Overview of our Vision and Purpose
The purpose of Global Urban Development is clear: to make a better world for everyone. Prosperity and quality of life for all people and communities is our goal, which we believe includes both world peace and a globally sustainable living environment.
Global Urban Development was born exactly at the moment when for the first time in all of human history, more than half of all of the people alive in the entire world are currently living and working in cities, towns, and other urban places. This change has occurred so rapidly that a half century ago only one-third of the world's population was urbanized, and a half century from now nearly two-thirds of the people on this planet will be urban residents.
Urbanization and urban development are now so fundamental to the world's economy, society, and environment, that making a better urban world and improving urban life really means making a better world for everyone, including all of the people living and working in rural areas.
How are we going to help make the whole world better? There are three reasons why and how Global Urban Development will make a difference.
Point One: Bringing the Urban World Closer Together
Our main strategy is to bring everyone together and engage them in one unified conversation about the future of the urban world, and indeed, of the world itself. That is what we mean by Global Urban Development. This is a new idea in the world and represents a genuine paradigm shift because we are talking about treating the entire world as one place and one phenomenon within a unified policy framework. No person, nor any institution, has ever done this before with regard to urban policy.
The general state of urban policy in the world is divided very sharply into three separate and distinct international networks. The first and largest network is focused on urban policy in developing countries, which also includes some of the post-communist “transitional” economies. This network is led by the United Nations, the World Bank, and related institutions. For example, the UN’s World Urban Forum brings together people from all over the world, but it is not about the whole world. It is mainly about urban policy in and for developing countries.
The second network is urban policy in the developed world, minus the U.S. This is the world of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and similar organizations. The third network is urban policy in the U.S., which is the most insular and least international of the three networks.
Global Urban Development is breaking down the barriers between these three different networks. Starting with many prominent urban policy professionals, we have built the first truly global urban development network, uniting all three of the world's major urban policy constituencies. It is clear that the more than 300 members of Global Urban Development's Board of Directors and Advisory Board already cover an extremely wide range and diversity of people from all walks of life around the world, and this coverage will only become more comprehensive and diverse as the Global Urban Development expands its activities across the globe.
Point Two: Standing for Principles and Values
Secondly, we chose to emphasize in our communications such as the brochure and website, as well as in our form of organization, the values and principles for which we stand rather than functional activities. That is why we have organized Global Urban Development around themes that are the heart and soul of what we will be working on and what we hope to accomplish in the world.
These themes are:
1) Global Urban Development. This theme has already been explained above in Point One. Under this theme, we publish Global Urban Development Magazine twice yearly online, and we also will publish articles through Global Urban Development Perspectives distributed via email by Metropolis and the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) the two largest organizations worldwide representing urban elected officials. In addition, we intend to create a Ph.D. Program and a textbook on Global Urban Development.
2) Treating People and Communities as Assets. What this means is that everyone and every place counts. People are the world's greatest resource - all people. They have the talent, the energy, and the commitment to solve their own problems and create better communities. We just need to include them fully in the process and make sure they all benefit from the results. The key project under this theme is the Community Productivity Project (CPP), consisting of Community Productivity Indicators and Inclusive Economic Development Strategies for low-income communities throughout the world. Global Urban Development is launching the CPP in partnership with the United Nations and Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) under the Millennium Development Goals for poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, gender equality, public health, and global development partnerships.
3) Facing the Environmental Challenge. Bringing the whole world together starts with uniting the entire urban world, region by region. The real urban world is organized into metropolitan regions. The vitality of the global economy is now based primarily on the dynamic role of these urban regions, yet governments are not organized to reflect this new reality. We are living in an urban world with an “anti-urban mentality” in terms of public policy, with too few exceptions to this general fact. Global Urban Development is dedicated to getting international institutions, national governments, state governments, and provincial governments to recognize the importance of investing in urban regions in order to genuinely improve the overall economic, social, and environmental health of the world. We are deeply committed to creating new mechanisms of public-private-civic governance that enable urban regions to work together more effectively through increased cooperation across municipal, state and/or provincial, and even national boundaries, particularly in dealing with issues of land-use planning and design, transportation and infrastructure, and a sustainable environment. Global Urban Development’s European Union-funded study by Sir Peter Hall, “The World’s Urban Systems: A European Perspective,” was our first major project under this theme, and we are now working on a major new initiative to address the challenges of climate change/global warming and environmental sustainability worldwide.
4) Metropolitan Economic Strategy. This theme is closely related to Treating People and Communities as Assets, and Facing the Environmental Challenge. Metropolitan Economic Strategy is a global policy initiative designed to generate sustainable prosperity and quality of life for every person and community through cooperation by all stakeholders in urban regions—governments, businesses, and civil society—to create invest in the fundamental assets and grow the dynamic industry networks that will promote investment and employment, raise incomes and values, and do so in ways that improve the physical environment and cultural heritage, and that are truly equitable and inclusive for the benefit of all people and places. Global Urban Development projects under this theme include the training provided to the South African Cities Network funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, advising the Central Bohemia Region in the Czech Republic and the Hampton Roads Partnership in the U.S., and the conference in Metro Manila during February 2007 sponsored by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and funded by the German government
5) Building Gender Equality in Urban Life. We believe that the world will only begin to heal and live peacefully together with prosperity and quality of life for all if women play a much more important leadership role. Their special understanding of the role of family, the precious importance of sustainable life, and the power of love and forgiveness is crucial for making genuine progress toward a better future. To accomplish this vital task, we must work to break down the discriminatory barriers against girls and women of all ages, and to encourage women to take greater leadership roles in all institutions of our society at every level and location. Global Urban Development projects include supporting the Millennium Development Goals on gender equality, and focusing on strengthening grassroots women’s leadership in urban policy, planning, and development.
6) Celebrating our Urban Heritage. Some people thought this was an unusual choice for a major theme. Our view, however, is that cultural and environmental values are absolutely fundamental for strengthening economic prosperity and quality of life in the world. Under this theme we will address what makes urban life special and truly worth living. Global Urban Development is currently working on both a guidebook for local government officials, and an edited volume on this theme for scholars and practitioners, as well as a case study research project on Urban Heritage as an Economic Asset.
7) Improving Public Health. Generating sustainable prosperity and quality of life for every person and community throughout the world require a major focus on improving public health. Only healthy people and communities can become prosperous and maintain a high quality of life. Therefore, GUD has now launched a new program committee in 2007 to directly address issues of global public health.
Point Three: Engaging in Strategic Policy
Thirdly, we are engaging in what we call "Strategic Policy." Global Urban Development is not primarily an academic "think-tank" churning out volumes of scholarly research, and we are not mainly a consulting firm operating hundreds of individual projects all around the world. We will be doing research and education, as well as action-oriented practical work. However, everything we do will come under the heading of Strategic Policy. What this means is that we are trying to change the way people think and act in the world. Our purpose is literally to redefine reality - to change the definition of what is possible and how it can be achieved, or put another way, to create new possibilities for improving urban life. Every project that we engage in will be designed to develop new ideas about how to do things better, and to demonstrate that these ideas can be successfully implemented not only in one or a few places, but can be replicated on a very large scale globally.
Conclusion
To sum up, these three elements combined - defining the new paradigm of Global Urban Development and building a truly global network; organizing around principles and values under our seven main themes; and, engaging in Strategic Policy to create new possibilities for change in the world, and carefully selecting every project and activity to reflect our major Strategic Policy priorities - together constitute a new platform that will enable us to do something vital: to have a global urban development policy organization actually serve as an engine for worldwide transformation by helping generate successful large-scale solutions for the enormous challenges of the 21st century.