On October 31st of each year, the global community celebrates the “World Cities Day”. This celebration reflects the shared willingness of all countries and peoples across the globe to increase bilateral and multilateral cooperation and partnership and step up efforts in order to promote urban planning and development, enable the cities of the future to meet the requirements of Sustainable Development Goals, and create adequate solutions to cope with the ever-increasing urban expansion.
Moreover, the current global health situation has placed all the world’s cities on the front lines in confronting the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and in curbing its repercussions using modern communication technology, while at the same time preserving their role in creating job opportunities, producing wealth, providing basic services, ensuring social inclusion, and achieving well-being for their inhabitants.
Under the slogan, “Smart cities defy COVID-19,” ALECSO reaffirms its alignment with global trends aiming at developing our cities and establishing smart programs to meet the challenges they face, by reviewing their planning and management. This would promote real sustainability for the cities of the future and ensure that all available capabilities and resources, both public and private, are mobilized to overcome the difficulties that prevent the realization of the desired urban development. These are indeed the same principles which ALECSO had proposed in the global report presented by UNESCO to the third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) held in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016, and which it is keen to incorporate in its activities and programs.
Through its current projects and its forward-looking vision, ALECSO seeks to help Arab cities, especially those in special situations, overcome the obstacles that hamper their ability to carry out their societal functions. These include, in particular, promoting the values of responsible citizenship, and guaranteeing the right of current and future generations to education, health, work, housing, and decent living in a clean environment.
These goals will not be achieved without a strong commitment to increasing cooperation and partnership among all relevant actors, including civil society, local communities, official institutions, Arab and global stakeholders, especially the relevant regional and international organizations, both governmental and non-governmental, along with Arab and foreign donors. The aim is to enable the Arab city to preserve its identity and memory, and safeguard its cultural heritage and use it to achieve sustainable development and reduce the economic and social costs of the COVID-19 crisis.
