The "city" is a strategic site for change - a place of innovations, power, autonomy, diversity, inter-mixing and an opening on the world. But it is just as much a place of exclusion, poverty, violence and danger as it is of potential. What is more, through a tight network of economic and communicational exchange, a new "world economy" is developing out of the relations between the major metropolises in the South and the North. The struggle for the city is essential, but only on condition that it learns to progress from each individual area to the city as a whole, that it helps to produce new regulatory systems and that it joins the poor in their fight to be part of the city.

We must start thinking of the city as a rapidly evolving historic and symbolic totality, and at the same time as a diverse group of actors working in much larger systems: ecological spaces (the city is itself a group of overlapping ecosystems), rural spaces, regional spaces, international spaces.

The city needs urgent action, aimed primarily at the most deprived areas (which in turn calls for an accurate evaluation of urban poverty), based on a city "model" in which the different actors and actions could be integrated with a view to long term change…

© 2001 enda third world

Urban observatories

With the help of CNUEH-Habitat , enda third world's Relay for participatory urban development ( RUP) is currently setting up urban observatories in 6 French-speaking African countries, (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mali, Marocco and Senegal), at a national and local level (in towns and rural communities). Each observatory acts as a network of support and advice for decision-makers on topics of planning (assessment of given situations, elaboration, follow-up and evaluation of urban policies). It is developing tools to help with decision making (indicators,...).

All information produced in put on a web site:
http://www.ovaf.net The observatories allso assist in the evaluation of the implementation of the recomendations made by Habitat II.