Skip to content

Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

World Urban Forum – Day One

By

Read more articles by

HiMY SYeD is sending daily reports from the World Urban Forum to the Spacing Wire. Here is his first report.

World Urban Forum – Day One ( Monday June 19, 2006 )

It is the first day of the World Urban Forum. 6,000 people were expected. 8,000 registered. Even more are here. Imagine every person you speak to — waiting in line, in the hallways, at countless networking sessions and side events — being an evangelist for the themes, issues and ideas you read on the Spacing Wire and you begin to get a sense of what is happening in Vancouver this week.

Distilling opening day into a few sentences is challenging yet there is something consistent in each of today’s conversations — that every first world city contains a third world city, and the time has arrived for developed cities to be looking at cities in the developing world for solutions to housing, crime, poverty, zoning and governance.

Ultimately, it is the responsibility of people and their governments to create livable cities. Sadly, city governments the world over often morph into systems where corruption becomes a civic pillar. That leaves us with the people — us.

Many of my conversations are with people trying to break that cycle of urban growth followed by urban collapse. Yet it is in the world’s poorest cities where we find people resilient enough and stubborn enough to take ownership of their “slums” and recreate them into highly desirable neighbourhoods. This is important as today more than half the world’s population live in slums. And cities, including those slums, account for 70% of the world’s population altogether.

And yeah, like the lady from nepal I met, they too have read Jane Jacobs.

Day One ended with learning that in Curitiba, Brazil, public space per capita is around 550 square feet, in New York City it’s less than 150 square feet. When it comes to open public space, we in the north do indeed have much to learn from the cities in the south.

Stay Tuned.

HiMY SYeD
World Urban Forum 3, Vancouver

Recommended

2 comments

  1. [url=http://saitik.byethost7.com/matura-free-video-porn.html] FREE PORN DOWNLOAD [/url]
    [url=http://saitik.byethost7.com/matura-free-video-porn.html] TOP10 PROSTITUTES [/url]
    [url=http://saitik.byethost7.com/free-porn-big.html] GALLERY PORN PICTURE [/url]
    [url=http://saitik.byethost7.com/download-free-ipod-porn-video.html] ANAL SEX [/url]
    [url=http://saitik.byethost7.com/free-porn.html] LISBIAN [/url]

  2. Two new studies show why some people are more attractive for members of the opposite sex than others.

    The University of Florida, Florida State University found that physically attractive people almost instantly attract the attention of the interlocutor, sobesednitsy with them, literally, it is difficult to make eye. This conclusion was reached by a series of psychological experiments, which were determined by the people who believe in sending the first seconds after the acquaintance. Here, a curious feature: single, unmarried experimental preferred to look at the guys, beauty opposite sex, and family, people most often by representatives of their sex.

    The authors believe that this feature developed a behavior as a result of the evolution: a man trying to find a decent pair to acquire offspring. If this is resolved, he wondered potential rivals. Detailed information about this magazine will be published Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

    In turn, a joint study of the Rockefeller University, Rockefeller University and Duke University, Duke University in North Carolina revealed that women are perceived differently by men smell. During experiments studied the perception of women one of the ingredients of male pheromone-androstenona smell, which is contained in urine or sweat.

    The results were startling: women are part of this repugnant odor, and the other part is very attractive, resembling the smell of vanilla, and the third group have not felt any smell. The authors argue that the reason is that the differences in the receptor responsible for the olfactory system, from different people are different.

    It has long been proven that mammals (including human) odor is one way of attracting the attention of representatives of the opposite sex. A detailed article about the journal Nature will publish.