Invited by the conference organizers to share his experience with city-to-city learning, Mr. Cobbett first introduced the Cities Alliance:  The Alliance is a global coalition of cities and their development partners committed to scaling up successful approaches to urban poverty reduction. It receives funding support not only from traditional OECD donor countries and multilateral organizations, but also from an increasing number of new middle-income and developing member states, such as Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia and the Philippines.

 

Cities are proven poverty fighters and engines of economic growth. By promoting the positive impacts of urbanisation, the Alliance supports learning among cities of all sizes, and also among cities, governments, international development agencies and financial institutions.

 

On improving urban development approaches and city-to-city learning, Mr. Cobbett shared the following practical experiences and recommendations:

 

·         In pursuing sustainable urban development, harmony at the local level is most important, particularly a harmonic relationship between the local government, the urban poor and the private sector, and their respective interests.

 

·         Know your city, and know your country! A solid knowledge base is a basic precondition to pursuing sustainable urban development. Many African cities and countries lack a sufficient data and information basis to analyse and interpret trends, and to design effective urban development strategies. To this end, the Cities Alliance has supported a number of countries […] in elaborating national and regional “State of the Cities Reports”.

 

·         Don’t try to stop urbanization. Instead, state the case for cities! Urban development can drive a country’s development at large, but it needs to be anchored in suitable national-level strategies and policies. There are a number of good examples for this, notably slum upgrading policies in Mexico, Columbia and Brazil. With few exceptions, African governments have failed to provide adequate national policy frameworks to promote urban development.

 

·         National city-to-city learning can be very effective, with the Philippines City Development Strategies (CDS) platform being one positive example to state. This form of learning is still underdeveloped in Africa. To this end, the Cities Alliance is working with the South Africa Cities Network (SACN) and the Tanzania Cities Network (TACINE).

 

·         Further to national city networks, there are regional and global forms of learning among cities. The Cities Alliance has supported the development of a distance learning course based on Sao Paolo’s experience in upgrading, land regularisation, application of housing policy legislation, promotion of social development and community participation;  Other learning events and studies were launched at a regional (Addis Abeba – Johannesburg Partnership Programme) or global scale (Johannesburg, New York City, Shanghai, Addis Abeba, Sao Paolo).

 

Finally, Mr. Cobbett commended the form in which the Sino-African Orientation Exchange is organised as a further option of trans-regional learning on sustainable urbanisation. He extended his wishes to all delegates and the organisers that the event be successful and contribute to a debate on Africa’s new urban future which in his view is urgently needed to release the potential of African cities.