UN-Habitat Arena - Two Regions, One Agenda: Lessons for Inclusive Urban Regeneration (WUF13)

Good morning in the UN habitat arena.
I hope the sound is coming through.
Can you give me a thumbs up for that? Wonderful.
We have this morning a fantastic panel actually looking at two different regions and one agenda which looks at actually implementing policies at local level focusing on urban regeneration.
My name is Katia Shaffer.
I'm UN habitats inter regional Advisor for Eastern Europe, the Caucasus in Central Asia.
I have my co moderator, Jose Hong, Yes, it's a pleasure to be here also with Katia, we are colleagues and friends.
I am with UN Habitat Bing headquarters for the planning and finance section leading the work on urban regeneration and public space.
That is one of the main topics that we will discuss in the session.
Thank you very much.
Welcome to our region here.
Welcome to Baku, welcome to the Caucasus, and welcome, especially to our guests from the Andes region from Latin America and the Caribbean region.
It has been quite a challenge actually to bring together this panel that will reflect on actually the great experiences that have been done in the two different regions, but also to bring together the common challenges and basically the aim of this session is to explore how we can maybe inspire each other and maybe find a way also to collaborate in the future.
It's a bit of, let me say, a getting to know session, an urban dating session to understand who are we and how can we work together on addressing actually urbanization in a global context in your specific regions.
I would like to suggest just the agenda so that we are all aware of this.
I will just briefly say something about the region and then Jose will speak about the other region, and then we will invite our speakers to reflect on your specific contexts.
Thank you.
I would like to open this image, which this region very much represents.
Imagine a building built in the 1980s or 1970s, families are living there, I A Mohammed, please.
Families are living there.
The elevator is broken.
The heating is basically permanently on or permanently off.
You have to open the windows to adjust your climate.
Maybe the staircase is not always clean.
The pavement in front of the house is broken and maybe the playground is there, but it could be safer and nicer for children to play in.
This is maybe an image that applies to many cities, but at the same time, there is wonderful innovations being done.
People are claiming their stake.
They would like to see better neighborhoods.
They would like to see walkability.
People love cycling, but cannot because maybe the infrastructure is not there.
So just to open this image, um, I think here in this region in particular, the climate agenda is very high.
We are at the Caspian Seashore.
You have seen it on Sunday, we enjoyed this century event actually that flooded even this venue, but at the same time, we have desertification, we have issues of sandstorms, desert storms, and so on.
I think these are all frameworks in which we are moving, and we will hear from different perspectives from your side.
Maybe Jose, you can speak a bit about the other region, let's say, Thanks a lot, Katia.
At what Katia was describing is also similar to our Latin American context.
In my case, I am from Peru, but we will have a representative from Panama, from Cuba and from Colombia to tell us that is a nice region where I wanted to point it out some years ago, we did a study with Latin American Development Bank, and we found that inequalities in Latin America were very high.
Actually, Latin America in that study was the more unequal region in the world.
So you have like very nice urban development like high end buildings, but also you have poverty, slums, and inequality similar to Africa Africa, for instance.
So I think we have a lot of challenges, and there is a lot of efforts coming up from Latin American countries to try to battle and to reduce inequalities in our regions and through urban regeneration processes.
We I'm thinking because we have only 1 hour, let's get started with this conversation.
Jose, if you don't mind, I will invite the host region to start and let's start with the central level.
Tinatin, you are sitting in the center and you represent the Spatial and Urban Development Agency of Georgia, the neighboring country.
I would like to ask you actually, how your country and your institutions are basically addressing urban development in Georgia.
I welcome you.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I'm Tina Galbaya from Special and Urban Development Agency.
As Katia knows, I don't never miss the opportunity to say a few words about our institution.
Special and Urban Development Agency as the independent agency was established in 2022.
Actually, this planning as the authority of the government always was there, but it was a small department under the Ministry of Infrastructure and sometimes under the Ministry of Economy.
But nowadays, we are under the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development, and we are independent legal entity.
That means a lot for the concluding and be the actively free independent legal agency in terms of international and national relationships.
Our main authority is to elaborate a national special plan.
However, we also cover municipalities and local terms in terms of, we support municipalities with urban and special plans.
We've reviewed the plans if they are elaborated by the municipalities, we cover a lot of urban and special planning in our country.
Uh, our planning system resembles a German planning system actually because the special planning code was elaborated in 2019 and it was almost German code, which meant higher six hierarchy of plans.
Um, we didn't have much planning experience in Georgia, actually, because after collapse of Soviet Union, all the institutions were abolished.
But now we are really happy to have a lot of plans around Georgia.
We are working on 12 plans.
We already have almost 40 plans that are already adopted by the several municipalities.
Our planning system is participatory.
We are really very proud to have a public participation from the phase zero and before the plan is adopted, all the phases of planning and gone through the public participation and public hearings.
What I can say a few words that very important thing is that our plans are supported by the priority investment plans.
What are the priority investment plans? Those are the plans that gives the livability to the certain settlement or the cities and those are the list of the investments that shall be carried out by the municipality or the public authorities.
This is the main idea of what we do so far.
And we may question where is your housing.
Housing is everywhere actually, in our activities, in our authority.
There is one statement in the Special code that housing issues will be regulated by the separate legislation.
Until now, we don't have one umbrella or we don't have separate legislation that covers housing.
But housing issues are fragmented in Georgia and several authorities are carrying out housing activities.
With the help of UN Habitat in 2024, we dedicated our National Urban Forum to housing and afterwards, we elaborated outlines of white paper that was prepared by very of the very respectable expert in housing, Mr.
Vladimir Vardosani and we are really proud to have that outlines of housing policy.
We count on national special plan concept actually because we have worked together with TR and TR was publicly also published and we had participatory preparation of the TR and in the R we have the item and specific topic that is dedicated to the housing and we think that NSDC also will cover parts of housing.
I will just touch few items that are covered by the national or local governments and that is related directly towards housing.
Those are IDPs, first of all.
As we all know, we are post Soviet country and we do have IDPs and in 90s, approximately 300,000 IDPs, We are moved to other parts of Georgia from Abkhazia that is occupied right now and from South Ossetia unfortunately, and 90s were very hard time for the country itself and in addition, there were IDPs, the country had to give them the shelter and even up to now, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs is building the houses to IDPs and according to their policy, they are giving the houses and accessible housing to them.
Um, we also do support young families and families who have the children under one year and we subsidize mortgage loans.
Tilisy City Hall is having a housing program in terms of rehabilitating depreciated and cultural heritage and historical parts and After rehabilitation, they are given back to the owners.
We do, of course, face gentrification problems in the cultural heritage part, but it's a common problem for the country for all countries.
What I want you to touch that for our next step is, of course, housing policy under one umbrella.
But in terms of the preparation works and reforms that Georgia has conducted so far, we have already completed systematic registration and thanks to World Bank, that was the first pilot projects that World Bank supported to NAPR and it was really a good example how the informal settlements or informal houses can be legalized to the owners.
We also elaborated length cover.
We are working on an SDC national special data and all the important reforms that are relating to the housing actually almost are completed and our next step will be one unified policy.
I think that special planning and urban planning and housing is, of course, so much related to each other that despite the fact that we don't have one dedicated authority to it, it will be, of course, the part of planning system.
Our next step, of course, will be reforms toward the unified housing policy.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much for sharing this picture and maybe let me immediately move to your side of the world.
Thanks a lot.
Now we are moving to Latin America and I hope for the ones who doesn't speak Spanish, have an interpretation device or you can practice your Spanish.
Now we're going to switch to Spanish and I want to thank the representative from Georgia for sharing what you're doing with your policies in terms of housing, space, and urban planning and rehabilitation in general, I wanted to begin with Jaime Gibne who is the Minister of housing and land planning in Panama.
We know Panama is a national government that's working hard to regenerate the urban space and spatial planning as well.
I want to start with the question, what are you doing currently and what are the challenges you're facing in terms of urban planning and spatial planning? Please tell us how are you regenerating historical areas that have high value, historical and cultural value? Thank you very much.
Good morning to all the colleagues present here.
Panama is a very small country located in Central America and it has a deficit in housing that is quite remarkable.
We are looking at 5% of our population.
But in terms of the quality of housing, we are reaching at 10% of housing needs.
The government, just like our colleague from Georgia mentioned, is working hard to try and rescue these social housing projects through financing, subsidies, and housing developments that are trying to fulfill this need.
However, the biggest challenge we're facing currently is that the development of these housing solutions has no infrastructure or no social infrastructure.
The solutions we have don't have basic utilities and services like water, transportation, roads, energy, health and education.
And on top of that, we have another challenge that the state is really in the need to make a big effort to reach those companies that are supposed to offer these basic services and utilities to guarantee the quality of life of each of these families.
This should be a priority in the housing efforts we're trying to carry out at national level.
In terms of talking about historical areas, we also made a lot of effort trying to rescue all these heritage.
These rescue efforts have made quite a lot of progress and we're trying to keep The idea that once it's salvaged, we allow people to come back to these areas and that we can keep the social and housing aspect of these areas beyond all the historical monuments, that we also keep the human aspect of these areas.
Because on the other hand, diversifying the city has led us to build very high rise buildings, almost 40, 70 floors high, and these represents a big contrast with the surrounding areas.
That have spontaneous development that don't have even basic services.
This is being solved through subsidies.
I can give you an example in terms of transportation.
We're creating a cable car that is trying to um create less traffic on the ground because this is suspended above the roads and this could allow many families to move from the periphery of the city to the center.
This is one of the developments we're doing in terms of transportation.
Another place we're trying to rescue and it's one of the most important objectives we have is on the Atlantic side of Panama, and this is the city of Colon.
We have a very important rescue plan that already began.
But taking from previous experiences, we know that now we need to start from infrastructure first and foremost.
We're making a huge effort with the limited resources we have to try and guarantee that the investment in infrastructure is ahead of the agenda and beyond any demand needed.
We're trying to guarantee social infrastructure and we're trying to avoid the same mistakes we made in the past.
Now we are creating spatial planning agendas and these national level plans in the past were executed without restrictions, without a proper structure, without verifying whether or not this social infrastructure.
Now we're really trying hard to make sure that these spatial planning are in the mind of local governments and municipalities so that they can manage these plans in a way that they don't lose the social aspect and the needs of every region that we're trying to rescue.
This is essential for us.
This brings us another challenge in different regions of the country, which is hiring staff that understands well what's needed to do proper spatial planning, including those that are focused on water reserves, water bodies, and that makes sure we take care of the environment as well so that this becomes a very sustainable plan in every step.
Thank you very much.
Ben Vivian.
Thank you very much for your participation.
I would like to continue now with the vice president from the S Planning organism from Cuba.
The problems mentioned now from Panama are very similar to what Cuba is facing.
As in Cuba, there's been big changes and big challenges based on these external forces that are really changing their quality of housing, the quality of the environment.
So I would like to ask you about housing policies and special planning and what are you doing in terms of the new urban agenda? As Cuba is an example of a country that created this agenda as a priority in their planning and how the implementation is really allowing them to advance in this front.
Can you hear me? Good morning, everybody to all the participants in this event.
Hello to all my colleagues in the panel that are here today.
I would like to begin sharing that Cuba comes to the World Urban Forum with a determination to make sure that the new urban agenda becomes vital for the development of our cities.
Cuba is a very small insular state.
That has been for about 60 years been under a very severe blockade imposed by the United States of America, which is worse nowadays because of the new administration of the US that came with new presidential orders and these limits highly, the acquisition of resources and really affects the development in our nation.
It's simply something that completely goes against the survival and the development of our people.
How Cuba faces spatial planning to make progress? Well, we have a national urban policy that is strengthened by the law of spatial planning and urban development, where we establish all the functions that each national government, municipal government, and in every province, and it ensures that every regulation that has to be taken into account for the urban and rural development of our cities is established there.
And It also offers a statewide plan for the urban planning in Cuba.
This plan has eight different pillars that try to diversify the focus At different levels, the province, the municipal, and the state so that we can implement these plans in every single city of the country.
This is a fundamental mechanism at national level to advance on the spatial planning and urban planning.
A different level, everybody has their own plan for urban development and spatial planning, and then The whole process is established in each one of these plants.
Of course, each plants are also connected to the state.
The state guides this, but they are implemented by each province and municipality.
We have a plan that currently is centered or focused on climate change and it takes into consideration all the cities that are the most vulnerable and we are trying to implement preventative measures together with the civil defense in case of natural catastrophes.
We also have other plans that are focus on, for example, serving communities located in the mountain area and areas that are very remote.
These plans are financed through the budget allocated by the state, which is granted every year to ensure the development for maintenance, rebuilding, renovation, and also to tackle any problems that might emerge through climate events or any other catastrophes that might occur.
It's also connected to policies like the one focused on women, women that usually are single and have more than three children, also for the elder people, people with diseases.
So all these policies policies are being enforced and are always trying to fall into the eight different pillars that we established for this new focus that we have in Cuba.
Like this, we try to tackle all the challenges we see in our country.
Currently, we're also developing a new policy related to energy.
As you know, All these impositions that don't allow us to receive oil or any other fuel has given us or has forced us to create an alternative way to obtain energy, for example, through solar panels or other means of energy, thanks to certain countries who have really supported us in the acquisition of the solar panels.
In this way, this has allowed us to provide basic services to those most vulnerable regions in the country.
For example, also places like hospitals, places that are essential for the population to certain areas where we house single moms that have more than three kids or areas where we have orphan kids people with disabilities, people that have certain urgent medical needs that need electricity.
For all of these, we created a water program as well that can ensure that water reaches all these essential places and where we see the most need for action.
This is how we have connected each and every plan so that we make sure that all the housing plans and all the settlements And in all the different neighborhoods, all the different areas of different cities that have had a lack of services, get these guaranteed services through the government.
We want to make sure we provide them with all the basic utilities.
So Through all the learnings we will gather in this great World Urban Forum, we will learn how to keep solving these problems and bring all these experiences to our country and keep developing all these fundamental topics so that our people gets the benefits and we can create cities.
That we all dream of.
So we are sure a better world is possible and we know that our country, despite all its limitations, we will keep going.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, sir, for the resilience of the Cuban people and in facing those adversities.
So we are moving to another region.
Thank you very much the resilience.
I'm taking notes on the communal experiences and I think as much as one wants to drive development in one own country, external influences, natural or man made side have always an impact.
Swlana, I would like to move to the local level.
You are working in the city of Qisina and we need some assistance, in fact, as Swtlaa will be speaking in Russian, and our colleague Carolina will assist you.
Thank you.
Please share your experience from a Tamdrin algia, which has.
Medivit.
Yes.
I just want to say that I'm not a professional translator, so sorry for my English.
And Tetiana said that she is glad that and happy and thanks for this invitation and she'll try to speak slowly because I need to translate.
Public in Moldova, Svo Last year, she performed and talk about the Moldova housing policy, and now she will try to show how they are planning housing system.
Uh, so she wants to show you the project that realizes in the history center of the city and continue with the topic of rehabilitation of historical center and important sites in the historical center this territory is 700 hectars in the center of the city of Moldova and has historical heritage meaning.
So it's a huge territory and it's really difficult to plant there and to develop this territory.
Vaslavaisto Silva Variant, we atyian plant, they teach they teach gado.
Reglaming plant sim, where they teach a small gado.
Okay.
She wants to tell you about a little bit of the context of this development.
The general plan or master plan of the city was developed in 2007.
I Prak plays Polsv territory.
Yuslavia is Polana Plan, Belarus territory is Ruthenian.
So these plans were developed with the conditions that it should be also developed the one plan with transportation development system.
Territory, R poor preval poor nationals canadist my best known is robotics, watching the tile plan, plant historic architectural, a poor ne plan.
Um, so unfortunately, it was difficult to realize this plan, but two years ago, they started to develop this zone plan and after that, Historical architectural references plan.
Yes.
Due to their law, they needed also to develop this one.
Absolute So this plan is important because I needed to observe and to assess all these historical sites and monuments and the amount is more than 2000.
Cadastra absolute.
Uh, so it was difficult because they needed to study and explore all these historical documents, all these archives, and how there was the development due to all these years.
So they are proud that this document is really quality, is good and great.
You can find it at this platform.
P all the documents are digitalized and they have location geometric, so you can find it.
Set up zone zlchit Travia Uh, so the next step will be to assess what are the preservation zones and why she's telling so detailed about this because it's this is the municipal need to deal with these problems, so they need to assess it and to develop it in the right way.
So there are a lot of debates what to preserve and what innovation they could do in the center of the city.
So in the parallel, they develop the general plan, master plan of the city that they started last year.
They want to align two of these documents and also to align it with the transport plan.
Paga Clchit plan of plant.
Um, so also they are developing one more project to vision habitat that includes a mobile plan to general plan, and they want to align all these three documents and for people will live comfortably and also they will agree to this development.
So it's a very ambitious plan, but we think that we will achieve it.
Thank you.
But Thank you for sharing this experience and I think we should travel to Colombia, to Catena, another very historic city.
Thank you.
Good morning.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity and even the opportunities of cities to share with you what we are doing, what we need, and to look for alliances.
I am glad to see that so many cities are following the new global agenda because us as people from the city, we know what are the real needs of the people.
We experience it every day, and so we are the best to the best to bring ideas on development.
Cartagena is a country of 1.8 billion people.
It's located on the Caribbean part of Latin America.
We are famous for our city center, and so we would love for you to visit.
We face many social challenges.
We have many informal settlements in many areas of the city.
We have problems of land legalization.
We have also lots of environmental problems, and in many during many months we have problems with rains and floodings.
And so we would like to share something very good that's happening to our city, our new mayor, which has been elected for one year and a half already.
And so This new mayor has created a new space for the people called Tambaku.
It's nearby our historic center, and it's more than 24,000 regenerated spaces.
Last week, we celebrated the completion of the first stage of the program, and so we had to resettle more than 120 families who had been leaving in informal settlements made with wood sticks near houses of billionaires.
These families were brought to new social housing in different areas of the city, which the whole program was developed in a participative way.
Our mayor went to visit the people, see them in person, and negotiate with them, and So we managed to have those families accept the resettlement and we thought it was a very good challenge because we thought it would bring them a better future.
But those people were very worried that they wouldn't be able to afford sustaining the cost of this new way of leaving because they were used to living in those informal settlements.
Another big challenge that we had to face was the illegal trafficking of drugs because that area was an area that had a lot of violence and drug trafficking.
And so that was obviously another difficult point with informal informal shops behind the former ones.
And so it was a huge drugs platform for the city.
So generated we created public spaces with football or basketball areas, areas for pets as well, for children to play.
So we created public spaces that are free and available for everyone within the city and close to the city center because we usually think about investing for tourism and we tend to forget about investing into our own people.
So the mayor, wanted to do half and half.
We have to generate investment for tourism because it enables further development, but we also want to generate investment for our own inhabitants.
If they live better, it benefits everyone in the end, so it was very important.
Having said that, the city is generating public spaces, which in turn creates new opportunities for growth.
We have created new alliances, new opportunities thanks to the World Urban Forum, and we want to continue creating value with the construction of a city that is more resilient and more inclusive.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, miss bondano head of Corporation of Kaag Indas.
This was a very appropriate intervention.
We have heard about different logistics and about the importance about public spaces and public equipment, and we have also mentioned how we need to develop national and local policies to benefit all the population and develop the economic sector as well.
So now I'm going to give the floor to Katia to talk about implementation of those policies and how to finance regeneration.
Who is a dear friend and colleague, is working in Uzbekistan with the World Bank, and I think looking from, you know, the policy to actionability and the project support actually is something that I think we should also discuss where are the challenges and how are you supporting actually the government in addressing some of those challenges.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
Well, Uzbekistan, I think is really doing a great job over the last few years in shifting a very centralized planning system that has been there for quite a long time.
So the context there is very centralized.
There is a significant detachment between the spatial planning and the actual implementation of the capital investment plan.
So you will have the agency responsible for preparing the special plans is quite different from those that are preparing the economic plans or the annual capital investment plan.
Then those who should be implementing it at the local level is also detached from this.
Bringing this all together is one of the key challenges that we have seen in Uzbekistan, the excessive centralization of the decision making.
If I'm the Hakim, if I'm the mayor of one of the cities and I get the spatial plan and I don't have the means to implement it.
How can I implement this plan? If I don't have the power to implement it, how can I implement this plan? If I don't have the data that would allow me to make decisions about where to put the schools, where to put the expansion of the city, which area should I focus on in terms of economic development, which assets I would like to focus on? These are all I wouldn't say only challenges in Uuzbekistan.
It's a challenge that we face in many, many countries across the globe.
But I think what Uzbekistan have been doing is that they came up with a very ambitious agenda of reforming the system.
From one side, they launched the biggest planning exercise that I personally have ever seen where they are currently doing national, regional, and district level planning at the same time.
They launched the national plan.
They have launched regional plans for all regions in the country.
14 regions at the same time.
They are also launched 35 district plans out of the 208 districts that they have and they are planning to expand next year for 70 more.
They are moving very quickly with the process of preparing the spatial plans and making sure that the regional plans are in line with the national plan, that the district plans are in line with the regional plans.
I think that is one of the very big tasks that the government is doing in Uzbekistan and the bank is trying to support with this exercise.
Another key challenge is, as I mentioned, about the access of data.
They start to invest in developing the National Spatial data infrastructure so that they can bring data from all state ministries, put it all in one geo platform or one platform that bring all the geospatial data so that it allow decision maker at all levels to make decisions around sectoral investments and spatial investments within the cities.
Financing is a very big challenge.
So many times we would have a very good plan, but then how to finance the plan We don't have money.
So now they are looking at different innovative ways of looking at financing the developments.
You know, private sector is now very, very, you know, in the forefront now to play an important role.
The context of Uzbekistan historically have been dominated by state owned enterprises that are the key driving force of the economy, but they are now shifting more to open for more private sector that can take the lead on this The private sector cannot invest in everything.
Private sector have their own interests, have their own agenda, which is a win win.
We need to be very clear which areas the private sector can support and which area that the state needs to intervene and can mobilize through its intervention more private financing.
That's also a very important area that the government is focusing on now.
I one of the key things that we are starting we haven't yet worked on, and I think we need to learn a lot from Latin America is on land value capture.
I think looking at Colombia, looking at Brazil, looking at many countries in Latin America, I think they have introduced many of the instruments on land value capture like air rights, like betterment levies, like developer charges or developer extraction.
This is something that's Uzbekistan and Central Asia at large doesn't have these instruments.
So we need to start to see how we can capture how the state and local government can capture the increase in the property values that are resulting from development on the city and how to capture this money and then reinvest it in further development of the city.
So, uh, In a nutshell, it's a very ambitious agenda in Uzbekistan.
I was telling to the colleagues in the government in Uzbekistan, I have been working in many countries and all the time, I tell them, please let's move things faster, let's move things faster.
Uzbekistan is one of the countries that I tell them, please slow down.
We are too tired.
We cannot keep up with the pace of the work there.
Work 27247 But I can say, it's a very enjoyable journey, and I really want to I'm not a Nb.
I just happened to be there now.
So I just wanted to echo some of the work that they are doing there.
Thanks a lot.
I'm looking at the time, and I think Mohammed, you summarized a few things and you actually build bridges across the regions and I really enjoyed this panel.
I think we have to move on and I think this is a really nice moment to capture.
Actually, I took a lot of notes, in fact, where there are elements to build further on.
You mentioned, I think on the local level tools and approaches that have been developed.
I think the participatory approaches are also something that this region can learn from, but I think we would like to continue the exploration, and I think we will be ready.
I see also our colleagues from the regional office in Latin America here on our side as well in this region to continue this facilitation.
I would like to just say the last thing.
I B is coming to your region.
Here is Fernandes, who is hosting the next World O forum.
I think we should continue this discussion and move maybe into concrete terms on how we can inspire each other.
I really thank you for this great panel.
Jose, you would like to add something because I would also suggest that the photographers can take a picture of this wonderful panel to capture the moment.
Thank you.
No, thanks a lot.
I think it has been a fantastic panel.
Thanks a lot to the speaker to the spirit actually of the World Un Forum of collaboration.
As Katia was mentioning, we can learn from each other.
Maybe we think there are very different environments, but actually the challenges are the same.
Maybe innovation that is happening between thinking out of the box is something that is demonstrated with the Worlun Forum.
I'm happy to welcome to our colleagues, our region to Mexico specifically and hope to continue the conversation and also please reach out to you and habitat.
If you need any support and to facilitate these collaboration.
Thanks a lot and see you in the next session.