IN DEPTH: WORLD URBAN FORUM
World Urban Forum was the place to network
Daniel Lak, CBC News Online | June 22, 2006
 At the conference, more than 6,000 delegates will consider how to make city life more sustainable against the backdrop of that soaring urban population growth.
Nearly 12,000 people from about 100 countries came to the meetings, workshops and social events. Most left clutching business cards or scribbling down contact numbers for colleagues in other lands. Among the many chance encounters, could some lead to new ways to solve problems?
When the mayor of N'djamena in Chad met Afghanistan's minister of housing and urban development, the two spoke in Arabic about rebuilding neighbourhoods wrecked by war.
In a nearby meeting room, the leader of a women's group from earthquake-devastated Jogjakata, Indonesia, was getting tips on disaster relief from a Sri Lankan psychologist who worked with victims of last year's tsunami.
Indigenous groups from northern British Columbia consulted native leaders from Nicaragua and El Salvador about dealing with newly elected governments that might not be as sympathetic to the agenda of First Nations as their more left-of-centre predecessors.
"It's all about networking," said Anna Tijibuka, the executive director of the UN agency HABITAT. "Some call it a talking shop, but I prefer to think of the forum as a machine for raising awareness and getting things done."
The best place to network, or just relax, was on the balcony of the Vancouver Exhibition and Convention Centre, next to the cruise ship docks. People marveled at the view and learned to stop talking when the ships summoned passengers on board with a blast of their horns, or when a float plane churned through the waves, taking off for the run to Victoria.
"It's fabulous out here," said Mark Sessions, a professor at the University of Waterloo. "Look at the view. My colleagues and I have been meeting out here to look at how to integrate water and land transportation in city planning. And we're looking at it right now."
Dissenting voices were heard
But there were dissenting voices, quite a few of them, in fact.
One belonged to Jockin Arputham of India. He is a founder and president of the National Slum Dwellers' Association, an activist group formed to stop slum residents from forceful eviction.
In his first address to the conference, Arputham attacked his hosts — the UN and Canada's government — for not doing enough to stop slum evictions. He pointed to Zimbabwe and other countries where hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes as governments "clear" illegal squatter settlements.
"What's the point of all of this?" he said, gesturing around the hall where hundreds of delegates were listening. "You call yourself experts or members of government and you can't stop people from being kicked out into the street from homes where they've lived for years."
Arputham even attacked the World Urban Forum itself.
"We have real problems with conferences like this," he told CBC.ca. "How much money has been spent, how many consultants hired? What could that money do given directly to the poor? We need to meet in Mumbai or Cairo or Lagos and sit listening to the slum dwellers, instead of making them listen to us. That's when some real change will happen."
His words were greeted with loud applause. Conference organizers who asked to remain anonymous said Arputham was asking the right questions and it was up to delegates to respond and act on what he said.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper even generated a little controversy of his own when he said in his opening speech that Canada was a country "that had largely avoided 'ghettoization,' the bane of urban existence in so many other places."
That prompted Mary Teegee, a band official with the Takla Lake First Nations in northern B.C., to ask whether Harper knew about the "Third World conditions in federal reserves and urban aboriginal enclaves."
In the end, glorified talking shop or not, most delegates said they found the World Urban Forum to be a useful and enjoyable experience — with a few caveats.
Latella Williams of Tanzania said she had met hundreds of people from all over the world, "but I want more young people to come to the next one."
Shantelle Richardson, an American living in Nepal, agreed. "There were wonderful speakers, but not enough on the issue of children and the young in developing world cities."
Sitting around a wide-screen television watching soccer in the German government pavilion, Andreas Soares from Mozambique pronounced himself happy with both the World Urban Forum, and Thursday's results at the World Cup.
"I met someone from Uganda who's sending me details of an urban agriculture program that can work in my country. And Ghana has got through to the next round. Viva Ghana and viva Brazil too."
The next World Urban Forum will be held in Nanjing, China, in 2008.
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