizenship, in everyday life and in institutions;
-a change in the guiding principles of urbanism;
-the critical revision of said paradigms of urban development;
-the renewal of methods and techniques for mastering the spatial element in urban processes;
-the improvement of rules and procedures in operational urbanism.

Seminar participants are invited to prepare their contributions within the above framework, approaching these from their own discipline, their own analytical angle, and their own field experience and professional practice. Since the idea is not only to help define criteria and policies, but to find the means to translate these into practice, we appeal to you to combine critical analysis with praxis and professional experience.

Questions to guide our discussions (for information only)

• What could be the operational, political and social consequences of the international paradigm of "integrated urban development" and/or "sustainable urban development"?
• What could be the empirical and ideological contents, and what could be the consequences, of the rapprochement between urban management and planning? (Critical assessment)
• What kind of structure can allow inhabitants to participate in and be responsible for the conditions of urban management systems and planning as a whole?
• How can we help inhabitants advance from the condition of city-dwellers to that of citizens?
• What kind of urbanism would achieve democratic urban governance?
• What are the components of political and civil societies when they participate in urban management and development

3. Programme

Opening

2 p.m. - 2.10 p.m.: Welcoming address by the two Chairpersons, Mr P. VIZENTINI (UFRGS) et P. SANÉ (UNESCO)

First part

2.10 p.m. - 2.20 p.m.: Introduction to the first part, by the Chairperson P. SANÉ
2.20 p.m. - 2.40 p.m.: D. LAMBA (Mazingira Institute, Kenya)
2.40 p.m. - 3.00 p.m.: Y. CABANNES ( PGU, Latin America)
3.00 p.m. - 3.40 p.m.: First general debate. Introduction to the debate: G. HERMET (CERI-CNRS/IEP, France)

COFFEE BREAK: 3.40 p.m. – 4.00 p.m.

Second part

4.00 p.m. - 4.10 p.m.: Introduction to the second part, by the Chairperson P. VIZENTINI
4.10 p.m. - 4.30 p.m.: E. ORTIZ (HIC-Latin America, Mexico)
4.30 p.m. - 4.50 p.m.: A. OSMONT (Urbanism Institute, Paris VIII, France)

4.50 p.m. - 5.50 p.m.: Second general debate. Introduction to the debate: G.HERMET (CERI)
5.50 p.m.- 6.00 p.m.: Meeting closed by the rapporteurs: G. SOLINIS and C. MILANI (UNESCO)

Working languages: French, Spanish, English and Portuguese, with simultaneous interpretation.

4. Contacts

Publication(s) :

Quels plans pour la ville ? Gouvernance, gestion et politique urbaines - Table ronde de l’UNESCO au II Forum social mondial. (Pour plus d'informations voir le site MOST sur le Développement et gouvernance urbains)

Notes :

1. See www.unesco.org/most/wsfunesco.htm

2. Defined as the process which guides and takes into account relations between the various actors intervening in urban development, including decision-makers, authorities and citizens belonging to political and civil society. It complements centralized authority with participatory measures to try and ensure the contribution of all communities concerned, the negotiation of conflicts between these actors, transpoarent decision-making and innovation in strategies and methods for urban management policies.