04/03/2013

South-south city cooperation: attracting more partners

Over the past few years, the dissemination of knowledge in a strategic manner among cities has fueled development partners such as Cities Alliance, UN Habitat, GIZ, universities, and institutions, to become partners in a number of the activities conducted in the framework of the UCLG programme on South-South Cooperation.

Building on the motivation and commitment of Mozambican and Brazilian cities in this process, UCLG, in collaboration with development networks and agencies - namely  Intermediary Cities Network (CIMES) and Architects without Borders – Catalunya (ASF-C) - will encourage more exchange between the cities of these countries, particularly between the National Government Associations: National Government Association of Mozambique (ANAMM) and National Front of Mayors (FNP) in Brazil. This will further motivate exchange and support the strengthening of both institutions as active drivers of decentralized cooperation.

Building blocks

In this respect, a two-day event (last 14th and 15th of February) were dedicated to establishing the building blocks for initiating the project on decentralized cooperation between cities of Brazil and Mozambique including the launch and coordination meeting held in Maputo, Mozambique. This project, funded by the European Union, is supported by the Government of Norway and Cities Alliance and will be implemented during the next 28 months. The project builds on the cooperation between UCLG and Cities Alliance under the "CityFuture" programme.

Activities were initiated by setting up the implementation and coordination teams, conducting a needs assessment of Mozambican cities, establishing an approach to city technicians and the creation of a gathering of mayors from both countries scheduled to take place during the II Meeting of Municipalities with sustainable development  in Brasilia next April 23rd to 25th.

Three tools of the urban management sphere have been selected to build on Brazilian cities’ experiences according to scale and needs : Inclusive Cadastre, Business Plan or Internal administration Coordination and Land Management Plans.

An important milestone for the activities planned will be the Intermediary cities seminar to be held in KwaDukuza, South Africa were Mozambican representatives will be invited to a peer learning event on Planning for Intermediary Cities and a meeting with Brazilian and South African representatives, co-organized by UCLG Urban Strategic Planning Committee in partnership with MILE and CIMES.

Further activities about Intermediary cities and city-to-city cooperation

More activities to bring other cities together and involve more actors in the debate on Strategic Planning and Urban Management are foreseen this year:

June 2013: debate on Intermediary planning policy and leadership in Lleida, Spain.

October 2013: debate and presentation of the orientation document on planning for Intermediary cities in UCLG World Congress in Rabat, Morocco.

The key objective this year is to forge relationships between the different actors: member cities, networks, agencies and academia to continue promoting city-to-city cooperation building on the positive experiences and results achieved.

Source: UCLG