IDB’s Mayors Forum meets in Washington DC

More than 50 Latin American and Caribbean Mayoral members of the Inter-American Development Bank’s Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ESCI) met in Washington DC during the IDB’s Mayors Forum 2015.

The mayors participated in public and private sessions and heard from counterparts in Europe and Asia. The Emerging and Sustainable Initiative was launched in 2011 to support cities with populations between 100,000 and 2 million people that are growing faster than the region’s mega-cities. The initiative was the IDB’s response to the effects that rapid urbanisation and climate change have had on medium-sized cities. It seeks to form alliances with cities to develop long-term strategies for environmental and economic sustainability and security.

The ESCI now supports 55 cities including Montevideo, Trujillo and Belize. Darrell Bradley, Mayor of Belize, told Cities Today: “The ESCI sessions were very powerful in terms of finding out what other municipalities in other parts of the world are focusing on. People within Latin American and Caribbean communities want goods and services and high efficiency in government but at a municipal level, you don’t tend to have the funding or resources to deliver that kind of public expectation so managing it is a daily challenge.

“Belize has been working with the IDB to fund infrastructure projects and among the areas we’re trying to encourage is to have more people within our community connected to social media to get the buzz out about city services so people can come into our offices less and use technology more to obtain public services. But in a small city like Belize, which is strapped in terms of financial resources, a lot of focus and attention is on basic issues like infrastructure and sanitation.”

Harold Guerrero Lopez, Mayor of Pasto in Southern Colombia, said being an ESCI member had coincided with the digital transformation of his city: “Technology has been key in the transformation of the city. There used to be one computer for every 23 students in public school; now it is one in seven and yet our highest objective was for it to be one in twelve.

“We’ve also set up a ViveLab free digital entrepreneurship centre and opened up our control centre to operate streetlights, an example of smart city development.”

Morten Kabell, Mayor of Technical and Environmental Affairs in Copenhagen, was among the speakers who addressed the mayors. He urged them “to focus on developing a new city as a city for your citizens rather than focus solely on sustainability”.

Milan Obradovic, the Deputy Mayor of Malmo, Sweden, told mayors: “It’s not about being the best, it’s about being the best city for your citizens so they can enjoy their lives. We have to act on climate change and make our cities carbon free but we have to understand why we’re doing this. We’re doing it for the future of our children and grandchildren. Billions of people won’t live on this planet unless we act now.”

The mayors also heard from Mashahi Mori, Mayor of Toyama City and Ellis Juan, General Co-ordinator of the ESCI initiative. Mr Juan told Cities Today: “We’re in our fifth year working with 55 cities and 30 have action plans to improve their quality of life and sustainability levels. We’re now into on the second cycle of the programme and focusing on the competitiveness of the city and local economic development.

“This is rudimentary grassroots work but we end up with an action plan that contains key strategic interventions in order to be able to improve the sustainability indicators. Yet we also get immersed with the individual mayor to mobilise long-term funding. The problem is that everybody knows what to do but most of the cities have a triple-B credit rating so they just don’t have access to funding.”

He added: “We have mobilised in terms of long-term finance from our own resources and from our partners–local development banks in the region–around US$4 billion for the initiative. The vision we have for 2020 is to have 120 cities involved in the programme and look at other types of cities, for example capitals which have a population between 5 and 10 million people.”

The previous evening, the IDB’s Demand Solutions event culminated in top prize at a Venture Night, designed to showcase the most innovative and dynamic young Latin American entrepreneurs, being won by an Argentine businesswoman who creates software that turns smartphones into digital hearing aids.

Patricia Sanchez, cofounder of USound in Jujuy, Argentina, won the US$15,000 prize for being the Most Innovative Startup-Best in Show. Usound also won the Best Use of Technology award with a prize of €10,000 from Telefónica.

Other winners from the fifteen-entrepreneur shortlist included the Catalyst Award going to Mariana Costa Checa who founded Laboratoria, a tech school in Peru for at-risk young women who are taught software coding and employment guidance, and Kahlil Bryan of Caribbean Transit Solutions in Barbados who won Best Pitch Award for devising a transport app for citizens requiring taxis or buses to monitor their vehicles.