Under the leadership of Vice President Mona Serageldin, I2UD has been working with UN-ESCWA* and UN-Habitat ROAS** to prepare the Habitat III Regional Report for Arab States. This report reviews and takes stock of the implementation of the Habitat Agenda since Habitat II in 1996 and identifies new issues affecting sustainable urban development in 22 countries in the region.

Last week, Mona Serageldin and Maren Larsen travelled to Cairo to present a draft version of the report and received valuable inputs from invited experts. The Habitat III Regional Report for Arab States seeks to inform the preparation of the outcome document to be endorsed by member states at the conference in October 2016 in Quito, Ecuador.

I2UD has also contributed to the preparation of the Habitat III National Urban Policy Unit’s review of NUPs in Arab States and facilitated a Habitat III Youth Consultation at Boston University in November 2015.

*Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia

** Regional Office for Arab States

The Institute’s ability to carry forth it’s mission of promoting sustainable and inclusive urban development depends in large part on the generous donations of our Board of Directors, friends, and supporters. These gifts enable the Institute to support urban planning practices in cities and communities seeking to reduce poverty and ensure access to basic services for all. The Institute delivers this support through direct technical assistance in urban and regional planning, as well as capacity building and training modules to enable municipal staff and citizens to plan for their own development. Our work in the last ten years has had an impact in cities in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the island of Ireland.

Shopping through Amazon Smile this holiday season and selecting the Institute as your preferred charity helps us to continue to produce high quality inputs to global publications, most recently contributing to such publications as the IOM’s 2015 World Migration Report and the World Bank’s Inclusive Cities Approach Paper. Gifts also supplement grant-funded independent research, such as an investigation of climate change adaptation strategies for informal settlements in Latin America recently published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Spanish.

We thank you in advance for thinking of I2UD this holiday season and supporting sustainable urban and regional planning practices and research.

Photos by Mona Serageldin in Lublin Poland, 2004 (left) and Arusha, Tanzania, 2013 (right).

AdP – Villes en Développement is a platform for urban professionals to exchange and reflect on urban development and city management in developing countries.

Click here to read the July 2014 Bulletin, “Recherche et action pour une ville durable”, in French.

Click here to read Dr. Vigier’s article in English.]]> http://ori.i2ud.org/2014/08/i2ud-president-dr-francois-vigier-writes-article-in-julys-bulletin-of-villes-en-developpement/feed/ 0 http://ori.i2ud.org/2014/06/connecting-the-dots-project-receives-honorable-mention-at-the-boston-public-space-invitational/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=connecting-the-dots-project-receives-honorable-mention-at-the-boston-public-space-invitational http://ori.i2ud.org/2014/06/connecting-the-dots-project-receives-honorable-mention-at-the-boston-public-space-invitational/#comments Thu, 05 Jun 2014 20:10:02 +0000 Maren http://i2ud.org/?p=5386 Continue Reading]]> The Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics recognized the “Connecting the Dots” project with an Honorable Mention at last night’s first-ever Boston Public Space Invitational Awards. The project submission to the Boston PSI was facilitated by I2UD Research Associate Maren Larsen, working in close collaboration with Codman Academy teachers Vanessa Savas and Haley Malm, as well as the Codman Academy Class of 2014.

From left to right: Maren (I2UD), Haley, Asia, Martin, Vanessa, and Francis (Codman Academy)

The Codman Academy’s project submission proposed a walking tour of the Codman Square neighborhood, highlighting the historic and civic assets of the community through interactive tour markers that would describe different tour stops and link visitors to information through a telephone number and a QR code. Inspired by the My Dot Tour project in Field’s Corner, students at Codman have already hosted several “D-Tours” for visitors and community stakeholders with the goal of combating stereotypes associated with Dorchester and reflected in the French Consulate’s Boston travel warning advising French tourists against walking in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. It should be noted that the wording of this advisory has recently been changed.

Photo Credit: Office of Mayor Walsh

All submissions to the Boston PSI will be on display at Boston City Hall through early July and are also available online here.

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy hosted a Networking Event at the 7th World Urban Forum in Medellin. The event presented the findings of Lincoln’s research fellows into approaches to dealing with environmental risk in Latin America, including I2UD’s recent work in Nicaragua and Colombia. Lincoln’s research focuses particularly on the ways in which climate change exacerbates the vulnerability of low-income urban dwellers living in precarious locations.

The report, entitled “Building Resilience for Informal Settlements in Latin America,” will be published later in 2014.

While the role of urban planning in flood risk mitigation is better understood, the relationship between water scarcity and land use planning, including in mountainous communities affected by receding glacial ice, remains a critical gap in planning research. The changing climate has made an understanding of this relationship all the more urgent, especially for developing countries where the poor are the least able to cope with environmental crises.

In order to better grasp the role of land-use planning in a context of water scarcity, we worked with partners at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) in Cambridge, MA. The study looked at the Bolivian city of El Alto, considered to be the world’s highest city. This rapidly growing city is vulnerable to climate change due to the region’s declining water resources and its socio-economic, fiscal and governance constraints. El Alto’s population will almost double by 2025 to 1.6 million if past development patterns continue.

SEI has a unique expertise in WEAP modeling, a water resources planning tool used to assess the implications of changes in water supply and demand and to explore the effectiveness of different physical and/or policy interventions. The model, in addition to extensive research and stakeholder interviews, helped answer the study’s following questions:

• How will climate change affect water availability in El Alto?
• How will climate change affect urbanization patterns in El Alto?
• Who will be the most vulnerable to future water shortages?
• How can water use efficiency strategies inform land use planning?
• What land use planning responses can improve water access equity and reduce vulnerability to future water shortages?

The results of this case study suggest that urban growth management should play a strong role in climate adaptation in arid zones. Besides supply-side infrastructure, adaptation efforts in the water sector should build El Alto’s institutional capacity to manage urban growth and promote community drought resilience.

In addition to institutional strengthening, this study also highlights how climate change acts on existing conflicts over scarce natural resources and further stresses not only the resource base, but also political and financial adaptive capacity. The response must therefore more comprehensively address risk factors, integrating climate considerations and new initiatives into much needed development and governance improvements.

The role of urban planning and spatial adaptation is better understood in areas susceptible to too much precipitation, while the study of its role in drought environments has been much more limited. This analysis suggests that urban planning and management does have a role to play in climate change-induced drought environments, which are often in flat and expansive places conducive to sprawling development. Drought will bring about two major effects: stable or higher rates of rural-to-urban migration, and reductions in water storage and supply. These tendencies will drive exurban development, as well as place new, significant financial burdens on water service providers in terms of funding capital improvements for supply side expansion, extending water networks outwards, and maintaining infrastructure. The vulnerability of the poor and peri-urban communities is linked to the financial vulnerability of the local water utility.

The paper was co-authored by Linda Shi and James Kostaras from I2UD, and Marisa Escobar and Brian Joyce from the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Read the paper here

Field Notes from Bolivia here

Project Page here

Photo courtesy of UN-Habitat/GLTN

Having joined the Global Land Tool Network in early 2013, the GLTN 5th Partner’s Meeting held at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs was the first opportunity for I2UD to meet the network and learn about synergies between the Institute’s work in urban land policy and administration around the world and the dynamic work plan of the GLTN. One of the key objectives of the meeting  was to strengthen partnerships to build a more sound network. Kees de Zeeuw of Kadaster International aptly pointed out in the opening plenary that the word “partners” is often just a professional term for “friends.” If that is the case, the GLTN meeting allowed I2UD to reconnect with old friends, and make several new ones while advancing the land tool development and implementation agenda.

Land tools are essentially operational approaches that allow partners working on land issues to overcome various land challenges. The GLTN has identified 18 different land tools backed by pro-poor, gender sensitive, affordable, and sustainable values, among others. While major gains have been achieved in the roll out of these various tools, partners were kept busy focusing on country-level implementation and coordination while strengthening policy frameworks and improving global knowledge integration. While significant work time was dedicated to formulating work plans within each cluster, time was also allocated to collaborate on a cross-cluster basis based on tool themes and regional specificities. I2UD chose to actively participate in debates in the African context and around land-based financing, land readjustment and city-wide slum upgrading tools, areas in which the Institute has significant project experience and where it can contribute to best practice development and knowledge sharing.

Photo courtesy of UN-Habitat/GLTN

Day 1 was spent in organizational clusters where I2UD and partner training and research institutions debated the role of the cluster and how to best contribute to the overall work of the network as academics and scholars. Building evidence, developing curricula, and deepening and framing the land tool discourse were cited as potential areas where the cluster could have ‘value-added’ in the network. I2UD was made aware of several partner resources that we are happy to share with our blog readers below.

The morning of Day 2 was spent working towards drafts of country level implementation plans. With several new partners active in Africa, work concentrated on familiarizing participants of all the activities being carried out in the land domain on the continent by GLTN partners. I2UD highlighted its past and ongoing projects both in South Africa and Tanzania as experiences that could contribute to the eventual workplan. The afternoon was spent with De Gebouwengids or “The Building Guide” who organised an architectural/social housing learning tour of Rotterdam that highlighted different models of housing development with interventions from a representative of Woonstad Rotterdam (a social housing agency responsible for housing for 1/6 of Rotterdam’s population), the innovative, DIY collective Urbannerdam initiative, along with various architects involved in individual home projects and entire social housing complexes. The tour gave great perspective on various ways of housing the urban population and the development/gentrification  dynamics at play in Rotterdam.

Lastly, Day 3 concentrated on identifying and advancing work on land tools across clusters. Partners from various clusters met to discuss land readjustment, land-based financing and city-wide slum upgrading and carried out a thoughtful debate about specific tools such as taxation, accountability, local government negotiating capacity, the premise of equity, urgency of tools, and incorporating civil society in upgrading programs.

Photo courtesy of UN-Habitat/GLTN

The GLTN 5th Partners Meeting was an engaging and highly-participatory conference. I2UD is excited to be counted as a new member of this dynamic group of experts and institutions and looks forward to identifying more concrete ways to participate and contribute.

- Maren Larsen, Research Associate, I2UD

Web
Post-conference report from GLTN’s website – The Land Portal. This web resource hosts an abundance of information on land related issues and is supported by a wide coalition of partners, including GLTN Partner IALTA.

Books
Land Administration for Sustainable Development. 2009. Ian Williamson, Stig Enemark (from GLTN Partner Aalborg University), Jude Wallace, and Abbas Rajabifard. E-book downloadable for free here!

Trading Places: Accessing Land in African Cities. 2013. Mark Napier (Programme Director of GLTN Partner – Urban LandMark), Stephen Berrisford, Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, Rob McGaffin, and Lauren Royston. The full book is available for download  here!