URBACT network Cities for Sustainability Governance (CSG) held a workshop in World Urban Forum (WUF12) in Cairo, Egypt. It was hard work, high learning curve and lots of fun. WUF12 is the largest urban development conference in the world organized by UN Habitat, and CSG was there to showcase how 2030 UN Agenda and the sustainable development goals (SDG) can be used to create a city strategy for holistic sustainable development. Workshop had participants from ministries, academia, from cities and from private sector and from several different countries in Europe, Africa and Middle East.
In the workshop participants used SDGs to map sustainability in a team setting and in a dialogue driven process in real-life work projects. Aim was to of course increase personal knowledge and understanding of sustainability and the SDGs but to also learn about the complexity of holistic sustainability and also about how other team members think and feel about the topic. This is important because when we do things together through a transparent and shared process it creates data that can be shared, reviewed, and utilized by all cities and communities glocally.
It also automatically engage colleagues, citizens, other community members, and create co-ownership to our topic. This leads to a process where co-created and shared knowledge and understanding are turned into shared and transformative action. And that is how transformation actually happens. We simply can´t move forward without that. Urban challenges are too vast, too complex, and just too wicked. To solve them we need everyone on-board. At strategic, tactical and operative level.
The SDG-workshop process had three guiding questions:
- How do you build a story for your city?
- How do you utilize VLR (Voluntary Local Review) in this process?
- How do you create co-ownership within your community?
The aim was to find feasible, viable, desirable, and sustainable answers to these questions.
Kind of 101 in "design for X". But that was done knowing that true value in our constantly changing urban communities is to acknowledge the complexity of this challenge space and to make sense of it, with or without clear answers. Simply because they can very well be outdated before implementation. What you do matters, yet perhaps it´s even more important how you do it, and with whom?
For the CSG facilitators guiding this amazing multicultural, multisectoral, multilevel, basically a multiX group was a great privilege. Start felt like hopping into cold water as we made the actual full SDG analysis journey instead of a light-version rehearsal. Risky call that luckily this time paid off (sigh of relief). It just proves that you can find clarity within complexity when things are done together, through a well thought and developed yet flexible process, and with the right goal setting.
Finally, WUF12 provided yet again important outreach beyond European borders and definitely in the right context. WUF12 slogan was “It all starts at Home” and that is to the point.
Special thanks to CSG members who joined the workshop Hélder Costa (Braga, Portugal), Krista Kampus and Triin Sakermaa (Tallinn, Estonia). This was another important and amazing milestone for CSG and the Story of European cities!