Global Urban Development Update
(June 15, 2009)
It has
been more than seven years since Global Urban Development was officially
incorporated on December 3, 2001. On April 28, 2006, we received our official permanent
designation from the United States Department of the Treasury (Internal Revenue
Service) as a tax-exempt non-profit “public charity” organization, which is
vital for receiving grants and donations. During November 2002, Global Urban
Development was featured in a major article in National Geographic on
“Megacities” that brought us a great deal of worldwide publicity. Since then, the Global Urban Development
website has received two million visitors.
Our
first full-scale Board of Directors meeting was held in Washington, DC
on December 12, 2002. The December 12
Board meeting was followed in the evening by a wonderfully festive reception
attended by more than 60 people, including many members of the Global Urban
Development Advisory Board. This reception
was our first anniversary and birthday party.
We also held a strategic planning meeting of the Board of Directors in Washington, DC on October
5, 2002, and a special meeting of the Board of Directors in Washington, DC
on April 21, 2003. We held another
reception in Washington, DC
for the Board of Directors, Advisory Board, and staff on April 24, 2003, and
eight receptions in Prague,
on May 30, June 13, October 3, October 9, and November 28, 2003, and on March
24, March 26, and April 15, 2004. We held
a Board of Directors meeting in Prague on
December 12, 2003, followed by a reception, and we held two Board of Directors
meetings in Washington, DC, one on February 3, 2004, and another on
May 20, 2004. We held a Board of Directors and Advisory Board meeting in Barcelona on September 18, 2004, and we held a Board of
Directors meeting and Advisory Board reception in Washington, DC,
on February 10, 2005. We held a Board of
Directors meeting in Washington,
DC, on July 27, 2005. We held a
reception in Prague on September 22, 2005, and
Board of Directors meetings in Washington,
DC, on October 21, 2005, April 3,
2006, and May 5, 2006. We held a Board
of Directors and Advisory Board meeting in Vancouver,
Canada on June 23, 2006, a
Board of Directors meeting in Rehoboth, Delaware on December 15, 2006, and a Board of Directors
meeting in Rehoboth, Delaware on December 10, 2007. We held a Board of Directors and Advisory
Board meeting in Nanjing, China on November 5, 2008.
Global Urban
Development is fundamentally a worldwide network of expert thinkers and
practitioners, organized into seven major program committees: Building Gender
Equality in Urban Life, chaired by Monika Jaeckel,
Paola Jiron, and Wandia Seaforth; Treating People and Communities as Assets, chaired
by Lance Buhl, Marlene Fernandes, and Patrick Wakely; Facing the Environmental Challenge, chaired by Habiba Al Marashi, Mary Jane
Ortega, and Tom Roper; Celebrating Our Urban Heritage, chaired by Luigi Fusco
Girard, Donovan Rypkema, and Belinda Yuen; Global
Urban Development, chaired by Elizabeth Autumn, Claudia Laub,
and Nancy Sedmak-Weiss; Improving Public Health,
chaired by Vivian Lin, David Wilmoth, and Robert Zdenek; and Metropolitan Economic Strategy, chaired by
Peter Hall, Neal Peirce, and Marc Weiss.
As of June 15, 300 members of our Global Urban Development network
belong to one or more GUD program committees.
Every member of the Advisory Board is welcome to join any program
committee. There are also three
managerial committees of the Board of Directors: Executive, Program Management, and Budget,
Finance, and Audit.
We have a significant track record of
accomplishment. To date the Global Urban
Development has completed 21 projects, has another three projects that have
already been launched, and five projects that are actively under
development. The 20 projects that have
been completed are: (1) a report published by the United Nations Human
Settlements Program (UN-Habitat) entitled “Productive Cities and Metropolitan
Economic Strategy” based on a keynote speech and theme paper by Dr. Marc Weiss
presented to the UN International Forum on Urban Poverty in Marrakech, Morocco
during October 2001; (2) National
Governors Association (NGA) in the U.S. on “State Policy Approaches to Promote
Metropolitan Economic Strategy” (the full report is available on the NGA
website); (3) a report published by the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France, on “Leveraging Private
Financing for Community Development” (the full report is available on the OECD
website); (4) a four-day “think tank” educational workshop and training
session on Metropolitan Economic Strategy in Cape Town, South Africa, along
with a report on Metropolitan Economic Strategy for the South African Cities
Network (SACN), the national Department of Trade and Industry, and the national
Department of Provincial and Local Government (the full report is available on
the United Nations-Habitat Best Practices and Policies website). The South Africa project on Metropolitan
Economic Strategy was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID); (5) a report for the Center for National Policy in Washington,
DC on “National Housing Policy in the U.S. for the 21st Century”; (6)
a report on “Rebuilding Post-War Iraq with Livable Communities and Democratic
Local Governance” by Craig Raborn, a member of the
GUD Advisory Board and former American Planning Association Congressional
Fellow who recently worked for U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer. Congressman Blumenauer is Co-Chair of the
Livable Communities Task Force in the U.S. House of Representatives, and a
founding member of the GUD Advisory Board; (7) a report by Peter Hall,
GUD Vice Chairman, on “The World’s Urban Systems: A European Perspective” (the
report is available on our website).
This report was prepared as part of the GUD’s contribution to a European
Union-funded urban policy research consortium, ESPON (European Spatial Planning
Observation Network), and Peter Hall presented his findings at a major public
lecture in Prague
on June 13, 2003. GUD served as a
partner from 2002-2006 with Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden
on an ESPON-funded research project. 1.1.3, entitled “Enlargement of the
European Union and the Wider European Perspective as regards its Polycentric
Spatial Structure.” This report, along
33 other reports, produced by more than 600 researchers throughout Europe,
served as the basis for the ESPON Synthesis Report entitled “Territory Matters
for Competitiveness and Cohesion: Facets of Regional Diversity and Potentials
in Europe” published on the ESPON website (www.espon.eu)
in October 2006; (8) two reports published by the Metropolitan Strategic
Plan Association of Barcelona, one on “Metropolitan Regions are Dynamic Engines
of Global Prosperity and Quality of Life for Everyone” and the other on
“Metropolitan Governance and Strategic Planning in the U.S.” (the report on Metropolitan
Governance is available on our website); (9) an international conference
on “Redefining Europe: Federalism and the Union of European Democracies,” which
was held in Prague
during March 26-30, 2004. This
conference was funded by the Association to Unite the Democracies (AUD). On May 1, 2004, 10 countries in Central,
Eastern, and Southern Europe, including the Czech Republic,
formally entered the European Union (EU), joining the 15 nations that already
were full EU members. Global Urban
Development co-sponsored this conference together with AUD and the British
Council. Joseph Drew, Global Urban
Development Advisory Board member, coordinated this effort; (10) an
international conference on “Redefining Europe: European Union Enlargement One
Year After,” which was held in Prague
April 29-May 2, 2005. Global Urban
Development co-sponsored this conference together with the Ashburn Institute
and the Prague campus of the University of Northern
Virginia.
Joseph Drew served as the conference coordinator; (11) a report
by Dr. Marc Weiss on “Metropolitan Economic Strategy and Quality of Life” for
the World Life-Culture Forum sponsored by the KDI School of Public Policy and
Management in Seoul, Korea during December, 2003; (12) a report by Dr.
Marc Weiss on “Teamwork: Why Metropolitan Economic Strategy is the Key to
Generating Sustainable Prosperity and Quality of Life for the World” for the
Global Cities Program at the Munk Centre for
International Studies of the University of Toronto, Canada; (13) publication in May 2005 of the
inaugural issue of Global Urban Development
Magazine, followed by publication of
the second issue in March 2006, a
special issue focusing on the UN Millennium Development Goals, with numerous
articles from the UN Millennium Project.
Global Urban Development Magazine is published annually. The November 2007 issue is a special issue on
Urban Land Policies for Poverty Reduction, with articles originally produced
for the 2005 World Bank International Urban Research Symposium held in Brasilia, Brazil,
co-sponsored by the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) and the
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Mila Freire, Bruce Ferguson, Ricardo Lima, Dean Cira, and Christine Kessides
served as guest editors, and Peter Hall wrote an introductory article for this
special issue of GUD Magazine. Marc Weiss serves as the Executive Editor and
Nancy Sedmak-Weiss serves as the Managing Editor of Global Urban Development Magazine. During 2008, GUD Magazine will publish two
special issues: during August GUD will publish
a special issue on the theme of “Celebrating Our Urban Heritage” and in
November GUD will publish a special issue in partnership with Ashoka on “Transforming Urban Markets for the Poor throiugh Collective Entrepreneurship.” The theme addresses empowering grassroots
private market-based social entrepreneurship and supply chain initiatives for
economic and community development, environmental sustainability, affordable
housing and public health in developing country cities. On November 5 at the UN World Urban Forum in
Nanjing, China, GUD and Ashoka will sponsor a
Networking Event on this theme and to formally launch the special November 2008
issue of GUD Magazine; (14) an
international conference on Metropolitan Economic Strategy for urban regions in
Asia, entitled “Investing in Asia’s Urban Future”, sponsored by the Asian
Development Bank with funding provided by the German Federal Ministry for
Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), held in Metro Manila, Philippines
during February 5-6, 2007. The conference was coordinated by GUD Board member Emiel Wegelin and GUD Advisory
Board member Michael Lindfield, with advice and
assistance from members of GUD’s Metropolitan Economic Strategy Committee; (15) producing a global, long-term
research strategy for the World Future Council, written by Marc Weiss; (16) the “Future Scan” project involved
interviewing key community leaders and working with major local institutions in
planning for the future of the City of Lewes and its surrounding area in Sussex
County, Delaware, located in the mid-Atlantic region of the US. “Future Scan” was funded by the Greater Lewes
Foundation, and GUD Secretary-Treasurer Nancy Sedmak-Weiss
served as the Project Director. A key focus of the work on this project is
building support for a very large offshore wind energy project to be built in
the Atlantic Ocean nearly 12 miles off the coast of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. This project will supply nearly 15 percent of
the state’s electricity and will drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions to
help prevent global warming; (17) GUD produced a research strategy
for the newly formed World Future Council located in Hamburg, Germany and
London, U.K. Marc Weiss worked with GUD
Board member Bianca Jagger and GUD Advisory Board
member Herbert Girardet on this project; (18) funded by the Brookings
Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, this research project identified,
described, and analyzed national policies, initiatives, and programs that are
explicitly pro-metropolitan, promoting goals such as economic competitiveness,
environmental sustainability, and social equity. These types of public policies are now being
formulated and implemented in many countries throughout the world. Marc Weiss coordinated this research project
with the assistance of members of GUD’s Metropolitan Economic Strategy
Committee. (19) funded by the Mistra Foundation (the Government of Sweden’s Foundation for Strategic
Environmental Research), this project identified the key issues, challenges,
institutional capacity, innovative policies, best practices, and other major
trends related to successfully improving the future of Sustainable Urban
Development throughout the world, including climate change and many other vital
environmental concerns. Henrik Nolmark served as the
overall project coordinator, Marc Weiss and Nola-Kate Seymoar
as the coordinators for the US
and Canada, Belinda Yuen as
the coordinator for Asia, and Wendy Sarkissian is the
coordinator for Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. Other members of GUD’s program committee on
Facing the Environmental Challenge also were involved in supporting this
project on the global future of sustainable urban development; (20) this project was a spin-off from
the Mistra Foundation research, and involved working
with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to organize a meeting on “The Economic
Benefits of Climate Action” held at Pocantico Hills,
NY during November 26-28, 2007. This
meeting brought together US leaders from state and local government, economic development
professionals, business executives, environmental leaders, and scholars to
discuss connecting actions to prevent climate change and promote urban
environmental sustainability directly to strategies for generating economic
prosperity and enhancing quality of life. Marc Weiss helped organize this event
together with Michael Northrop of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Karl Ulrich
of the University of Pennsylvania; and (21)
Marc Weiss wrote a GUD report for the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) and the Government of Wales, describing and analyzing
Washington, DC’s successful North of Massachusetts Avenue (‘NoMa’)
sustainable economic and community development initiative, including the
innovative public-private partnership financing and construction of the New
York Avenue Metrorail Station, which has generated thousands of new jobs and
billions of dollars in new investment and rising property values over the past
decade. Marc Weiss helped coordinate
this initiative, during 1997-99 for the city government, and from 1999 to 2005
as Chairman of the private sector New York Avenue Metro Station Corporation.
Three other
projects are already underway. The first is Climate Prosperity that GUD is
coordinating. Climate Prosperity has received grants from the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund and the Environmental Defense Fund. This project is a direct outgrowth of the Pocantico Hills meeting on The Economic Benefits of Climate
Action. It will include publication by
the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) in June 2009 of the
Climate Prosperity Guidebook. In
addition, eight places have initiated pilot Climate Prosperity Strategies: Silicon Valley/San Jose; State of Delaware; Metropolitan Seattle; Metropolitan Denver;
Metropolitan Portland; Metropolitan St. Louis; Southwest Florida; and Montgomery County, Maryland. Many more places will be initiating Climate
Prosperity Strategies during 2009. Marc Weiss is
serving as Chairman. Several GUD staff members, including Richard Allan, Elizabeth
Autumn, John Cleveland, Richard Eidlin, David Engel,
Nicky Gavron, Alex Gray, Joseph Gross, Paul Haeder, James Hanusa, Christine Loh, James Nixon, Bill Radulovich,
Kendra Sandoval, Nancy Sedmak-Weiss, and Ivy Simmons
are working on this important initiative.
On November 5, 2008 at the United Nations World Urban Forum in Nanjing,
China, GUD and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund sponsored a Networking
Event/Habitat Seminar on “Climate Prosperity: Sustainable Economic and
Community Development.” On February
20-21, 2009, GUD organized a national Climate Prosperity strategic leadership
conference in San Jose, CA, in conjunction with the public launch event for the
Silicon Valley Climate Prosperity Strategy (“Greenprint”).
The second project is an edited collection of articles on
urban heritage that was published in August 2008 as a special issue of Global Urban Development Magazine. This project was initiated by the GUD program
committee on Celebrating Our Urban Heritage, and the four editors are the committee’s
three Co-Chairs, Luigi Fusco Girard, Donovan Rypkema,
and Belinda Yuen, together with Marc Weiss.
Several members of GUD’s committee on Celebrating Our Urban Heritage
contributed articles to this state-of-the-art publication. Partial funding was
provided by Heritage Strategies International.
The
third project is an international conference on Best Practices and the UN
Millennium Development Goals, co-sponsored by the United Nations-Habitat Best
Practices and Local Leadership Program and the Dubai
Municipality in the United Arab Emirates, to be held in Dubai. This global conference was preceded by an
Expert Group Meeting at UN-Habitat in Nairobi, Kenya during July 26-29, 2004,
followed by two Dialogues at the UN-Habitat World Urban Forum in Barcelona,
Spain, September 13-17, 2004, a BLP Steering Committee meeting in Dubai during
January 29-31, 2005, and a BLP Steering Committee meeting and International
Conference on the Transfer of Best Practices held in Medellin, Colombia on
November 28-30, 2006. These meetings
focused on the next stage of the UN-Habitat Dubai Award for Best Practices to
Improve the Living Environment. Marc
Weiss, GUD Chairman, helped to plan these meetings together with Wandia Seaforth, Acting Chief of
the UN-Habitat Best Practices and Policies Section, and Nicholas You, Special
Advisor for Strategic Planning to the Executive Director of UN-Habitat. Both Wandia Seaforth and Nicholas You are members of Global Urban
Development’s Board of Directors. Global
Urban Development is an official partner of the UN-Habitat Best Practices and
Local Leadership Program (BLP), and Marc Weiss co-chairs the Working Group on
Good Urban Policies and Enabling Legislation for the UN-Habitat BLP Steering
Committee.
Projects
that are currently under development include: (1) the Community
Productivity Project for urban low-income communities in the developing and the
developed world. Global Urban Development is partnering with Shack/Slum
Dwellers International (SDI), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP),
and the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat), to do the
project in Cape Town, South
Africa; Mumbai (Bombay), India; Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil; and London, U.K.
The CPP is part of the implementation and monitoring of the UN Millennium
Development Goals (an overview of the CPP is available on our website); (2) a Ph.D. program in Global Urban
Development, in conjunction with several major universities around the world; (3)
Urban Heritage as an Economic Asset, another worldwide project in formation
with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA); (4) a global project on “Sustainable
Cities Plus” led by the International Center for Sustainable Cities and funded
by the Government of Canada; (5) Global Urban Development Perspectives
will be an ongoing series of brief articles on key issues written by members of
our global network, and distributed via email by United Cities and Local
Governments (UCLG) and Metropolis to thousands of local elected officials
throughout the world. In developing GUD
projects, we are working with a wide variety of partners, including the United
Nations, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Shack/Slum Dwellers International,
Clinton Global Initiative, International Housing Coalition (GUD is an IHC
Member), Metropolis (GUD is an Associate Member of Metropolis and Marc Weiss
serves on the Metropolis Commission on Financing Urban Services and
Infrastructure), United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), ICLEI-Local
Governments for Sustainability, UN Millennium Project and Columbia University
Earth Institute, Grassroots Women’s International Academies (GWIA), and
numerous other organizations.
Descriptions of the various Global Urban Development projects are available
on our website.
We
currently have nine offices. In Barcelona,
there is Miguel Sodupe, Senior Fellow. In Beijing, there is Jiang Mingjun, Senior Fellow; Shan Fengping,
Fellow; and Sun Younian, Fellow. In Hong
Kong, there is Christine Loh, Senior
Fellow. In London,
there is Nicky Gavron, Senior Fellow; and Marc Weiss,
Chairman and CEO. In Oakland, there is Richard Eidlin,
Senior Fellow; Bruce Ferguson, Senior Fellow; Joseph Gross, Senior Fellow; Paul
Haeder, Fellow; James Hanusa,
Fellow; James Nixon, Senior Fellow; Bill Radulovich,
Senior Fellow; Louise Rubacky, Fellow; Kendra
Sandoval, Fellow; and Marc Weiss, Chairman and CEO. In Prague, there is Ludek
Sykora, Senior Fellow. In Singapore there is Belinda Yuen,
Senior Fellow; and Kwok Leong Kong, Fellow. In Sydney, there is Edward Blakely, Senior
Fellow. In Washington, DC, there is Richard Allan, Senior Fellow; Ron Armstead, Senior Fellow; Elizabeth Autumn, Senior Fellow;
John Cleveland, Senior Fellow; David Engel, Senior Fellow; Alex Gray, Fellow;
Pamela Hollie, Senior Fellow; Laura Lee Ross, Fellow;
Nancy Sedmak-Weiss, Secretary-Treasurer; Ivy Simmons,
Fellow; Carola Soltau,
Fellow; and Marc Weiss, Chairman and CEO.
In Barcelona we share offices with
Metropolis at 15 Avinyo Street in the center of
the city, the same building as the world headquarters of the United Cities
and Local Governments (UCLG). In Beijing we are located at Villa 18 in the Beautiful Asian
Garden, 8 Xinglongxijie
Street, Taipingzhuang, in the Chaoyang District. In Hong Kong we are located at Civic Exchange, Room 701 Hoseinee House, 69
Wyndham Street, Central. In London we are located at the Young
Foundation, 18 Victoria Park
Square, E2, near the Bethnal
Green underground station on the Central Line.
In Oakland
we are located at Sustainable Systems, 300 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Suite 210, near the
Oakland City Center BART Station. In Prague we
are located in the Faculty of Science at Charles University,
Albertov 6, Praha 2. In Singapore we are located at 32 Springleaf
Crescent.
In Sydney we are located in the Faculty
of Architecture, Wilkinson Building, at the Camperdown
Campus of the University
of Sydney. In Washington
we share offices with B & D Consulting at 1050 K Street, N.W., Suite 400.
At the Prague office, we
organized a seminar series on global urban development issues. Senior Fellow Ludek
Sykora worked with Marc Weiss on this project, which
involved many members of the Global Urban Development Board of Directors,
Advisory Board, and staff. At the first
seminar, held on May 30, 2003, Dr. Emiel Wegelin, Global Urban Development Vice Chairman and
Director of UrbAct in Rotterdam, Netherlands, spoke
about a major project he is working on to provide good and stable housing for
thousands of refugees in the recently war-torn countries of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro.
At the seminar on October 3, 2003, John McIlwain
discussed “A Global Perspective on Urban Housing Policy.” The following week, on October 9, 2003, Peter
Calthorpe gave a public lecture on “A Global
Perspective on the New Urbanism.” On November 28, 2003, Cornelia Poczka gave a seminar on "The Unification of
Post-Communist Berlin: Strategic Urban Development, Community Planning, and
Citizen Participation." On March 24, 2004, William Stafford presented a
seminar on "A Global Mutual Learning Network for Urban Regions." On
July 22, 2004, Mary del Carmen Diaz Amador presented a seminar on “Microfinance
and Microenterprise in Mexico.”
On September 29, 2004, Margaret Caust presented a
seminar on “Creating the City of Ideas in Adelaide, Australia.”
On September 30, 2004, Arthur Alderson presented a seminar on “The Impacts of
Globalization on the World City System in the 21st Century.” On
October 12, 2004, Christopher Leinberger presented a
seminar on “Back to the Future: Progressive Development Returns to America and the Lessons for Europe.”
Peter Calthorpe and Margaret Caust
are members of Global Urban Development’s Board of Directors. Arthur Alderson,
Mary del Carmen Diaz Amador, Christopher Leinberger,
John McIlwain, Cornelia Poczka,
and William Stafford are members of the Global Urban Development Advisory
Board. All of the lectures and seminars were followed by a reception.
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