News

March 29, 2022

THE FIRST STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING OF UEF 4

UEF 2021 received an incredible response from the international community with more than 200 speakers from various cities and countries and diverse backgrounds. In preparation for the 4th Urban Economy Forum, we are establishing this year’s Steering Committee to help guide its programming. The 4th Urban Economy Forum will continue to be a world class platform where all voices and ideas are heard and innovative solutions for sustainable urban management can be exchanged. 

The theme of this year’s forum will focus on Finance, Cities, and Sustainability. In preparations for UEF 2022 and our activities in the upcoming year, the first UEF Steering Committee for 2022 was hold on March the 29th, 2022, from 10am – 11:30am (Eastern – Toronto Time) with participation of outstanding members of 4^th UEF Steering Committee. 

The meeting was seek to provide an overarching the opportunities and obstacles that we have in accessing the financing and urban resources that we need to have in making cities sustainable and provide development in that context the concept paper that has been mainly the framework that secretariat was provided to be enriched, especially on the 4th urban economy forum themes and dimensions. 

 In this meeting the participants discuss on various aspects of finance and urban economy, for example Camilla ween focused on alternative economic models such as sort of circular economy and local wealth models. Eduardo Moreno Lopez recalled the effect of pandemic on cities that affected seriously and distorted the finance and economy of cities of value chains and many things. He also emphasises on the role of innovative models of finance that can help us to rethink the long-term perspective of sustainable urban development on the basis of these concepts, for instance how to address climate change. Eleanor Mohammed believes that we need make sure that we come with something tangible at the end and we're leaving no one behind no country no municipality and no community. For Julie Ward that would be the big challenge is how can we make the concept of economy really understandable for all so it not frightens people?

Frank D'hondt think when we are thinking through what it takes from wealthy to healthy cities it indeed relates to alternative economy and finances which we haven't defined yet. He added that in general I would say from wealth to health generating urban finance sounds like a fantastic topic but of course we have to give it hands and feet so it can start to walk and talk and not just a theoretical discussion. 

Henk Bouwman mentioned that metro polarization going on in Europe where we see more collaboration between communities, municipalities on this metropolitan level and we are extremely interested in what's happening here at the Urban Economy Forum because, we develop an answer to the European commission a metropolitan vision for Europe 2050. 

Jose Etcheverry suggested that two ways to make more explicit the finance theme are that to include financing the UN-SDGs as something important and to showcase the best examples advances on using finance strategies to achieve the UN-SDGs he believes money is what matters now and the second thing is the use of financial strategies to achieve peace and stability in the world.  Also Maria B. Rasmussen, from Danish bank mentioned that in the European union the financial sector has been given a central role in the transition to a green and sustainable economy, so the reason for that obviously is public funding is not sufficient in order for the entire economy to be transitioned so private capital is really key here. Patricia Canelas indeed emphasised on the need to understand the difficulties in the communication that she believes exist in general between the private and the public sector their different goals and time frames. 

Angelika Poth-Moegele raise the question of the inclusion and added, I was wondering whether we stop at the income dimension or whether we also look at the spending dimension because this is also a question how the spending is organized and is it organized in an inclusive way, for example mainstreaming gender equality to or gender budgeting, in similar activities. Ali Alraouf was another speaker who emphasis on the role of people and stated we need a sort of a shift from a based finance to community-based finance this is so crystal clear in the context of the Middle East and Africa we need to empower people rather than to empower in most of the cases corrupted governments, also to new kind of economies particularly knowledge economy creative economy which is related to climate change. Ramin Keivani shed light on the concept of capacity building which is very important particularly in terms of the local authority for engaging with financial institutions, he also added that we need to develop this issues around the community finance and alternative finance but particularly for focusing on pro poor and sort of focusing with an objective of poverty alleviation.

Vincent Tong brought a new aspect to the discussion , he highlighted the impact of debt on cities so if cities are or countries are borrowing money, what is the impact of that and how do they sustain themselves and avoid any kind of predatory lending that may occur as a result of that. We need to understand how do cities borrow? How can they borrow and who can they borrow from?  

Steering Committee Members

Ali Alraouf, Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, Head of Research and Development Urban Planning Department

Amarjeet Sohi, Mayor of Edmonton, Canada (Lisa Holmes, Chief of Staff, City of Edmonton, to attend on his behalf)

Atsushi Koresawa, Director, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, UN-Habitat, Japan

Angelika Poth-Moegele, Secretary General of the Greens Group of the European Committee of the Regions

Camilla Ween, Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University and Expert in Urban Design, City Planning and Transportation

Eduardo López Moreno, Former Acting Director of Sustainable Relations, Strategy, Knowledge, and

Eleanor Mohammed, President of the Commonwealth Association of Planners

Frank D'hondt, Co-Chair of the World Urban Pavilion in Regent Park, Secretary General of ISOCARP

Henk Bouwman, Secretary General, the Network of European Metropolitan Regions, and Areas

Innovation of UN-Habitat

Julie Ward, Former British Member of the European Parliament & Co‐Chair of the World Urban Pavilion in Regent Park Steering Committee

Jose Etcheverry, Professor of Geography and Board of Governors at York University and serves on the Investment and Land and Property Committees.

Majid Jowhari, Member of Parliament for Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada

Maria B. Rasmussen, Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Manager, Arbejdernes Landsbank

Patricia Canelas, Departmental Lecturer in Sustainable Urban Development, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Ramin Keivani, Head of School of Built Environment, Oxford Brookes University , Mayor of Gyumri, Armenia

Vincent Tong, Vice President, Development & Asset Strategies, BC Housing, Canada

Yücel Yılmaz, Mayor, City of Balikesir, Turkey