Friday, May 14, 2010

25 Urban Best Practices: Success Stories - WUF5 Rio de Janeiro

As promoters and coordinators of the “25 Urban Best Practices: Success Stories” joint exhibition which was featured during the World Urban Forum (WUF5) in Rio de Janeiro, we would like to send you our sincere thanks for your collaboration during the preparation and development of this initiative.
 
Coordinated by Fundación Hábitat Colombia, the exhibition took place with the technical and financial support of the UN-HABITAT Best Practices and Local Leadership Programme (BLP), Best Practices Hub Vienna and the Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF) and also involved the active collaboration of the partner organizations of the BLP network in the selection of participating projects and in obtaining graphic and written information.
 
The joint exhibition comprised a selection of 25 urban practices from 23 countries: from Latin America and the Caribbean (7), North America (3), Africa (3), Asia (5 - Including DWF project in Viet Nam) and Europe (7) – all of which were either winners of the Dubai International Award or the World Habitat Award, or had been classified as best practices by the BLP programme. In addition to the exhibition materials, leaflets and brochures of the UN-HABITAT Best Practices and Local Leadership Programme and of each of the participating practices were distributed, a video was shown with images of the projects and a website was created so that information on each of the 25 best practices could be made available for ongoing consultation.
 
We are pleased to share the positive outcomes of the exhibition with you, which have been demonstrated not only through the positive comments and interest expressed by numerous visitors (WUF5 had 13,718 participants from 150 countries) but also by the positive feedback on the written materials that were distributed. Specialized guides were present at the exhibition stand, who along with the collaboration of the BLP partners, provided information about the different practices. Flyers of each best practices were available and were distributed to the public.
 
The materials used at the WUF5 exhibition were designed as a travelling exhibition and are therefore available for use in other international events. If any of the participating organizations would like to consider the possibility of taking the exhibition to their respective countries, Fundación Hábitat Colombia would be happy to coordinate this along with UN-HABITAT and the participating organizations. The information is also available electronically, for any of the organizations who would like to include a link on their websites .
 

Wandia Seaforth, Chief, Best Practices Programme, UN-HABITAT
Lucelena Betancur, Director, Fundación Hábitat Colombia
Ariane Müller, Coordinator, Best Practices Hub Vienna
Silvia Guimarães Yafai, Head of International Programmes, Building and Social Housing Foundation

See Project DWF Viet Nam
See Video 25 urban best practices