Special Session - Cities as playing fields (WUF13)

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For some people, sport means the world.
Not because of medals, not because of trophies, but because it creates confidence, community, identity, and freedom.
So today, we open this session with feeling.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Can everyone take their seats? Welcome to the special session, Cities as Playing Fields co created by UN Habitat and the IOC, the International Olympic Committee that I know are watching us right now.
My name is Kristal Hadu.
I'm an architect, an urban designer, and the editor in chief of Arc Daily, and I will be your moderator today.
Now, when we think of sport, many of us immediately imagine stadiums, competitions, or elite athletes.
But for most people, sport happen somewhere else.
It happens in public parks, between housing blocks, in school courtyards, on sidewalks, along rivers, in refugee settlements, and in streets reclaimed by people.
Cities are the real playing fields.
And this session starts from one very important idea.
Sport is not an optional extra.
I will keep repeating this throughout this session.
It's an essential urban service, just like housing, just like mobility, just like public space.
Because when cities create opportunities for movement, for play, for recreation, and for physical activity, they're not simply prompting sport.
They are building healthier, safer, more resilient, and more inclusive cities.
Perhaps most importantly, also, they're building cities where people feel they belong.
So today's discussion we'll explore how sport can move from the margins of urban policy into the center of planning, financing, governance, and city making itself.
Before we begin our discussion, and to help us frame today's conversation, we are honored to hear from two leaders who have been instrumental in advancing this agenda globally.
First, Her Excellency, misses Anna Claudia, Rosbck Executive Director of UN Habitat, followed by Laura Chinchilla, former President of Costa Rica, IOC member, and permanent observer to the United Nations.
Excellencies, honorable guests, distinguished delegates, colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen, very good afternoon to all of you.
I would like to thank the International Olympic Committee for the strong collaboration and co organizationiation of this session and to thank all distinguished speakers and participants contributing to today's discussion.
Sport has the power to transform cities.
The way our cities are planned, financed and governed shapes not only where people live, but also how they move, connect, play, and belong.
Just as housing, mobility, and public spaces are fundamental to livilability, so are accessible opportunities to connect, move, and learn through sport, recreation and play.
At UN Habitat, we increasingly see sport as part of the infrastructure of cities connected to inclusion, health, safety, and community well being.
Our growing collaboration with International Olympic Committee is built on this conviction.
But institutions cannot do this alone.
Different sectors need to collaborate and many of you are in this room today, practitioners, the sports sector, planners, governments, and financial institutions.
I really want us through this session to carry something with us beyond the forum.
I would like to ask everyone in this room, what is your commitment toward integrating sport into the of our cities.
I look forward to hearing the commitments and ideas that emerge from this discussion.
Please continue to count on UN Habitat as a trusted partner in advancing this agenda.
Thank you.
Dear colleagues, partners, and friends, unfortunately, I am unable to be with you today in person.
However, the International Olympic Committee is with you in spirit.
We appreciate your commitment to this crucial dialogue on leveraging sport for sustainable urban development.
These are unprecedented times.
We are facing multiple intersecting crises, chemist change inequality, forced displacement, health disparities, and violent conflict.
Nowhere are these problems more pronounced than in cities and urban settings.
As we know, nearly 70% of all people are expected to live in urban areas by 2050.
This will compound existing challenges and we need to prepare now to secure the future.
We need to act fast and more importantly, act together.
Sports has emerged as a proven low cost, high impact tool that can accelerate progress across social, economic and environmental dimensions.
This is not just our opinion, but in fact, to Agenda 2030 Pact for the future and the Doha Declaration, even member countries have repeatedly strengthened the role of sport for development, social cohesion, community health, ler Ves very far aarelz between Bar Malate Blech Itay, Bank, Diana Ka, Sind, Idman and the role owner, Dems Omilar Tolar man and Diana Khaled, arthal must Edel, Kimchi Bzimalalre concrete, he Fraunalishhal, und, Busan, Sahara, a Busan Sfunib for mash Musar is a unun early Hachim Miler announced port policy.
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Incorporating sport into urban policy and planning promotes health and well being, fosters safe and inclusive paths.
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Sport is also a valuable tool for supporting displaced communities in urban environments.
Dear friends, now more than ever, it is essential for us to unite.
We invite you to embark on this journey with us to transform our cities into healthier, more inclusive, and resilient communities through the power of sport.
I trust that today's discussions will inspire and enrich your perspectives.
On behalf of the International Olympic Committee, I extend my heartfelt gratitude for your time and participation.
Thank you.
Thank you for these powerful remarks.
I think one of the key ideas that emerge in this is that if cities already plan for housing, for transport, for sanitation, and formability, why are opportunities for movement, for recreation, and for sport still treated as a secondary? The reality is that when sport is absent from cities, the consequences appear everywhere else.
We want you to be part of this conversation.
I'm sure you all noticed the colored cards that you have on your chairs.
So think of yourselves as referees for this session with the red, yellow, and green cards.
You all have your cards.
Great.
Throughout this discussion, we'll be asking you a few questions and would love for you to respond using the cards.
For each question, the meaning of each color will appear on screen, and you'll need just to hold the card.
Shall we give it a test? I'm going to say yes.
First question, it's a simple one.
Let's see if you guys get it.
Have you already worked out today? Green is for yes, full workout.
Yellow is, well, I got in my steps walking from probably the entrance to here, and red is no, but I have my reasons.
Well, everyone did the steps.
I see a lot of yellow, a little bit of green.
Thank you very much.
A lot of yellow.
I think it says something important because physical activity is not only about personal initiative and personal motivation.
It's also about time.
It's about access, safety, public space, and it's the way our cities are designed.
So let's now move to our first conversation.
If we agree that sport contributes to a healthier, safer and more inclusive cities, then the next question becomes, how do we stop treating it as an afterthought? The first panel is really about that, about that shift from seeing sport as a separate sector to recognizing it as an essential urban service embedded within city life itself.
And to explore that, I'm very happy to be joined by an incredible group of speakers bringing perspectives from local government, development finance, public policy, criminal justice, and the sports sector itself.
So let me introduce them and welcome them onstage.
Mayor Rohilo, can I have you please on stage? Mayor of Banjul de Gambia.
Second one.
Fanep Aka Kai Valvate Senior Advisor Alliance of Sport and Criminal Justice in Thailand.
Thank you for being with us today.
Anna Baghirov, Director of the International Relations Department of the National Olympic Committee in Azerbijan Okay.
Ana.
I want louder applause.
Audrey Giral Naples, head of Urban Development Department, Aj Frances Del.
Welcome, Audrey.
Before we start, we've given a first try.
Let's hear from our audience again.
Another question.
Does your city treat sport and physical activity as a basic urban service in its plans and its budget and its policies.
Green is for yes, it's embedded.
Wow.
Yellow is in parts, but not systematically and red is not yet.
Let's hear it from you guys.
I love the green here.
Great.
We have a lot of green and yellow.
I wouldn't say a majority of green, but I'm actually surprised by that.
For the yellow ones, I didn't see much red yet.
It tells us a lot on why this session actually is relevant, seeing that most of us come from cities that still don't consider sport as a driver for urban transformation.
Let's start our conversation.
Hi.
Mike is here.
Yes.
Let me start with you, Mayor Lowen.
If you were speaking directly to the development bank representative in this room, what is the one investment in sport or in recreation that would make the biggest difference to Banjul's residents? Thank you very much, Madam Modreo.
I am more than grateful that Those institutions, our partners are here.
But let me first and foremost start by saying that in Banjul we have stopped treating sports as recreation and started treating it as an infrastructure.
I think this is one of the most important for a city to start thinking in that lenses.
I wouldn't ask much.
Trust me.
And I'm sure our partners that are here will totally agree with me.
I'm a very content mayor and I know exactly what my people want.
So we go in for a float lit, multi use sports court in every crowded flood prone in our underserved neighborhoods.
Not an expensive stadium.
I'm trying to slow down as much as possible so that the partners will hear me.
When the money is coming, they should not expect we're not expecting million.
We understand that they are exhausted now.
So just a concrete slab.
Sonar lights, basketball hopes that is lower for children because it is always very important when we talk about sports, we always have to remember the children.
It has to start.
The rules of sport, you cannot do sports when you're already 50-years-old.
Indeed, you can do it, but it has to be the mindset.
This is why we encourage children to be part of sport activities.
Goal posts that move is very, very important.
A small changing room, indeed, and a tap with clean drinking water.
It is always important.
When we do infrastructure, we always think about water.
Madam Modo, why water is important.
Well, let me just allow you to come with the second question before I exert my 6 minutes.
Let me ask it.
What has been most effective in ensuring that sport initiatives are inclusive and reach young people just like you mentioned, but also women and communities that need them the most.
Let me go back so that I can bring it in context to put the fourth and the second question together.
Why it has been so hard to finance? Because too many banks still call this recreation.
And so many people here will agree with me that many investors have seen sport as recreation.
They put it in the same box as playgrounds and less.
They do not see what we are seeing, especially us in Banjul.
We see climate resilience, the race concrete surface that does not wash away in the next float because we at Banjul were on the sea level, so we have to think of something that will be sustainable.
This is why we always think ahead.
We see public health, a place where children run instead of sitting still, where diabetes and high blood pressure are prevented before they start.
I'm sure everybody will agree that we're just not doing sport for the sake of sport.
We're doing sport indeed for our own health, not for investment, not for anything else, but first and foremost for your own health.
That should be something that should be considered every time.
We see crime reduction.
Young people playing on the lights at night, not roaming the streets, looking for trouble.
You can see how sports is cross cutting.
We're also here smartly thinking of how to reduce crime.
We see gender empowerment, which is very close to my heart, a safe, lit space where girls can play in the evening without fear.
Here is my political argument, Madam Modreo to every development bank representative in this room.
And this is an honest opinion coming from a mayor.
I'm the only female mayor in the Gambia running the affairs of the capital city, and I know where it hurts most.
I know where the impact should be.
And I keep saying this in every platform that It's good to deal with the national government, but local government is the deals, trust me.
I want to say stop the funding of the ambulance at the bottom of the clift.
Start funding defense at the top.
That is very, very important.
When I say that, I'm talking in metaphor.
That is to say, come to the local government.
Today, your money flows to hospital after people are sick, to prisons, after young people have fallen into crime, to disaster relief after the float has destroyed homes.
That is expensive, that is reactive, that is unfair to cities like Van Du.
Give us $1 million for neighborhood sports courts and we will save you $10 million in future healthcare policy and disaster response.
Change your categories.
We classify the sport coat as what it really is, a multi sector asset for prevention, for resilience, for inclusion.
Invest upstream, invest locally, invest in the playing fields of Banjul to Dhaka, to peking, This is not recreation.
That is the smartest investment you will ever make.
For a nutshell, come to local government.
This is where the most vulnerable are, and this is the women and the youth.
Don't go for photo ops.
The impact is on the ground.
Support yourself.
You are also local government.
Local government is the deal.
They should be supported.
This is where partners should come and please for God's sake, respectfully, I urge every partner to stop using the top down approach of governance.
We are all saying the bottom down approach of governance is what the world is yelling in and that means local government.
I thank you all.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Beautifully said and very powerful looking at local governments and bottom up approach, as you mentioned.
Mr.
Van Tapp, I would like to continue with you and you're a senior advisor with the Alliance of Sports and Criminal Justice.
You work has linked sport to outcomes like crime prevention and social cohesion.
What does a city that does not invest in sport for its young people look like in ten years, in your opinion, when it comes to crime rates, health costs, and economic participation? Thank you, Chrisel for the introduction and the question.
Well, first of all, my quick e and answer to your question is the picture is not going to be good.
If you think about ten years from now, I think it is you're going to see increase in crime rates.
Going to see high costs in health care system.
You're going to see the criminal justice system bearing a huge cost.
All of this can be dealt with through investment.
I could not agree more with the man what he said about the importance of investing in upstream, basically, investing in prevention, which basically cuts across all sectors.
And which brings me to the point about, looking at this.
I mean, we're here in Baku talking about the housing and urban development agenda, but we must recognize the importance of these cross cutting dimensions.
And from my side, looking at sport, we feel it is very important that we focus on the issue of youth crime prevention because let's face it, when you're talking about ten years from now, you're talking about the future, let me ask you, who's the future we're talking about.
It's the young generation? It's the youth.
Until and unless we treat our youth and young people properly and with the right kind of environment growing up.
Think about, you know, young people who are out of out of school youth, you know, people who are, you know, in a poor urban area, you know, and, you know, disenfranchised.
The level of susceptibility to crime and victimization, even trafficking, this is huge.
So you're going to have to ask, we're going to have to ask our people, what can we do to find a way to engage them through sport, I think this has been proven.
I mean, the colleagues at the IOC can attest that this has been proven as a low cost, highly effective, high impact tool.
For governments and cities to utilize, you know, in terms of smart based crime prevention approach.
Look at this from the perspective of social determinants of health.
You know, people were growing up as a result, as a product of the environment.
So if they grow up in the environment that are, you know, enabling environment, enabling them to, you know, succeed in whatever potentials, then I think this is pretty much an answer in itself, you know, so What I'm trying to say is the point about sport in relation to a city development, urban development cannot be seen in isolation.
It has to be seen as part and parcel, mutually inclusive because, you know, I think you rightly pointed out about, you know, should not be an afterthought and I could not agree with you more.
You know, we need to invest in prevention so that we prevent not only the crime, you know, youth crime, but also in terms of the potentials of the health crisis and, you know, the high costs.
You know, think about youth.
The, you know, preventing youth crime and youth development can also contribute to future economic productivity, and so that is very important.
Just just the last point on this question is that to say a few words about WHO statistics.
I did not come up with this, but basically, 80% of adolescents or one in three adults are insufficiently physically inactive.
And that is, you know, that is a warning to all of us that, you know, this kind of physical inactivity may lead to many risk factors, you know, something that could be prevented.
So we need to promote and enhance the culture of prevention prevention across the board, cross fertilization of agendas and ideas.
Throughout different organization, even within the UN and also different stakeholders, enhancing multi stakeholder engagement.
Thank you, so I would leave it at that.
Thank you very much.
You touched a bit upon question, but I will even member anticipate question Lavois Come contribute as the community residents nonpl the Institute of Prevention, the Ladina Council The initiative that raised the awareness of the importance of this preventing youth crime and engaging community and promoting advocacy in community and exactly what you just said, our tagline is safer and more resilient communities.
We do exactly just that.
And well, because this is the initial phase, and I think the colleague from AFD can reflect further.
But basically, you know, the initiative was launched in Southeast Asia.
We really hope that the evidence, you know, the theory of change that will be tested and evidence that have been generated from this will be a basis for scaling up partnerships and eBay application in many different parts of the world because this is not a phenomenon, that is particularly for Southeast Asia alone.
And just for starters, we only concentrate on four countries in Thailand, in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Lao PDR.
But just to say that we emphasize the inclusiveness because we want to make sure that When we talk about crime prevention, it has to be seen as something that, uh, you know, permeate through, you know, different kind of policies, likewise, and same goes for housing and urban development.
So that's why, you know, I cannot, you know, emphasize enough.
I think you mentioned the previous speakers mentioned about the building of the infrastructure for sport.
Which is hugely important.
It requires a lot of, uh, you know, uh, capital in terms of the physical infrastructure development, but equally important is the social infrastructure development, and that of course, has to do with human development, human capital, which in turns give you back social return on investment, and that is huge, you know, Investing in prevention.
I think maybe the last point to say that the keyword here, I just want to share with all of you is the integrated approach.
You know, I just for my one person point of view, in my previous capacity before working with the Allied sport.
I had the honor of working on the General Assembly resolutions entitled Integrating Sport into youth crime prevention and criminal justice strategies, Gsolution 74 slash 170 and 76 slash 183 a few years back.
That's the first time.
I mean, for peace and development, this is the agenda that has been around for many, many years.
But these two resolution that I have just mentioned, these are reference point on the issue of sports and youth crime prevention per se, and we really hope that we can, we're here in Baku, Wolf 13, let this be the watershed moment for this agenda, much in the same way that it happened in 2015, ten years, ten, 11 years ago when the SDG was launched and then you know, the Paris Agreement for the climate, you know, adopt was adopted.
Years ago, you were asking me about ten years later.
Can you imagine ten years back now, it's been ten years.
Everybody talked about decarboniization, everybody talked about climate finance.
My hope really is to look at ten years from now, this becomes the buzzword.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Van Tap.
Thank you.
Let's continue with you, Anara Baghirov, director at the International Relations Department of the NOC here in Azerbijan.
From activating public parks through Olympic Day to sport participation and education programs, there are many ways to ensure more people and communities enjoy the benefit of sport.
How can collaboration between sport institutions and city authorities be strengthened to expand access? First of all, thank you very much for the introduction and good afternoon everyone.
From the National Olympic Committee point of view, I would like to say that in most of the cases, cities already have the space and sport institutions already have the expertise.
So the challenge is not the resources.
It is the coordination the challenge is the coordination.
To strengthen this collaboration, we focus on three practical layers.
First one is that sport must be integrated during the planning stage, not added later.
City parks, waterfronts, school yards, they should become active public spaces, not just passive green areas.
Moreover, that during this planning, the city officials must consult with respective sport professionals to make sure that these sport facilities added and planned in the proper way so they will be effective to be used At the same time, the infrastructure alone is not the answer.
It's not enough.
It must be activated.
This is where the national Olympic committees and sports Federation step in.
Olympic Day, events in public parks, grassroot competitions, open training sessions for young people.
All of it works enough.
City provides access and infrastructure, port institutions provide content, coaches, and engagement, and private sector can support scaling it up.
So in Azerbijan, we actively use public spaces through Olympic Day, community sport activations, engaging thousands of young participants annually.
At the same time, through Olympic solidarity programs, we invest in dedication from young athletes to coaches, ensuring that these activations are sustainable, not just one off.
To finalize this answer, I would say that when cities and sport institutions move from parallel work to shared ownership, then sport becomes not just an event, but part of everyday urban life.
Thank you, Ana.
Thank you for putting it so beautifully.
Azerbaijan has a deep sport culture from gymnastics to wrestling.
How does the National Olympic Committee work together with other stakeholders to translate this culture into what you just mentioned, the accessible infrastructure and programs for all the communities, and again, not just elite athletes.
Yeah, as you mentioned, we really do have a very strong and long history of sport culture in some sports more, in some sports less, but a sport culture does not automatically guarantee access for everyone.
So our role as a national Olympic Committee is to bridge this elite access to everyday participation.
Again, through Olympic solidarity, National Olympic Committee of Azerbijan supports not only elite athletes, but also coaches, sport administrators, young talents, people who work in sport in general, both as professional and amateurs.
So we are trying to build a system that not just focused on results.
So we run initiatives focused on mental health, communication skills for all the stakeholders, ethical behavior in these communities.
So these programs help athletes integrate into society and become role models not only as champions, but also role models in behavior in everyday life through their dedication and how they behave in everyday life.
Another key priority is safe sport.
We launched safe sport forums, also with the help of the International Olympic Committee.
In the last couple of years, we became very active in that area.
So we launched safe sport forums and within just a few years, we raised it up to thousands of part participants, bringing together federations, institutions, experts, athletes, all stakeholders, basically.
So this ensures that sport is accessible, safe, and trusted, especially in our case for youth and women, for example.
So our goal is simple, that sport should not only create champions, but healthier and stronger communities in general.
Thank you very much.
This is where partnerships anyways become critical because cities cannot do it alone.
Thank you, Ana very much.
Let's finish with you, Adré Adré Giral Naples is the head of urban development at the AFD, La Frances de Vl.
We've heard from the mayor, we've heard from the criminal justice advisor and from the sports sector.
What would a compelling investment case for community sport infrastructure look like to AFD? Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for inviting me for this event.
I'm very honored to be here today.
This Word Urban forum is a great opportunity to discuss a subject that is crucial to us and that is fairly new.
This is the link between sport and urban development.
I want to thank the IOS and U and Habitat for bringing this discussion into the urban agenda and IFD, the French Agency for Development, was the first development bank to launch a dedicated strategy to sport.
I think we had a pioneer approach on this, trying to reinforce the foundings, but also the partnership and the mobilization of the public and the private sector for sport.
You mentioned the Coalition for sport.
That's very important for us.
But what is very important is what you said during your introduction, is that sport is everywhere in the city.
But it is still treated as secondary.
Miss Myers said it very well.
Sport infrastructure is not only about recreation for us, it's a key urban infrastructure and it will help we see sports infrastructure as a cornerstone to achieve SDGs.
So coming back to your question and according to our experience, we had the opportunity to finance around 30 projects, including sports infrastructure.
A compelling investment case is never just about the infrastructure itself.
It is about how the infrastructure is integrated in the city and in the livelihood of its residents and more importantly, how it will improve the quality of life.
We have financed local sports infrastructure that became community hubs because those infrastructure are very important in a neighborhood and for community.
But sometime we can see on the field that infrastructures after two years opening became unusable or were empty.
The difference of that were rarely a question of money.
It was more a question of conception and a question of how the infrastructure will be managed and operate.
So for us, it is important to think behind the ribbon cutting ceremony and to think how this will work after.
So when we look at an investment case, we ask our partners a few simple question.
Does this infrastructure respond to a real need documented on data? Is it integrated to the city, not just physically, but also in terms of mobility, in terms of public space, in terms of urban cohesion, Is it a realistic operating and managing plan? Is it an honor is an honor identified? The most important is, will it serve the people who need it the most in practical term, women, young people, and under served community? Those questions may sound simple, but Actually, it can be quite hard for a city to answer them because it requires combining data and insight about urban planning, about social engineering, about technical design, and also about financial modeling.
That's the work we are trying to do with our partner in order to be able to support sports infrastructure projects.
That's why that led us recently to publish a technical guide.
I can show it to you right now because we are very happy to have it.
It's this for cities that want to develop sports infrastructure.
It is based on field examples.
The core message is that a sport infrastructure is not only a construction project, it is an urban social and economic project and it needs to be treated as one.
My last question for you is, what is the single biggest policy barrier preventing cities from accessing development finance for sport? You mentioned that not a lot of cities could fill those requirements.
I think we could frame this question slightly differently because in our experience, there are several barriers.
Everyone think and of course, it's a very important point that the main barrier is financial, but it is not the only one because building the wong infrastructure Something unused, inaccessible, that will be deteriorated is far more damaging than building nothing.
It waste public money, it erodes trust between stakeholders, between population and national entities.
One of the barrier for us, it is first at the national level where the main issue is and you say that very well is recognition.
Because sport is still too often treated as a separated sector, a sector disconnected from urban policy, from strategy, from cification tool.
When this recognition is missing, when there is no strategy, sport becomes discretionary spending and can become the first thing which is going to be cut when we have budget problems.
There is a need of recognition at the national level, that's a real barrier.
The second point is at the city level where the challenge is multi factorial, It requires capacity in terms of planning, it requires capacity in terms of preparation and design, in terms of including the community, and a very important point is in terms of operational and maintenance model.
That's where our expertise comes in because behind financing, we try to support cities in those phase to help us to be able to prepare projects and our role is to work alongside cities to help them to build capacity, to help them in the planification process, and to help them to structure project that actually last.
Thank you.
Thank you, Adré.
For the sake of time, I'm going to look at the audience and bring the room into the conversation.
You know how it works now.
You all have the cards.
The question is, is the biggest barrier to grading sport in your city planning financial or political? If you can have the question on the screen.
Green financial, we need the resources, yellow, both equally and red political, the will isn't there.
I see a lot of green cards here, so it looks to me a bit financial, I don't see your card at the very end.
I see mostly green and financial.
Thank you to our panelists.
Thank you for being with us and I'll ask you to join the audience.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
One thing we've discussed repeatedly is accessibility.
But accessibility is not theoretical.
It is experienced physically, spatially, emotionally and socially every single day.
For our next conversation, I'd like to bring in someone whose work exists precisely at that intersection.
Let's welcome on Zoom, Irina Rodriguez, Paralympic swimmer and architects.
While we wait for Adina because she's also in the US, and I think she's connecting right in the middle of the night.
Should we ask another question for the audience? Or should we wait for the Zoom? Should we continue the second panel? Let's continue then to the second panel and we'll come back to our Zoom interview with Ileum.
We've heard why sports matters and how it gets financed.
The harder question is actually, that it doesn't integrate itself into cities.
It takes political will, institutional commitment, and the courage to put it into the plan permanently, as my first panelist mentioned, not as a project, not as a legacy, but as a service.
The real question becomes, how do cities move from talking about sport to governing, financing, and sustaining it as part of everyday urban life.
This panel is exactly about that.
We're moving to practice in budgets, policy, governance, and long term city making.
And to explore what that looks like across different urban and institutional context, I'm very pleased to welcome four speakers who sit exactly at the intersection of planning, governance, development, and international cooperation.
Can we please welcome Igar Isbatov, Deputy Chairman State Committee of Urban Planning and Architecture in Azerbiutan? Salon Singh, Head of Services of Latoca City Council in Fiji.
Seku Omar edu, Director for the Promotion of Territorial Development, Ministry of Urban Planning, local authorities and territorial Development in Senegal.
And Lu Dian Francesco, Italian ambassador to Azaz Regian.
Hello, this ambassador.
Quick note before we begin, for this panel, some speakers will be expressing themselves in their native language.
So please make sure you have your headset with you.
I will also need some headsets, please.
Tim, can I have some headsets? Thank you.
Let's start first with the audience.
Again, coming back to you.
Question for the audience.
What is creating the gap between local and national governments on sport for sustainable urban development.
The green is awareness and political buy in, the yellow, skills, knowledge, and coordination.
The red is financing and implementation.
Can I see your cards? That's the second time we talk about finances and financial things.
Skills, knowledge, and coordination.
Anyone thinks it's a question of awareness? A lot of reds in this one, financing and implementation.
Let's start with our second panel.
Thank you.
Can I have some heads up, please? Hello, Mr.
Igar.
You are the Deputy Chairman State Committee of Urban Planning and Architecture in Azerbijan.
I'm going to ask the question in English.
How do I make it work? Perfect.
I'm going to ask the question in English and Mr.
Igar will respond in your language.
In many cities, planning frameworks prioritize housing, transport, and infrastructure while social infrastructure is less systematically embedded.
Where does sport currently sits within those planning priorities? I would like to answer this question while considering the context of W 13 because It was announced that the Wo 13 means housing for all safe and resilient cities and communities.
I would like to give my answer within this context.
First, I would like to say that, in my opinion, the most important thing is the communities.
Playgrounds, sport fields are the integral part of the housing.
While speaking about communities, I would like to look in a broader sense to how the cities are created.
As you know, the cities are formed throughout the progress in civilization and now we live in the post industrial world.
Yeah.
The structure of employment has changed in urban environments.
If during the industrial revolutions, there were factors such as factories that formed the cities, but now the employment has reshaped and the service sector is 80% of employment and they are causally connected to the housing environments and While designing houses and communities, we have to consider this.
Within this event, we speak about affordable, accessible cities and how can we achieve it? This question makes me think about it as an architect who worked on urban planning for many years within the committee, and now I work on this issue within the committee.
I think that the most important thing is to look at the hierarchical structure of the communities.
This way we can achieve goals like neighborhoods, forming communities, population like 2000 or 5,000 people.
Then we can go and look at it as several communities forming micro districts where around 50,000 people live or a bigger district where we have 250,000 or more people living.
Then we speak about bigger cities with million or more people.
We have to build this chain and within this chain, we have to Look at the main components of each community.
First comes houses, people who live in them.
The next component, as I mentioned, people prefer to be employed somewhere around their houses, and these are mostly the services that are provided within the urban area.
Social facilities, kindergartens, health facilities.
These are different components that are important.
The factors that allow to ensure the high living standards for people.
These factors are very important and one of the key factors is the sport infrastructure, playgrounds, These can be mixed used areas, entertainment centers or recreational areas.
These are components that must be included in living areas.
And based on the hierarchical structure that I've mentioned before, in a community with several neighborhoods, we have to understand what infrastructure is important, including sports, There can be gyms or open sport grounds, maybe enough for smaller neighborhoods or you may need bigger infrastructure for bigger communities.
They need to be fixed in regulatory documents while urban planning.
In this approach, we need to have an approach that is systematic and hierarchy.
Thank you very much.
Which raises also an important question about if when is integrated into planning frameworks, how do cities actually deliver and sustain it in practice? With that, I want to move to you, Shen De Singh, head of Services of Laoca City Council in Fiji.
Could you walk us through what Laoca has actually built, what it costs, who uses it daily, and how you resource it within a Pacific Island city budget? Thank you, moderator and fellow speakers and all the guests from around the world.
Blavla everyone.
Fiji has a rich culture of sports and my council, the lot of city council has placed sports and playing fields as a priority in its planning and budgetary process.
Having said that, we have worked with a number of stakeholders, including government, sporting bodies, and our rate first funds are used to invest in a simple a playing fields, multipurpose courts, pavements, which has multipurpose use.
It can be used in the day for completion.
In the evening, it can be used for recreational use for training for wellness.
Having said that, we have entered into an agreement.
If you have followed Super rugby, we have entered into agreement with our Fiji's own franchise, which is the Fijian Ra and it is playing in the high level super rugby competition in the Super rugby.
In my city, our ground, Chisel Park, is the home ground of Fijian Ra.
If you look at last year's the economic report of the Fizi government, By hosting the games in Fiji, the government has generated $108 million in revenue.
This shows the role and important sports it can play for the nation as a whole.
Not only that, it has been inspiring for the young generations, empowering our youth, the women, the girls to also take up sports as they admire these stars in the Bain.
As we can now see that a number of local players are now playing in the Drea team, both the woman and also the men.
They are now because of this talent development, they are now getting good offers in France, in Italy, in England and Sangion playing rugby and bring remittances to Fiji.
That is one part.
If you look at the holistic approach, we are very proud to say that we have built a multipurpose court.
We have 11 playing fields within a small city, and also we have 111 open spaces.
For us in the urban planning rule, it says that for every subdivision, we have to allocate 5% of the space for recreation, for training, all those things for community use.
So we have 111 spaces like that, which is heavily used by our youth, the children, the elderly, to do the wellness training to, you know, meetings and socialize, which unites the whole city together.
We've also invested in a 1.7 kilometer walk away in the main prime beach facing area with light and CCV cameras.
So it is heavily used in the early morning, daytime, and evening by all sectors of community.
Having said that, the government has also come on board and they have invested in a $15 million Olympic standard swimming pool.
Which will be commissioned by the end of this year, and that will not only offer compression opportunity, but as well as offer opportunity for the citizens to come and exercise by swimming in these pools.
This shows some of the activities that we're doing.
We also signed an agreement with the cavity Hitils.
They are now constructing a high performance gym in one of our grounds.
So they'll use 4 hours per day in the remaining hours, we one for citizens to use, which will give it out.
These are some activities that we are promoting at the local level because we see that sport is very important, not only at competition level, but also on a daily recruition level for wellness, to address the issue of crime, to empower women and girls, youth to divert from crime, and also to address the issue of NCDs, which is in in the Pacific at the moment, at 16% to 60%.
These are some activities we're doing and these are mostly in partnership and also funded by the rate payers.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm going to ask the second question about voluntary local review.
Just to understand a bit what came first, the vision, or did the VR process, the voluntary local review itself help you articulate and commit to it.
Which one first.
Thank you.
A, I'd like to thank the UN Habitat and USCP for helping us prepare our first VLR report and the second for the Pacific Islands and what this vision for Latoca to be a health cultural and sports touring city was there from before.
But what Velar has done, it has helped us recommit our resources and also refine and consolidate where we want to be in terms of planning for sports facilities.
Having said that, Velar has taught us to visualize and understand that through sporting facilities, we can achieve a number of SEC goals, which is S three, four, five, 11, 16 and 17.
So these are something that we've learned from the voluntary Local report, and this is what our council has now realized that is high time that we have to invest in these simple playing fields to bring about unity and social cohesion within the city context.
Thank you.
The vision only matters when cities translate it into long term governance and everyday implementation.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Sharon Seku.
Maybe I can continue with you.
Skumeddu is the Director for the Promotion of Territorial Development, Ministry of Urban Planning, local authorities and the territorial Development in Senegal.
The Dhaka 2026 youth Olympic Games are creating momentum around sport in Senegal with attention, investment, and visibility at the national level.
What needs to happen in your opinion, for that momentum to translate into everyday access to sport within cities and beyond the event itself? Thank you, miss facilitator.
Allow me to thank you and habitats and to thank the mayors of Bangi, Pekin, And I am the representative of the mayor of Dhakar.
So I would like to answer to your question regarding the Youth Olympic Games 2026 that will take place in Dhakar.
It's important event, a historical event for synagogue, not only a sport event, It's a way of urban, social and territorial transformation.
The real legacy of the 2026 Olympian Games will not be measured in the sports sector.
It will be measured by the capacity of Sengalese towns.
To transform this mobilization into a sustainable culture of physical activity that is accessible to everyone.
To reach this, some structural conditions should be met.
First of all, make sports an essential urban service.
It should be considered as a basic service such as water, sanitation, and transportation.
And so we want to create proximity sport facilities, and thanks to the organization of the Dhaka Olympic Games, we're creating multipurpose playing grounds in the city of Dhaka, and thanks to the support of UN habitat, we've built sport playgrounds in Bani.
The mayor is here today.
So those are actions that are being carried out at the moment in Dhaka.
And beyond that, We need to create pedestrian walkways and bicycle ways throughout the town.
We don't want only infrastructure, but we want the infrastructure to be used.
We need to organize activities in the neighborhoods, in different spaces so that young people, women, and elderly people can use these spaces, and we want to create a legacy in the different territories of the town.
The risk of huge sport event is to organize those spaces, only those big spaces.
What Dhaka 2026 wants to do is create a legacy throughout the whole territory of the country.
Not only Dhaka, but also the rest of the country should feel the legacy of the Olympic Games.
So Pekin can be a model of sports city, an inclusive city where the investment in the Olympic Games can help reduce social inequalities.
We know that Pekin is a popular city.
Fourth element, we want to integrate sports into health and education and climate policies.
The legacy of the Olympic Games will be sustainable if sport is not treated as an isolated item, so we need to reorganize its contribution to public health, to school and to equality of opportunities.
We need to give local governments the ability to act, especially in the area of sports.
In a nutshell, the success of the Olympic Games will depend on the capacity of the regional and local governments to become guardians of the legacy of the Olympic Games.
Thank you very much.
Senegal is integrating sport into the VLR, the voluntary local reviews, and voluntary national reviews the VNR through the SDG localization process supported by the partnership platform.
What concrete action is Senegal taking to transform those reports and SDG commitments into visible outcomes on the ground for people? I'm happy to answer this question.
This is what we are working on now with UN habitat.
If there was a national review aspect that I want to change, I would like to change the way cities measure sports and its impact.
We should not only see sport as an equipment, Most of the time, cities measure the number of facilities, the number of stadiums.
In the voluntary review, what we want to put in place is measuring the direction of access to a public playing field and also the frequency of sport practice, as well as the participation of women and girls, and the accessibility for people with disability.
We want to introduce indicators of active cities.
It's important to have those indicators in order to measure this.
Many times, we know that the local, national reviews are institutional, so we need to have indicators in order to measure this.
Picking and Dakar could innovate by integrative participative mapping.
That's what we are doing with a picking city.
We've done that with Paris as well.
We also want a legacy for the Olympic Games.
We want it to be link to the SDT.
We want to promote a national model by showing the localization of the SDT.
We need to monitor how many neighborhoods benefit from investments related to the Olympic Games, but also how many young people access to a regular sport practice and what is the impacts on health, employment, and social cohesion.
Finally, we want to make sports an official component of urban resilience.
Thank you very much.
At the very end.
And let me continue with you, Ambassador Luca Gian Francesco, Italian ambassador to Azabijan.
So Italy is engaging with sports across different levels from national priorities to city level action.
What opportunities exist to better integrate sport intonational and international corporation frameworks supporting cities? Thank you.
Good, good afternoon to you, to my fellow panelists, and of course, to everyone present here today with us.
It's a great pleasure and an honor to participate to this high level panel.
Thank you for the invitation and warm greetings also on behalf of our Under Secretary of State, Mr.
Claudio Barbaro, who was here just a few days ago for the opening session of the World Urban Forum and who has strongly supported Italy's participation to this event.
So to answer your question or your questions, I would like to perhaps, first of all, start from a principle or precondition and then go into some concrete examples and perhaps suggestions.
So as far as the precondition is concerned, I would underscore the importance of awareness.
It's a known fact and well recognized also throughout the debate in these days that there is broad awareness about the fact that sport is a growingly necessary and fundamental element to enhance, let's say, well being both at the personal level and at the social level.
I think we're witnessing, at least in our national experience and we're working on this, where there is a need to enhance awareness is on the fact that sport is most effective when it is embedded within a broader strategic framework that should connect infrastructure, urban planning, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability.
It should not be considered as a standalone sector, but as a cross cutting layer of public policy.
Moving to some examples, I would like here to perhaps mention, again, the partnership platform on localizing the SDGs.
Also because among the partners of this initiatives, we count on the International Olympic Committee who is one of the co sponsors of today's initiative, and also on our institute, the Italian Institute for Sports and Cultural Credit.
I will maybe come back later in the second question on the specific role of the institute.
But why I'm mentioning the partnership platform here is because localization is indeed the key, as it has been stressed during this panel and also the previous panel.
And at national and local level, what the partnership platform is aiming to do is to create enabling frameworks for sustainable development.
So in this context, projects and initiatives with strong social and environmental impact at local level are identified and supported, and since its outset, sport related initiatives have been among them, being sport, as we were saying earlier, a transversal lever that contributes either directly or indirectly to all of the SDGs.
And what is also, I think, important to underscore is that, of course, this approach is fully aligned with the evolution of the international debate.
I'm thinking, of course, the recent resolution on sport adopted at the level of the UN Environment Assembly and the Pact for the future.
I and we're also very closely looking at the experience and coordinating, for example, with the Sports and Sustainable Urban Development Initiative, which is led by the IOC and the UN Habitat, because indeed coordination is a very, very important element in this.
I mean, it's been very rightly stressed the importance of the bottom up approach and local experiences.
But it is also very important to avoid fragmentation and to maximize the synergies in this specific case between sport, urban development, and international cooperation.
So from this perspective, and I conclude, I think, to enable sport to be fully embedded in city policy and strategic urban planning, we should not only see sports as a tool to promote healthy lifestyles, but also as a means to foster a new culture of sustainability and environmental education, strengthen citizens' participation in the implementation of the SDGs, and also their awareness of the SDGs, and contribute to urban regeneration and revitalization processes which directly benefit well being, safety, and social cohesion.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You mentioned briefly the ICSC, the Institute Per Credito and my second question is going to be about it.
Italy has been a leader in sport financing through the ICSC and the G seven Pescara Declaration.
How can we ensure sustainable financing for urban sport is not a one off grant, but the systems that cities can actually rely on.
Thank you very much for mentioning the Pescara Declaration on sustainable investment in the sport ecosystem, which was adopted during the latest Italian G seven presidency under the umbrella of the G seven Development Ministers Declaration.
It's very useful, I think that you mention this because the declaration recognizes explicitly that sport can act as an enabler for achieving the SDG objectives.
But at the same time it stresses the need to mobilize quality and long term investment.
Moving beyond the one off approach.
This is very important because we know that everything that relates, well, in general, we could say to urban planning, but in particular, as far as sports facilities and structures are concerned, from a strictly economic perspective are very often not seen as investments or at least as investments with a quick, let's say, return on equity ratio.
So they need long term investments, they need credibility, and this is exactly what the role of the Institute for Sports and Cultural Credit or the ICSC is about.
It's a specialized public development bank which has gone through a recent reform, namely in 2024 to better address these objectives.
As it does not limit itself to financing sport infrastructures, but also develops dedicated credit instruments, public private partnerships, and risk mitigation mechanisms for local authorities, thus enabling municipalities to plan investments, as we were saying over time in a stable and predictable manner.
And just to give you some figures that may allow to better understand, let's say, the scope and the way the institute works.
In 2024, the institute has given a total of loans of around 550 million euros.
Which being the first year of its new operational dimension is quite good achievement.
In its portfolio, more than 60%, let's say of the clients, let's call them that way, are local entities.
The remaining 20% are firms and enterprises, and attention also to the private sector, which of course is working again, mostly at the local level.
Then there is a 9% also of non profit organization.
I think to wrap up It's a demonstration or one of many answers that can be declined at the national level to allow sustainable finance to provide continuity, reliability, and coherence of funding, enabling cities to plan over the long term and connecting sports facilities to a wider vision of sustainable urban development.
In this way, sport can become a lever to strengthen social cohesion while empowering local communities and improving also urban quality of life.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Ambassador.
I have one last question for our panelists.
It's one common question for all of you.
I really appreciate if we can have one sentence from each one of you.
I'm going to start with you, Mr.
Ig.
It's the same question for everyone.
Cities and the audience in this room, they're taking notes.
What is the one recommendation, the one thing you would change in how cities plan, finance, or govern sport infrastructure and programs that would have, in your opinion, the highest impact? Planning.
Planning.
I mentioned, partnership for goals.
We have to achieve sustainability for goals, we have to start with the local councils.
That is the heartbeat of the nation.
So we need to support the councils to develop these playing fields and promote sports to achieve a more socially cohesive city, to achieve a more inclusive city and a sustainable and resilient city for the future of generations.
Thank you.
Second.
I I would say, like the other support local authorities planning, and also integrate sport in planning documents.
Integrates into urban planning systematically into sustainable financing frameworks and SDG localization processes rather than addressing it through isolated projects.
In a nutshell, to move sport from the margins to the core of urban policy.
Thank you very much.
Can we hear it for our panelists? Thank you very much.
So thank you very much.
I'm going to ask you to take a seat with the audience.
Ana is back online with us.
She's on Zoom.
So let me reintroduce her again.
Please welcome live on Zoom, Irina Rodriguez, Paralmpic swimmer and architect.
Hi, Irina, can you hear us? Yes.
Can you hear me? We still cannot hear you, but thank you for waking up in the middle of the night to be with us.
I think you can hear me, right? Yes, I can.
We can hear you.
Can we have the volume higher, please? Hi, Alena.
Hello.
Okay.
Great.
Again, thank you for waking up in the middle of the night to be with us.
You're an architect and a Paralympic swimmer who has experienced displacement.
How do these double hats come together and do they shape your thinking, your understanding, and your work around access to the sport in city settings? Thank you so much for the question and thank you so much for all of us being patient with technology.
I'm super happy to be here today.
To answer your question, I think that the easy way to say is that people with disabilities have this amazing way of adapting.
As well as people who see displacement, right? So the combination of the two really helped me to start a new life in the United States.
I was born in Cuba, and I moved here when I was 15-years-old, and I learned very quickly that through sports, actually, that I could do whatever I want, whatever I could dream of.
And it was then to a coach that told me in high school invited me to come and swim with the team.
And I was the one that told the coach I couldn't do it because I didn't work.
And the coach is like, but you told me you swim.
So I'm not asking you to walk.
I'm asking you to swim.
And that made it very easy for me to start shifting that mindset and start to look at myself in a different way that I had never thought before because I could only see back at home in Cuba barriers around me.
So when I started walking, the urban planning around me did not cater for ramps, did not have anything that could actually empower me or help me to become whoever I wanted to be besides acquiring a disability.
And seeing this new reality when I moved to the United States, that I could see that I had the environment that would allow me to thrive.
And it was through sport that I discovered this.
It was fantastic.
So I decided to embark in this idea of becoming a prolific swimmer, an easy one, right? So I trained, of course, like any high performance athlete, and at the same time, I was studying architecture.
And it really helped me also to focus on the architecture, the fact that I had encountered so many barriers before.
Because I really wanted to make it more accessible environment for all.
And the sport was the driver, and funny enough, life goes on.
I competed in the Palmpic Games, and when I go back to work in the field of architecture and accessibility, I find myself in this great intersection of trying to understand both and how I could still use the sports as my driver, but also architecture to give the opportunity for anybody that could dream off of doing something to have that right environment for them.
And with that said, we've had the opportunities to work at different Olympic and Paralympic games.
And I have seen in the past, also in regional games, probably one of my favorite examples is Lima, where it came from not having a policy in place to developing one and then developing those venues to be ready for the games and those venues being the ones that were used afterwards, after the games left.
And now we're seeing that games are returning to Lima because of how successful this was.
And it's interesting to see that full cycle that allow for a fantastic change in policy.
So all of you guys here have a fantastic responsibility in the space of sports and politics on how to really make that happen, using sports as the reason behind some of these changes.
Then on this investment side, people saw the opportunity on investing in this infrastructure on a city that didn't have enough sport infrastructure to really cater for the community in general and not only that, make it 100% accessible to be able to have the Caban American games.
With that, athletes today can go back and frame and come back and continue with their activities in the sports space at a community based level, but also all the way to the national level.
This is a I think that I want to stress that sport is a healing process for a lot of people with disabilities.
So we really have to take that seriously and see that by providing spaces in the sports areas.
I hear a lot in the conversations that we were having before that we speak about sports, but I want to hear more about sport for all.
And when I say all, I'm not talking just about the financial reality of all of us.
Is also about the disabilities.
How can we start to see pair sports implemented in a lot of these community based and development investments that we're seeing around the world.
Thank you, Alina.
I'm very impressed by you, by your portfolio, by everything.
I want to ask you, what does an accessible city playing field actually look like, not in theory, but in the specific design decisions that make or break it for a person with disability, for a refugee, for a child, for the elderly person.
I think that the deal breaker is to think about it.
I like to put a lot of pressure on the architects and I know you're an architect as well.
Yes.
So I'm not taking you out of the equation, and I'm not taking out of your magazine either because I think that we need to start putting more and more pressure on education and how are we allocating those architects, those designers, those urban planners to really take this as part of their decision making process.
But also, they're the ones that are going to bring it to the institutions that are financing some of these projects and say, yes, we're now reducing the budget in this area because it's relevant and because we understand that we need to serve all of our users.
So this is the approach that I try to take in every decision that we make in terms of really pushing some of our stakeholders.
Sometimes you can only imagine how challenging that is because we think that just because it's five of the population in the world is not five, it's 15.
And to be honest with you, Every single person with a disability, at least, their disability is affecting three other people around theirselves.
Let's think about families.
If you are the one with a disability, three people in your household, at least, are going to be impacted by it and the decisions that they make every day, they're going to be related to the disability of this person.
And I think that we need to with that, we need to start changing it around and start to think that the disability doesn't live within the person.
It lives within the environment and the environment not being able to provide for people, to be able to do what they need to do.
So let's remove the burden from the person and look at the environments that we have.
So I think that that would be my number one point, and I think that governments, and this is a funny one that I always try to enforce as well, that it is that people with disabilities were not exempt from paying taxes.
So I really encourage governments to take this to heart and really see that policy have to also serve this population.
And the government is the one to enforce and make sure that places are being designed and built accordingly to make sure that accessibility is taken into consideration.
And by doing that in the sports spaces, what a fun way to start the process and what a fantastic driver to do that.
And as my previous example with Lima, has seen it also in a smaller scale.
And I would like to bring up DLA 28 right now, which I'm part of the organizing committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games with PLA, which is a program that is community based, and you have athletes that are able to at a grassroots level to learn about sports.
The organization has taken into heart the inclusion of parasports into a lot of these developing programs in the community.
So we have not only kids that can have access to sports, but also kids with disabilities that can participate also in these sports at the same level, in the same venue with the same kids.
And not only this allows for kids to participate, but also we need trainers to understand how parasports works.
So the program is kind of in full circle and really supports the bigger community.
So the games are already leaving that legacy impact, not at the end of the game, but we're seeing how that's progressing.
And funny enough, the best story we have so far or one of the best stories that player L has is that one of our athletes is the only medalist out of the program at Olympic or Paralympic Games who won silver in Paris.
So you're already seeing how sport is changing the life of the athlete, and this athlete not even started competing in many years ago.
They made it the Paris Games and now she's switching to another sport because she found it so interesting and she's being exposed to so many opportunities that she's seeing now, a new area where she can learn, participate, and really develop.
I think that this is the beauty of the power that sports at the community level has.
And if you're providing the right environment, you're going to be able to thrive.
Thank you, Nina.
Thank you very much for being with us.
Guys, we have a surprise for everyone that stayed with us.
You can start setting up while I wrap up.
Before we close, I'd like us to leave not only with ideas, but also with commitments.
While they set up, please take one of your cards.
You can use one, you can use two.
You can also use three.
It depends on how ambitious you are, and please write down one thing you will do differently in your city, your organization, your work because of something that you've heard today.
We would like to collect these commitments.
The volunteers will collect them at the door.
But while we wait for the whole setup, I would ask you please to write your commitment on the cards that you have.
It can be a policy change, it could be a partnership.
It could be something that really was striking for you today.
It could be a design approach.
It could be a budget priority since a lot of people talked finances.
It can also be a personal commitment, something that you're going to do in your city.
I think we're ready.
What we're witnessing is much more than a performance.
The White Suit Girls Initiative was launched here in Azerbijan to encourage girls to wear white Judo suits before or instead of traditional wedding dresses, using sport as a tool to challenge early marriage, support education, and empower young women.
Since its launch in 2023 by the Azerbaijan Judo Foundation and Azaz telecom, the initiative has already helped hundreds of girls begin their Judo journey, with many continuing to train and even compete at local and international level today.
I think it captures perfectly the spirit of today's conversation.
Let's hear a bit some commitments from our audience.
Aha.
Does anyone want to share any commitment that you wrote, we have a volunteer.
Thank you for volunteering.
Yeah.
My name is Hussein El Nafati.
I am an urban planner from Abuja Nigeria.
Mine is a question that I want to ask.
It goes like this.
How do we justify investment in recreational play fields in cities struggling with housing, transport, and infrastructural deficit, especially in Africa.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
The commitment is actually a question.
Anyone else wants to share any other commitment? If not, please make sure to share them with the volunteers at the door.
Thank you all for being part of this conversation.
Thank you to UN Habitat, thank you to the IOC and to all our speakers and all of you here in Baku and online.
Enjoy the rest of the forum.
Thank you, everyone.