From May 16-17 2011, UNITAR's CIFAL Network of local development training centres held its third steering committee meeting under the framework of the 2011 International Conference of Innovative Cities (ICIC). The CIFAL Network meeting brought together the CIFALs to discuss achievements in 2010, solutions to shared challenges, and integration of new themes and approaches to capacity development delivery for each of their regions. UNITAR's Manager of the Knowledge Systems Innovation Unit, Ms. Sueli Giorgetta, held training sessions for CIFAL staff to ensure the decentralisation of UNITAR expertise and methodologies in training under the context of Paris Declaration and more results based investments in capacity building; as well as moving towards more e-Learning based solutions.

Overall, the two day meeting led to commitments from regional CIFALs to increase consolidation of work programmes and implement global training programmes focused on green growth in the context of urbanization and basic services delivery. The meeting was organized with the financial support of Veolia Environnement.

The four day International Conference of Innovative Cities was organized in Curitiba (Brazil) in partnership with CIFAL Curitiba, the Federation of Industries of Parana State, UNITAR, and many other partners and institutions. From May 17 -20, 2011 it gathered 4,000 people and more than 200 cities from all over the world to explore the following question: how should the ideal city of the future look like?

The Conference opened with the reading of a message from the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, noting “No one wants to see growing urbanization as a threat to development, but rather as an opportunity. Cities are the drivers of growth and can be the drivers of poverty reduction as well. This is why innovative approaches to tackle MDG targets, like the improvement of the lives of 100 million slum dwellers, are crucial to the success of urban development” and “only through partnerships that share knowledge from city to city can we find common solutions to our shared challenges”. Mr. Jaime Lerner, the former mayor and visionary expert urban planner of Curitiba, opened the floor by giving a two hour inspiring address on dreams, cities and innovations. Later, Ms. Amal Medani, Associate Director of UNITAR’s Governance Unit, shared her experience and vision with co-panelists and the audience during the discussion on “Reinventing government from cities”.

The ICIC included events exploring a multitude of key themes in urbanization and innovation today. Some events were hosted by CIFALs, such as CIFAL Curitiba and CIFAL Atlanta’s one day seminar on Educating Cities, exploring Latin American challenges in capacity development and urbanization. The seminar included a variety of discussions around the challenge of building inclusive towns, cities, and conurbations, with more equal access to ICT, schooling services, safety and security, and child and family friendly policies. A model highlighted was the favela of Heliopolis in Sao Paulo, where thanks to local teachers, leaders, and other community efforts there has been a large reduction in community violence, and increased school access and safety.

CIFAL Curitiba also hosted its Medium Sized Cities Seminar, featuring Mayors from a variety of Cities and speakers from the Economic Commission from Latin America and the Inter-American Development Bank, finding ways to tailor urban development solutions for their growth. CIFAL Findhorn’s (Scotland) Director Ms. May East hosted a participatory seminar on transition towns, with sessions on contextualization for transition towns, principles and ingredients for towns in transition. CIFAL Durban's board member and Head of the International and Governance Relations of eThekwini Municipality (Durban), Mr. Eric Apelgren, hosted a seminar on World Cup Cities, exploring the challenges and opportunities of being cities involved in World Cup or similar large events, and how to sustain investments in infrastructure once the demand of world cup like furor is gone. CIFAL Plock’s Director Mr. Ireneusz Kaminski presented the case of the city of Plock in the event on innovative solutions for the development of cities while Mr. Krzysztof Buczkowski, Deputy Mayor of Plock was a panelist of the session “Building digital cities”.

The four days ICIC also featured the participation of CIFAL Shanghai (China), CIFAL Jeju (Republic of korea), and other members as speakers and moderators during a series of events on ICT and urbanization and many more.

The event concluded with the launch of CIFAL Curitiba's Green Dreams Initiative, a future framework initiative for the CIFAL Network and CIFAL Curitiba's official contribution to Rio+20 (in Portuguese). This viral youth based initiative aims at using social media and digital technologies to collect, map, and realise the green dreams of all community members by locally trained "dream catchers". It is an innovative community approach sourced from a similar project in Bangalore, India (Dream:IN, http://www.dreamin.in/) to researching local visions for better communities and then linking stakeholders, from government, business and other sectors to ensure these dreams come true. In Curitiba, the Green Dreams Initiative has already collected 800 dreams in just one week, and is now opening to much more and for replication across Brazil, and soon throughout the CIFAL Network similar efforts will be replicated.

For more information contact CIFAL Curitiba at info<at>cifalcuritiba.org.br.

http://www.cifalcuritiba.org.br/english/

http://www.unitar.org/ldp/