Ideas pour in for urban improvements on UN internet 'jam'

From internet cafes in the slums of Nairobi, New Delhi and Lima to flashy office blocks in Europe and North America, thousands of people around the world joined a global internet discussion of urban problems this weekend meant to elicit fresh ideas for the third session of the United Nations World Urban Forum in Vancouver next June.

The event, sponsored by UN-HABITAT, started on Thursday and ended on Sunday with participants bringing problems and solutions to topics as diverse as drinking water and land ownership. By the event’s close 25, 706 registered users from 193 countries led by Canada with 6,321 participants. Next came Kenya with 3,796, the United States with 2,722, Senegal 1,534, India 1,440 and South Africa 1,265.

“The Habitat Jam helped bring to the fore the concerns of the urban poor, especially in developing countries,” Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-HABITAT said. “The concerted efforts of all UN-HABITAT’s partners have meant that for the first time many slum dwellers were given access to Internet facilities. They made their voices heard.”

“You mean that even though I am 65, I don’t speak English and cannot write, I can make my voice heard?” asked a woman in the sprawling Nairobi slum of Kibera who used one of many township meetings arranged by UN-HABITAT to get her point across, the agency said.

The ideas that flowed in were as varied as the participants. A person called Askona wrote from Ghana with a message for local and national authorities: “Residents in high class society areas of cities should be made to support those more vulnerable by making them pay about four times more their water than the normal delivery price.”

From Nepal, Lajana Manandhar, said: “Slum dwellers in Nepal have difficulty in obtaining citizenship documents. They are asked to produce land ownership documents when they apply for the citizenship. Without the citizenship, slum dwellers could never own land and housing and exercise other basic rights.”

“This should be the way we address future issues, when citizens get involved they think of their future in a much more practical way than the planner. It is a learning experience for the planner and for the citizens,” wrote Mohammed Eid, an urban planner in Egypt who helped coordinate the discussions.