Global Peer Learning Series - Event 3: Bottom-up Action for Just Urban Development

The Global Peer Learning Series Urban Innovation for Just and Sustainable Cities hosts its third event of the year around the theme Cities for all: Bottom-up action for just urban development.

When looking at urban development in cities, oftentimes the voices of their citizens – especially the ones of marginalized groups and informal workers and settlement dwellers – are overheard and overlooked. But creating cities for all, demands true participation from all. 

To tackle unequal access to urban services and economic opportunities and ensure a sustainable and socially just urban transformation, it is essential to guarantee and encourage the participation of people living in poverty and those structurally underrepresented in urban planning processes. 

Neighbourhood organizations and local NGOs in many countries of the Global South as well as their international networks have already collected a wealth of experience of successful, community-based practices, knowledge and data on community led solutions, self-help, participation, and self-administration in the field of pro-poor urban development.

This session will thus explore how city dwellers from the Global South can voice their needs, offer their knowledge, contribute their solutions and become active agents in their cities’ and neighbourhoods' development. It is taking stock of best practice examples for collaboration between city administrations, civil society, and citizen movements. 

Further the session will explore how local governments can support and build coalitions with grassroots movements and create standardized instruments and processes to make sure local voices inform policies, plans and investments and no one is left behind.

Keynote: Suhailey Farzana, community architect and co-founder of Co.Creation.Architects and Platform of Community Action and Architecture (POCAA).

Moderation: Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi, City Diplomacy Lab

Speakers:

• Joseph Kimani, director SDI Kenya
• Paula Sevilla Nunez, researcher at IIED
• Naomi Flomo, Abijay and George, Federation of Liberia Urban Poor Savers (FOLUPS)

Watch the session recording on Youtube

The webinar is part of a peer learning series hosted by GIZ – on behalf of BMZ – and Cities Alliance, to strengthen local actors in their ability to act for socially just and climate-friendly urban transformation. The series will create a roadmap towards the World Urban Forum in November 2024 and discuss how subnational governments can be engaged more closely in the implementation of global development and climate agendas.