World Urban Forum expecting more than 500 mayors

The seventh session of UN-Habitat‘s World Urban Forum is expected to draw more than 500 mayors when it meets in the Colombian city of Medellín from 5-11 April, the agency said.

Spokesperson Ana Moreno told a news conference in Bogotá on 22 January that some 80 government ministers were also expected among the estimated 10,000 participants from 150 countries.

She said that 52 percent of the global population now live in cities. The conference theme, Equity in Urban Development Law, had been chosen for the 2014 biennial event because today an estimated 8.62 billion people live in urban slums without basic services.

She was joined on the Bogotá panel in the United Nations Information Centre by Colombia’s Minister of Housing, Luis Felipe Henao, Jorge Perez, Director of the Department of City Planning for Medellín, Fabrizio Hochschild, UN Resident Coordinator in Colombia, and Patty Londoño, Vice Minister of External Affairs.

Henao said the forum provided Colombia with an exceptional opportunity to show the progress it had made in what he called social urbanism, an egalitarian approach to urban development.

“We will show the world Colombia’s advances as a country, and that we are a country ready to have just and equitable cities for peace,” he said.

Hochschild added that the Forum would help change Medellín’s reputation as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Instead it is a model for urban innovation.

Moreno said the Medellín Forum would feed into the 2016 HABITAT III conference, the global summit on cities held every 20 years.

Other Medellín agenda items include equitable urban development to achieve peace, resilience to disaster, and gender equality in safer cities.