Support public space for WUF10!
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On 8-13 February 2020 the 10th World Urban Forum (WUF10) will take place in Abu Dhabi. WUF10 will be convened by UN-Habitat and jointly organized with the Abu Dhabi Department of Urban Planning and Municipalities.
Abu Dhabi will be the first Arab city to host the WUF, and the forum's theme will be "Cities of Opportunities: Connecting Culture and Innovation".
Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Executive Director of UN-Habitat, said the WUF10 will take the sustainable urbanization debate to a new level in what promises to be an event that will have an impact for years to come.
Mohamed Al Khadar, Executive Director of strategic affairs at Abu Dhabi Department of Urban Planning and Municipalities, said the UAE is aligning the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the development strategy to support WUF10.
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In August we launched a global campaign to support public space, inviting global stakeholders to join forces in order to ask to the WUF Secreatariat to include a clear reference to public space in the Concept Note. You can read below the strong interest that our campaign attracted, with also insightful statements from urban experts and activists.
After that, the Concept Note has been revised, now public space is included in the document and this is a great achievement. But we think that it should be addressed more strategically: since the main theme of WUF10 is Cities of opportunities. Connecting Culture and Innovation, we think that public space should be discussed also to foster inclusion, equity, resilience and sustainability, following the UN’s imperative to ‘leave no one behind.’ So we have decided to apply for an exhibition space (see details here) in order to showcase our best projects, in collaboration with several institutions and global stakholders: we want to engage visitors on high level discussions on the complexity of public space in our contemporary cities, in a global perspective.
We want to continue what we started in 2018 at WUF9 in Kuala Lumpur: our exhibition space was very successful and we received an enthusiastic feedback from many visitors! Read more here and a short report here (open the PDF).
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For WUF10 we would like to have an exhibition space bigger than the one we had at WUF9, in order to host more people and more projects. With our exhibition we want to have an impact on local governments and policy makers, we want to push them to include public space as a priority in their urban agenda.
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Future cities need public space for a more human(e) togetherness!
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We are seeking for financial support, both individual and institutional.
Help us to raise awareness on public space at WUF10!
Please consider to make a donation to support the cause of public space at the 10th World Urban Forum in Abu Dhabi, on February 8-13, 2020.
City Space Architecture is a non-profit orgnization based in Italy, our funding are used only for projects and activities related to the promotion of public space culture. Our members volunteer their time to support our mission.
We recommend the following scheme for donations:
- individual support: 25 USD
- institutional support (only for developing countries): between 80 and 150 USD
- institutional support: between 500 and 1.000 USD
We will include your name (for individuals) and your logo (for institutions) in our exhibition space at WUF10, with a thank you messsage. For those institutions who are attending WUF10, we will give them the possibility to arrange a presentation or a small event at our booth and to distribute materials (such as books and/or leaflets) or to screen videos related to projects on public space.
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If you are an individual, in order to include your name in the list of supporters, please write a message before concluding the payment or send us later an email to office@cityspacearchitecture.org, let us know how you want your name to appear on the exhibition space at WUF10. Please provide also your email address.
If you are donating on behalf of your institution, please write a message before concluding the payment and let us know how you want the name of your institution to appear on the exhibition space at WUF10. Later send us an email to office@cityspacearchitecture.org attaching the logo of your institution. Please provide also your email address and the website of your institution.
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For institutions who are willing to support us with more than 1.000 USD, please write an expression of interest to: event@cityspacearchitecture.org. We are currently working with several Universities and institutions to define the contents of the exhibition space at WUF10, so please send your expression of interest as soon as possible since the deadline for the submission for an exhibition space at WUF10 is November 15, 2019..
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FOLLOW UP: after WUF10, we will publish a full report on our The Journal of Public Space (expectd in the summer 2020) with all contents showcased at our exhibition space, inlcuding a thank you message with the names of all our supporters (individuals and institutions) and with a summary of all activities...
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OUR GLOBAL CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT PUBLIC SPACE AT WUF10
August 2019
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UN-Habitat is currently revising the Concept Note of WUF10, a draft is available here.
Since City Space Architecture is a partner of UN-Habitat, we received a request for a feedback. While reviewing the Concept Note and other documents, we realized that public space is poorly mentioned, and not clearly addressed, as it was in WUF9 in Kuala Lumpur.
We think that the Concept Note should clearly include public space as one of the topics of WUF10.
Our President Luisa Bravo submitted a feedback to UN-Habitat last week, explaining the reasons why public space should be included in the Forum. Here is what she wrote:
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"From the WUF's theme - Cities of Opportunities: Connecting Culture and Innovation - it is somehow evident that public space will be part of the discussion, for example in Dialogue 1, 2, 3 or 5. However we think that the words ‘public space’ should be included in the Concept Note, for example in the thematic objectives, and should be clearly addressed in at least one of the scheduled activities, for example in the WUF10 Special Sessions.
We suggest to include public space also in one of the Dialogues, for example reframing Dialogue 1 with 'Public space, culture and innovation’, since Dialogue 1 and 2 look very similar. Or as an alternative we suggest to merge Dialogue 1 and 2 and create a new Dialogue entirely dedicated to public space, for example ‘Public space culture as a driving force for innovation’ or ‘Public space as a driver of urban prosperity’.
City Space Architecture is at the forefront in promoting public space culture: we participated to the Habitat III conference (with a networking event and a side event) and WUF9 (as exhibitor and with a networking event), I was also selected/invited to attend the 26th Governing Council in Nairobi, the High Level Meeting on the New Urban Agenda in New York and the 1st UN-Habitat Assembly in Nairobi. My lecture ‘Stand up for Public Space’ was included in the UN-Habitat Global Urban Lectures Series (2017). With The Journal of Public Space, City Space Architecture is actively working in order to implement the New Urban Agenda and promote the SDGs, both at the local and global level. We are willing to launch at WUF10 our new educational programme, the Public Space Academy, and we are currently discussing with several stakeholders who are interested to support our work.
After major global efforts from many organizations to include public space in the New Urban Agenda back in 2016, it is extremely important to continue the discussion on well designed and well maintained public spaces to promote urban prosperity and social inclusion, with particular attention to youth, women, older persons and persons with disabilities. Public space is the expression of different cultures and is generator of social and economic innovation, especially in developing countries. So, quoting WUF's theme - Cities of Opportunities: Connecting Culture and Innovation, I believe public space is a real opportunity for cities and communities, for a good quality of urban life, enhancing community cohesion and civic identity."
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We need your support!
This is the list of our affiliated members and partners, who already confirmed their interest to cooperate with us in order to develop activities on public space at WUF10:
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Luisa Bravo, President, City Space Architecture / Editor in Chief, The Journal of Public Space, Italy
Simone Garagnani, Adjunct Professor, University of Bologna / Scientific Coordinator, BIM Foundation, Italy / Vice President, City Space Architecture, Italy
Hendrik Tieben, Associate Professor and Director of the Master in Urban Design, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Manfredo Manfredini, Senior Lecturer, Future Cities Research Hub, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Gregor Mews, Director, Urban Synergies Group, Australia
Setha Low, Chair, Public Space Research Group, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA
Katherine Kline, Co-Chair, GAP Older Persons, USA
Darko Radovic, Director, co+labo, Keio University, Japan
Mingxing Song, Hunan University, China
Haison Wang, Shanghai University, China
Ethan Kent, PlacemakingX, USA
Roni El Jalkh and Amir Gohar, Placemaking MENA
Laura Sobral, Urbanist and Co-founder, A Cidade Precisa de Você, Brazil
Lance Jay Brown, President, Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization (CSU), USA
Charles Mbugua, International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), Kenya
Michael Kanyingi Kimuhu, Founder, MICOP CBO, Kenya
Michael Mehaffy, Senior Researcher, Ax:son Johnson Foundation, Sweden
Jean Quinn, Executive Director, UNANIMA International, USA
Hannes Juhlin Lagrelius, Programme officer, Accessibility in Smart Cities Initiative / Bilateral Associate Expert, World Blind Union
Victor Pineda, President, World Enabled, USA
Tigran Haas, Associate Professor, Director of the Center for the Future of Places, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Husam AlWaer, Senior Lecturer, Associate Director for the Centre for Environmental Change and Human Resilience (CECHR), University of Dundee, UK
Rasmus Bering, CEO and Co-founder, DREAMTOWN, Denmark
Ziaur Rahman, Senior Project Officer, Work for a Better Bangladesh Trust, Blangladesh
Lorenzo Petrillo, Founder, LOPELAB, Singapore
Thomas Melin, Director, Block by Block Foundation, USA
Eliza Hoxha, University of Prishtina, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Republic of Kosovo
Celine D’Cruz, Block by Block Foundation and Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, Thailand
Massimiliano Scuderi, Art Director, Fondazione Zimei / Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Art History, Faculty of Architecture and Design, University of Camerino UNICAM, Italy
Estanislau Roca Blanch, Full Professor, Vice Rector for Infrastructure and Architecture, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
Kristie Daniel, Program Director, Livable Cities, HealthBridge, Canada
Alessandro Melis, Professor of Architecture Innovation, University of Portsmouth, UK / Curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale
Dario Canciani, President of Comitato Capannoni del Sale, Tortona, Italy
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If you want to add your name to support the discussion on public space at WUF10 please send us an email to: info@cityspacearchitecture.org with your name and the name of your organization.
You can also add a short statement (one sentence or one paragraph) to explain why public space matters.
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Thank you!
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Statements from global stakeholders on why public space matters:
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#1
"Creating public spaces accessible to persons with disabilities is key to break attitudinal barriers and increase citizen participation in the transformation processes of cities wherein we lead our lives on equal basis as others."
Hannes Juhlin Lagrelius, Programme officer, Accessibility in Smart Cities Initiative / Bilateral Associate Expert, World Blind Union
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#2
“Whether it seems impossible to reach optimal conditions for all people in cities- public spaces are the necessary and essential precondition, which reminds each and everyone of us in our daily lives, that what we experience is and always should be a shared human condition. It is now in your hands to create and impact this space as part of your story.”
Gregor Mews, Director, Urban Synergies Group, Australia
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#3
“Public Space sits at the intersection of an imbalance of power and the inequitable access to the provision of public goods. Designers often exclude by their designs people outside ‘normal’ ranges of ability (or participation), and likewise sustainability ‘thinking’ can result in environmental ‘solutions’ benefiting a dominant, already privileged sub-set within society at the expense of others. It does not nor should it always be this way.”
Nicholas Loder, Chair of the New South Wales Branch of the Australasian Housing Institute, Australia
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#4
"Public spaces are not just vital for people to socialize, learn and play but also form part of the physical fabric of a city, town or suburb. The network of streets and sidewalks, punctuated by open areas with parks, plazas and public institutions structure the circulation of people and vehicles, as well as commercial goods, personal services and natural resources. Public spaces, especially those that enable a smoothly running transportation system, provide the network for city wide mobility and circulation of people, animals and vehicles, but also for the flow of natural resources. Water ways, run-off and retention basins and drainage ditches, also part of the public space system, contribute to the environmental sustainability of the region, even beyond the city and built environment."
Setha Low, Chair, Public Space Research Group, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA
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#5
"Cities that create and nurture public space will ensure social inclusiveness, and liveable and sustainable neighbourhoods. Place based participatory decision making will provide for public space that is integrated into planning processes."
Martin Brennan, Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne, Australia
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#6
“The most vital aspect of a city is its publicness. Publicness is about coming together in the commons, about learning to embrace our differences, about deciding how we govern ourselves, and ultimately, how our futures are not only intertwined but how it is only through exchange and collaboration that we can ensure a brighter future for our cities. Public space is the spatial expression of this publicness. Moreover, publicness is a political process in the best sense of the term, because the political embodies the public conversations and debates we must have as constantly question, reflect, and re-shape our futures. Some of the best political conversations occur in public spaces.”
Aseem Inam, Professor and Chair in Urban Design, Cardiff University, UK
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#7
"Public Spaces Fulfill a Basic Universal Need. Despite changes in technology that allow us to receive information and entertainment via the internet, satellite, and other means, we as humans have a need to interact with other humans in close physical proximity. Generally, humans are gregarious, sociable, and curious. Public spaces allow us to watch others, talk with others, learn life lessons, and be exposed to different people and cultures. Essentially, human beings are drawn to other human beings; our collectively shared experience perhaps ensures a sense of safety, sense of self, and belonging to a larger community."
Mark Hinshaw, Architect and Urban Designer (retired), Author and Journalist (still active), Italy
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#8
"Public spaces are essential because they are where our shared humanity is expressed and sustained."
Nabila Alibhai, Founder, InCommons, Kenya
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#9
"If the intellectual community is serious about ensuring Sustainable Development Goals transpire from concept to reality by 2030, then it is hard to imagine rigorous discourse without attention to the role and value of urban space."
Ian Morley, Associate Professor, Department of History, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
#10
"Shared public spaces are the fundamental essence of cities - the places where urban lives and culture are shaped and re-shaped, configured and re-configured on a daily basis. They serve as the connective tissue between otherwise disparate components of urban life and landscape."
Piper Gaubatz, Professor of Geography & Geography Program Head, Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, USA
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#11
"Public space is a vital platform for engagement and dialogues that reveal the rhythms and arrhythms of a city and shape our understanding of the emerging urban culture. The public domain reminds us of our collective responsibility and the creative action within that space is the catalyst for understanding how we can navigate and shape our urban future. Without public space a city has no ‘soul’."
Maggie McCormick, Adjunct Professor, RMIT University, Australia
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#12
"Public Space is an important part of a city. It gives opportunity for socialization, entertainment and physical activity and provides environmental facilities, social and personal impact and opportunities of active recreations. Senior citizens choose these places to spend their free time. But due to lack of accessibility persons with disabilities cannot enjoy the public space. Lack of safety and playing equipment discourages women and children to go to public space. We need to ensure public space in our every community."
Ziaur Rahman, Senior Project Officer, Work for a Better Bangladesh Trust, Bangladesh
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#13
"Public space matters because this is the space where people can be heard and listened at; this is the place for lovers to meet, for the youth to dream and for the elder to contemplate each minute of the on-going life. Public space matters because it is fundamentally the place where the unexpected can happen: genuine social interactions."
Karine Dupre, Associate Professor, Griffith Architecture and Design, Australia
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#14
"In a world full of exclusiveness, privatization, and all sorts of inequalities, public spaces are the only path to bringing back humanity and livelihood to cities. Public spaces are where people learn about each other, embrace differences, and get together; it is simply where life takes place. And when these meeting experiences fade away and disappear, it is when cities suffer the most from all social, cultural, political...etc. in tolerances and in-acceptances, widening the gap towards a more peaceful and loving accepting world. And in my point of view, that's the epidemic of this century, which all of us should work to eradicate it rather than reinforcing it. It all begins with a lovely friendly chat in a public space."
Merham Mohamed Keleg, Lecturer Assistant, Urban Planning and Design, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt
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#15
"El espacio público nos pertenece a tod@s, acoge el encuentro, promueve el dialogo y es una plataforma que da vida a múltiples y diversas expresiones y derechos de la sociedad. Por esencia el espacio público, es y debe ser, la expresión en si misma de la democracia de la ciudadanía en su macro bien público, Ciudad y Hogar."
Edmundo Hernández Rojas, Founder and CEO, CIUDADES 2030 ciudades en movimiento, Chile
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#16
"Talking about a fairer world is inseparable from talking about public spaces, which have the vocation of meeting people, of dialogue, of building the common, of democratic debates."
Laura Sobral, Urbanist and Co-founder, Instituto A Cidade Precisa de Você, São Paulo, Brazil
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#17
“In my view public space by providing the conditions for children, youth and adults to share their common norms and values, to feel safe, and to have a sense of belonging to the place and its people, can promote people’s quality of life and well-being. In public space people know each other, make the closed relationship among their friends and family, and have a sense of community. These kinds of relationships also shape strong social networks among individuals. So, we need public space to have sustainable communities.”
Parisa Ziaesaeidi, former Lecturer in Architecture, Iran / PhD candidate, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
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#18
"The public space has long been the subject of a privatization culture that led to the loss of the collective sense. In recent decades a new sensibility, also through the contribution of innovative protocols based on sharing responsibilities in public art or the referring to cultural identity as a catalyst in the urban regeneration process, has been responsible for rewriting the history of these areas and contributing to the regeneration of the contemporary urban territories. Culture, as well as being represented by the European program objectives, is certainly an important asset in the construction of identity of individuals and social groups, and the workplaces not only are prerequisites for intercultural communication, but also a strategic approach to the issues of local development and governance."
Massimiliano Scuderi, Art Director, Fondazione Zimei / Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Art History, Faculty of Architecture and Design, University of Camerino UNICAM, Italy
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#19
"The increasing concern for sustainable mobility should define new policies to aim for a friendly city for everybody (for example, a city for walking and cycling), and one that has to take into account is the different kind of public sharing of the urban space. In my opinion the future transformation of large metropolitan open spaces into new potential public spaces of the regional city has to incorporate spaces that can play a new role as structural elements of the metropolis; spaces that generate new composite landscapes in wich natural features, infrastructures or cultural heritage elements are combined; and spaces that seek to enhance and balance new uses, mainly an ecological function, leisure activities, and agricultural uses. It is also important the configuration of metropolitan nodes as collectives spaces, while the governance of regional networks and their integrated conception is key to producing places with intense and mixed uses. The urban design project is crucial to enable the architectural and social relationships that produce collective space."
Estanislau Roca Blanch, Full Professor, Vice Rector for Infrastructure and Architecture, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
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#20
“Public spaces are democratic spaces of interaction of a city, in which a diversity of people with different cultural, religious and social backgrounds can celebrate these differences. This inclusivity of public spaces enhances social interaction, which allows society to share and negotiate values and ideologies. By that, a public space becomes the space where the identity of the city is created and displayed.”
Tarek Fouani, Architect and Urban Designer, Lebanon
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#21
"In our world, public space is a full member of our society, performing the function of a social planning moderator, creating a new institution, facilitating communication, proper functioning and development of the interaction between society, nature and technology, preserving the memory of generations. The adoption of a public space evolution as a basic principle of sustainable development is obviously necessary today."
Aleksandr Izarov, CEO, KAG Project, Ukraine
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#22
"We share our planet, while buzzling metropolises, innumerable cities and tiny rural villages, hamlets, woods and alpages are our homes. Some of us live in the largest urban gatherings we may know, others in the most remote settlements we can imagine, and the rest in every other place we may think of. We live together apart, apart together. We live with family, with friends, or neighbours, within a community, or more on-distance, with people we know, with strangers. We live with the other somehow. Beings a human, our world provides us shelter and our public spaces shape social living rooms. Across cultures and societies, these are more or less publicly-used, more or less publicly-owned, more or less publicly-known. All kinds of public spaces give place to our daily routines and our sudden encounters; struggles, surprises or discoveries every day. As simple as it is, the place we share is a human space by nature. Yet, although these places are everywhere and in every form, effectively, the planet we share, we share in our public spaces. We do so, while consciously our planet is challenged; from a political perspective, a technical, an economical, a cultural, an ecological, and thus always a spatial one. We do so, while our planet turns and we age. As cultures mingle, or clash, and our societies respond, and change, and new generations come and innovate, together we continuously have to maintain and update our public spaces. So, similar to the right to adequate housing, we better take care of adequate public spaces too! In a world where everyone should have a place, public space has become a global issue, connected and united in the challenges before us and with respect to their local nature."
Maurice Harteveld, Assistant Professor, TU Delft, Netherlands
