Sponsored in part by:
		Harvard University Graduate School of Design

The Harvard University Graduate School of Design has joined the United Nations Center for Human Settlements to support the Best Practices and Local Leadership Program (BLP).  The Center for Urban Development Studies at the GSD is a member of the BLP Steering Committee and acts as its thematic center for Urban and Regional Planning and Management. 

The Center for Urban Development Studies was an active participant in the Best Practices Initiative since 1996 when Center representatives joined the Technical Advisory Committee that reviewed over 300 submissions in Rotterdam. The Committee recommended 43 of them to the Jury that chose 12 Awards of Excellence.  The Center has continued its involvement in the BLP as a member of the Steering Committee.  As of 2001, over 1100 practices from 125 countries have been documented and disseminated by the BLP.  The practices are contained in a database available through the BLP websites and on CD-ROM. 

The Associate Director of the Center, Mona Serageldin , Affiliate Keith Garner and Associate Liz Melendez  are coordinating the Center's Best Practices activities. 

BLP Activities

The Center for Urban Development Studies at Harvard University is committed to identifying, documenting, analyzing and disseminating Best Practices. The Center continues to maintain the workstations in the Best Practices office that were initially set up in 1997. The Center's  web page is regularly updated to reflect the expanding scope of the BLP and to facilitate access to research on Best Practices. Access to the database through the Center remains an important resource for visiting scholars, fellows and graduate students as well as local officials from different countries attending our programs that use the database to study topics of particular relevance to their current and future work responsibilities. 

Best practices are a key component of our research and education activities. We document selected Best Practices including visual and technical materials.  This information is used in academic courses as well as our international executive education programs.  We prepare short case studies geared to the executive level participants (public officials, elected representatives, practitioners) and we are convinced that the ability to analyze practices and assess their achievements in a structured forum contributes to an informed dissemination of Best Practices.

Current BLP News

Ongoing activities related to identifying potential Best Practices, encouraging local officials to document their programs and, helping with submissions to the Dubai International Award, intensify in award years. The Center actively promoted the call for submissions for the 2002 Dubai Award. It provided direct assistance in the preparation of several submissions for programs in South Africa and Latin America, including a practice in Peru, which was eventually selected as a Best Practice - Neighborhood Participation in the District of Santiago de Surco (Peru). In April 2002, the Center validated six projects from Europe and North America that focused on sustainable urbanization.

The Center assisted the South African Ministry of Local and Provincial Affairs in organizing a Best Practices initiative for municipalities participating in South Africa's Municipal Infrastructure Program. The best initiatives were encouraged to submit nominations to the 2002 Dubai Awards. Two of these were recognized as Good Practices.

The Center was one of two Best Practices partners that spoke from the floor in the session on Sustainable Urbanization at the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg on August 2002. Other ongoing activities include identifying potential Best Practices; answering requests for national and international organizations regarding identification and information on Best Practices; recommending practices to be presented at specialized conferences; and encouraging local officials to document their programs.

The Center helped officials from the South African Ministry of Local and Provincial Affairs in organizing a Best Practices initiative for municipalities participating in South Africa's Municipal Infrastructure Program and submit the best initiatives to the Best Practices 2002 cycle.

03.28.2005 Iberoamerican and Caribbean Forum on Best Practices launch a regional Best Practices award for Latin America and the Caribbean. For more information go to http://www.premiomedellin.buenaspracticas.org

Steering Committee Meeting, Florianopolis, Brazil (November 2001)
On November 6-8, 2001, Mona Serageldin traveled to Florianopolis in the State of Santa Catarina,  Brazil to represent the Center,as a partner, at the annual BLP Steering Committee Meeting.  During the session partners reported on their activities and discussed the future direction and guidelines of the Award. 

UNCHS Habitat Expert Group Meeting, Brasilia (November 2001)
Following the Steering Committee Meeting, she joined other Steering Committee members for the Expert Group Meeting on Urban Policies and Enabling Legislation held during November 12-14, 2001 in Brasilia.  The objectives of the meeting were to develop criteria for the definition of good urban policy and enabling legislation, and propose a reporting format for submissions and documentation as well as means of dissemination. 

Habitat II+5, New York (June 2001)
The Center was represented in the UNGASS on Habitat II+5, held at the UN Headquarters in New York on June 6-8, 2001.  Mona Serageldin discussed "Best Practices and Implementation of the Habitat Agenda" at a panel organized by the NGO Forum Habitat Watch Habitat II+5 which attracted a large audience.  The presentation was based on the Center's reseach and fielwork nomitoring the evolution of selected Best Practices over five years or more.  The presentation examined factors promoting growth and sustainability of some initiatives and causes of decline or collapse of others.  It highlighted partnership as a critical ingredient to promote the Habitat Agenda and stressed the importance of an effective interface between local governments and civil society.

The Center, in collaboration with the Urban Management Program Latin America (UMP/LAC) organized a tour of cities which have received Best Practices awards under the UNCHS/Habitat Best Practices and Local Leadership program for twelve South African senior officials from central, provincial, and local government. The Center's BLP coordinator Keith Garner accompanied the group on visits to innovative local development initiatives relying on partnership and participatory processes including community based housing and infrastructure projects in Fortaleza, participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, integrated development and social inclusion in Sao Paolo and Santo Andre, and improvement of infrastructure and public space in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. 

The Center participated in several activities and events held in preparation for Habitat II+5 both at the U.N. headquarters in New York and abroad. At the Urban 21 conference in Berlin (July 2000) Mona Serageldin presented a paper on local indicators of sustainability. The presentation highlighted the experience of selected Best Practices in setting up frameworks for community involvement in the development and monitoring of indicators. Two Best Practices judged to be the most relevant to the panel's topic were invited to discuss their experience: South Africa presented ifs Municipal Infrastructure Program performance indicators and database at the local, provincial and national levels.  Santo Andre, Brazil, presented its effort at developing and mapping social inclusion/exclusion indicators to help direct action towards poor and marginalized communities.  THe session was particularly well attended and well received.  The issue of indicators has become of increasing importance to all levels of governments as they try to monitor the progress of their various development projects.  We have prepared modules on indicattors for our executive education courses and stress the need to link indicators to national and local development policies, Agenda 21 and the BLP guidelines and criteria.

Best Practices were also highlighted in the background paper on Decentralization and the Management of Infrastructure prepared by Mona Serageldin for the Third Global Report on Human Settlements issued in June 2001 for Habitat II+5. The paper, which is included as Chapter 13 of the report covered three main themes: decentralized institutional frameworks and participatory processes; financing infrastructure and the expanding scope of partnerships and equitable access to infrastructure and the empowerment of poor and marginalized communities. 

Mona Serageldin and Keith Garner participated in the UNCHS/Habitat-LAC Municipal Forum Case Study Selection Committee. The committee selected 25 practices to be included in a casebook on innovative municipal practices for improving the living environment. The case studies were chosen from municipal experiences accepted for inclusion in the Best Practices Database with a special focus on transferability and participatory processes. The casebook is part of the documentation to be presented to the U.N. Member States at the Habitat II+5 conference. 
 
 

Center Projects Honored as Best Practices

The Center played roles in two of the projects (Lublin & Adjamé) honored at the Awards for Excellence in Improving the Living Environment in 1996. To learn more about their awards, please click here. 

Objectives

The objective of the Best Practices Thematic Center for Urban Planning and Management is to disseminate information on innovative planning approaches from around the world to interested persons. The target audience includes policy-makers at all levels of government, city officials, human settlement professionals, the private and non-governmental sectors. The Center will also play a pro-active role in promoting the discussion and transfer of experience. The primary activities of the Center include identifying, collecting, analyzing and compiling, in collaboration with UNCHS (Habitat) and the other Best Practices Centers, new submissions by individuals, organizations and governments. The Center will provide feedback to those who access the Web Site or submit new Best Practices, update the Best Practices database, and promote activites such as workshops, policy seminars and pilot transfer schemes. 

We welcome your submissions at any time and will be available to orient you and your organization to the Best Practices Awards process as well as the BLP Database. 

The UNCHS Best Practices and Local Leadership Program

One of the highlights of the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II), held in Istanbul in June 1996, was the Global Best Practices Initiative, a call for particularly successful actions that improve the human environment. The Best Practices Initiative generated over 600 submissions from 80 countries. Awards of Excellence for Improving the Living Environment were granted to 12 outstanding initiatives, including those of two cities which the GSD’s Center for Urban Development Studies has worked with over the past few years, Lublin, Poland and Adjamé, Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire. 

The enthusiasm and interest generated by the Best Practices Initiative at Habitat II, has led to its incorporation as an ongoing program of UNCHS, the Best Practices and Local Leadership Program (BLP). The BLP will operate as a network of leading capacity-building institutions from around the world. The global initiative is mandated to promote and facilitate the exchange and transfer of experience, expertise and knowledge for improving the living environment. Each node in this global web will constitute a "Center of Excellence" working in partnership with key actors/stakeholders in sustainable human settlements development. Each Center is anchored with a capacity-building institute or facility actively engaged in policy analysis and transformation, education and training. UNCHS, which ensures overall coordination of the initiative, has established a partnership with the Together Foundation to service the global hub. The Center for Urban Development Studies has recently formed a partnership with UNCHS to set up a Best Practices Center for Urban Planning and Management here at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The BLP Center will provide access to some of the world’s most innovative and successful solutions to urban problems. Its database will function as an educational and policy development tool that can be accessed by hands-on practitioners developing better practices in their own communities. 

Learning from Best Practices

The BLP, in collaboration with the Together Foundation, has developed a database of global Best and Good Practices. The database allows users to search for solutions by region, country, eco-system, partners involved and thematic categories, such as urban governance, infrastructure and environmental protection. 

The BLP and its Partners are committed to transforming information into action by: 

• analyzing Best Practices and applying the lessons learned to policy development 
• awareness building, capacity building and leadership development
• using Best Practices to foster technical, international and city-to-city cooperation and capturing the lessons learned from these experiences
• promoting those directly involved in the Best Practices as resource persons for national, regional and international conferences, workshops and seminars, and
• mobilizing international support for the networking of NGOs/and CBOs to share and learn from each other's experiences.

• encouraging National Committees, associations of local authorities, and professional associations to organize competitions, conferences, workshops and seminars on Best Practices
• facilitating the transfer of know-how and technical expertise
• promoting partnership and participatory modes of government and management, and
• informing policy and decision-making processes. 

1996 Awards of Excellence in Improving the Living Environment

The first Awards for Excellence in Improving the Living Environment were presented at the Istanbul City Summit to the following initiatives:

• Sites and Services for Low-Income Families, North of Gran, Buenos Aires, Argentina 
• Integration Council in the Favelas Rehabilitation Process, Fortaleza, Brazil 
• Metro Toronto's Changing Communities: Innovative Responses, Metro Toronto, Canada 
• Post-Calamity Reconstruction of Anhui Province's Rural Areas, China 
• Successful Institutionalization of Community-based Development in the Commune of Adjame, Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire 
• A Women's Self-Help Organisation for Poverty Alleviation in India: The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) Bank, India 
• Shelter Upgrading, Agadir, Morocco 
• City Management in Tilburg, The Netherlands 
• Local Initiative Programme: Community Planning Process and City/Neighbourhood Partnership, Lublin, Poland 
• Community Information Resource Centre (CIRC), Alexandra, South Africa 
• City of Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA 
• "Don't Move, Improve" Community-Owned-and-Governed Urban Revitalisation Project, South Bronx, New York, USA 

www.bestpractices.wien.at