Urban Regeneration as a tool for an inclusive and sustainable recovery
• On December 1 and 2, the Global Meeting of Experts “Urban Regeneration as a tool for an inclusive and sustainable recovery” took place in Bilbao, where international experiences and good practices were exchanged and compared, identifying the necessary preconditions for governments that They seek to develop urban regeneration policies and interventions, considering the new vulnerabilities and trends that emerged in cities during COVID-19.
The meeting was jointly organized by the UN-Habitat office in Spain and the Basque Government. Experts and representatives of institutions such as UN-Habitat, the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, the Basque Government, the University of Deusto, UCLG, INCASOL, World Resources Institute, the City Councils of Rotterdam, Copenhagen and Tehran, URBACT, ISGlobal, the Agenzia per la Cohesione Territoriale of Italy, Agence Nationale pour la Rénovation Urbaine of France or the Joint Research Center and DG REGIO of the European Commission, among many others, recognized that urban regeneration has become one of the fundamental tools that they should apply to promote an inclusive, fair and sustainable recovery.
The institutional welcome was given by Carmen Sánchez-Miranda, head of the UN-Habitat office in Spain, and Ignacio de la Puerta, director of Territorial Planning and Urban Agenda of the Basque Government, who took the opportunity to thank and highlight the collaboration of the Government with UN-Habitat in the development of the Urban Agenda of the Basque Country.
The conclusions of this meeting seek to feed the development of some “Guidelines for Inclusive and Sustainable Urban Regeneration”, support efforts to consolidate data and methodologies to monitor spatial inequality, contribute to the process of knowledge development for the advancement of the program ” Inclusive and dynamic neighborhoods and communities ”of UN-Habitat, and, among others, contribute to the consolidation and strengthening of a“ Global Urban Regeneration Reference Group ”, which includes cities, researchers and professionals committed to the study of urban regeneration .
• Previously, on November 29 and 30, the 20th edition of the EuskalHiria Kongresua “Intervention in the city as an instrument to achieve a healthy territory” was held in Vitoria-Gasteiz, organized by the Basque Government and UN-Habitat, which brought together 200 attendees and experts at the international, Spanish, regional and local level to discuss the need to intervene in the territory and in inhabited environments to achieve a green socio-economic recovery.
Iñaki Arriola, Regional Minister for Territorial Planning, Housing and Transport of the Basque Government, highlighted urban regeneration as a way to achieve “the transformation of cities towards fairer and more sustainable cities.”
Carmen Sánchez-Miranda, head of the UN-Habitat office in Spain, stressed for her part that “if the Sustainable Development Goals are the What, urban agendas are the How.”
He also added that “UN-Habitat has been accompanying the Basque Agenda Bultzatu 2050 since its conception, convinced that the territorial scope is a key level in the processes of implementation, coordination and promotion of effective governance, and that the The role of sub-national governments is just as important as that of the national and local levels in this regard ”.
International experts included Katja Schäfer (interregional advisor to UN-Habitat), Shipra Narang Suri (head of the UN-Habitat Urban Practices Branch), Carlos Moreno (IAE Paris-Sorbonne), Valentina Corsetti (European Commission), David Lucas (secretary of Urban Agenda and Housing in the Government of Spain), Dolores Huerta (Green Building Council), Cristina del Pozo (Rey Juan Carlos University) or José Moisés Martín (Red2Red), among others, who reflected on and presented various initiatives aimed at both in the development of planning instruments and in the intervention processes.