World Urban Forum 3 - Opening Ceremonies

This is far later than I intended to post about the World Urban Forum 3 Opening Ceremonies that happened yesterday, but my week has kind of gotten away from me. Nevertheless, let me say that the giddyness has not worn off yet, not even now. I thought I was going to be late, so I rushed through the hallways into the main conference hall, only to stop dead at a sea of people filling the ballroom, many dressed in the traditional clothing of their countries. The excitement in the air was palpable and didn't die off entirely, even after Steven Harper got up to speak.

Already mentioned by a few sources today (Metro, Tyee, CBC) that he made a sub-standard impression on the crowd by focusing solely on Canadian issues and inferring that we were shielded from terrorism because of our racial diversity (!!!!), he also painted a nice picture of Canada as the land of rugged, hard-working people who have gone from being predominantly rural, to largely urban (80% of Canadians now live in cities), in a very short period of time. He described how our identity was born in rural communities and we've taken that culture with us into our new urban lifestyles. But Canadian does not have the poverty issues of many world cities, nor the safety concerns, although he did mention that we still have a housing affordability problem after 30 years of trying to address it.

More self-congratulatory dribble from Gordon Campbell and Sam Sullivan after that, before Mrs. Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka (Executive Director of UN-Habitat) made an inspiring speech and filled the crowd in on what's going on in the rest of the world's cities. Urban slums now contain upwards of one billion people. Satellites reveal sprawling cities stretching into the wildernesses, dumping waste and taking up resources. In many parts of cities poverty is so bad that there is no clean drinking water or sanitary toilets and disease spreads quickly. Education is sacrificed frequently because the children are needed to go and gather water.

The theme of this year's forum is "sustainable cities - turning ideas into action", with sub-themes of: urban growth and the environment, partnership and finance, and social inclusion and cohesion. So with so many different ideas and perspectives in one room, we can take a little of the things that work and mix them with the things that aren't.

This session marks the 30th anniversary of the first UN conference on human settlements, also held in Vancouver, called simply "Habitat". Since then, rabid urbanization and the growing footprint of cities has become a highly debated topic and generated a lot of ongoing discussion. WUF meets in a different city every 2 years and the next one will be in Nanjing, China in 2008.