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“Communication is not an option, but a constant obligation” – 2018 SBCC Summit: Keynote Speech by Anibal Gaviria, former mayor of Medellin, Colombia

May 4, 2018

This keynote speech on citizen dialogue and debate within an urban setting was delivered on 20 April 2018 during the 2018 International Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Summit featuring Entertainment Education (Nusa Dua, Indonesia).

2018 SBCC Summit: Keynote Speech by Anibal Gaviria, former mayor of Medellin, Colombia

“Communication is not an option, but a constant obligation.”

Aníbal Gaviria was the mayor of Medellín, Colombia, from 2012 to 2015. He is one of a string of mayors credited with turning around this city of 2.5 million people. Once the stronghold of the dangerous Medellín cartel, the city witnessed 6,349 killings in 1991. The homicide rate has fallen by 80 percent since then and, in 2013, the Urban Land Institute named Medellín the “most innovative city” out of 200 it considered. Prior to that, Gaviria was governor of Antioquia, of which Medellín is the capital.

Gaviria sees a connection between reducing inequality and violence in the city and the facilitation of dialogue and debate in communities. Medellin is well known for social urbanism and development policies, including the creation of the Metrocable system, a network of cable cars that link the city’s subways to some of the city’s informal settlements on the city’s steep hills. These settlements were in many ways cut off from the city, with residents commuting as long as 2.5 hours a day before Metrocable opened. Not only could people in these poorer isolated communities get to jobs more easily, but to public libraries, schools, health centres and recreation spaces. Metrocable – by linking people to what they need – is credited with dramatic reductions in crime in the areas reached by cable car, an integrated approach to creating change.

Summary of Anibal Gaviria’s keynote speech.

Anibal Gaviria explained the key principles behind the city’s transformation. He noted that the transformation did not take place under one mayor, but was a continuous process of change over many years of consecutive and synchronised “good governments.”

Gaviria listed the four key principles as being:

  • Planning
  • Transparency
  • Citizen participation
  • Communication

Planning: Gaviria pointed out that “planning is an absolutely critical and fundamental element for the development of cities in the next 30 years. Many of the cities in the world have developed and grown without planning, with bad planning or with planning that is not respected. Fundamentally [this has taken place] in Africa, Asia and Latin America but also in other regions of the world too.”

Transparency: Gaviria explained that “the process that Medellin has gone through was triggered by high levels of transparency being honest and open with their citizens together with a clear accountability]  compared with other Colombian and Latin America cities.”

Citizen Participation: When Gaviria spoke about citizen participation he described four different ways to implement this:

  • As a transversal element – interventions in public space;
  • through participatory budgeting;
  • through “life and ability journeys” through “participatory processes with the communities through dialogue and debate during the development plan”;
  • “as a long-term territorial plan” – with consultations about how to ‘occupy’ the territory. “It [Medellin’s development] was discussed over two years with more than 2,000 meetings.”

Communication: Gaviria explained, “Communication is a basic principle, like a credo…to govern is to communicate. Communication is not an option, but a constant obligation – a daily process where we communicate and receive communication from the citizens.”

Further details of the Summit can be found at the Summit website: https://sbccsummit.org/

Filed Under: Colombia, Participation, Urban Highlights Tagged With: Social Change

Communicating the City: Meanings, Practices, Interactions – what roles do media and communication have in lived experiences of the city?

May 4, 2018

This book by Giorgia Aiello, Matteo Tarantino and Kate Oakley examines how human meanings, practices and interactions produce and are produced by urban space is the focus of this timely and exciting addition to the study of urban communication.

Challenging notions of the ‘urban’ as physically, economically or technologically determined, this book explores key intersections of discourse, materiality, technology, mobility, identity and inequality in acts of communication across urban and urbanizing contexts. From leisure and media consumption among Chinese migrant workers in a Guangdong village to the diverse networks and communication infrastructures of global cities like London and Los Angeles, this collection combines a range of perspectives to ask fundamental questions about the significance and status of cities in times of intensified mediation and connectivity.

With case studies from Italy, Britain, Ireland, Russia, the United States and China, this international collection demonstrates that both empirical and critical knowledge on the relationship between communication and urban life has become vital across the humanities and social sciences.

Click here for full details.

Filed Under: China, Italy, Russia, United States, Urban Highlights

Urban Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Social and Behavior Change Communication Implementation Kit (Health Communication Capacity Collaborative [HC3], 2016)

May 4, 2018

The purpose of the Urban Adolescent Social and Behavior Change Communication Implementation Kit (I-Kit) is to provide a selection of Essential Elements and tools to guide the creation, or strengthening, of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) social and behavior change communication (SBCC) programs for urban adolescents aged 10 to 19.

The I-Kit is designed to teach these essential SBCC elements and includes worksheets to illustrate each element. It highlights the Essential Elements of SBCC programming, with particular focus on what is unique in the context of urban adolescents.

The I-Kit is intended for a range of audiences, including:

SBCC professionals, like program managers, designers and implementers who are already working with adolescents or are interested in doing so.

SRH professionals, like program managers, designers and implementers who are already incorporating SBCC components or interested in doing so.

Youth-led organizations or youth-focused professionals, like program managers, designers and implementers who are already working on, or interested in, incorporating SBCC elements into their SRH work.

Click here for full kit.

Filed Under: Behaviour Change Communication, Children, HIV/AIDS and SRH, Publications (published in print and/or online), Social Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC), Urban Development Tagged With: Toolkit

Community-driven Data Collection in Informal Settlements (IIED Brief, 2017)

May 4, 2018

Around a billion urban dwellers in the global South live in informal settlements. Most of these lack basic infrastructure (including water piped to homes, good provision for sanitation, paved roads, paths and drains) and services (including schools, health care and household waste collection). In many cities in Africa and Asia, more than half of the population live in informal settlements. But there is little or no data on these settlements. Most have no street names and their residents have no addresses. Many national governments rely on national sample surveys for data on health and living conditions, and these have sample sizes too small to provide needed data for the residents of informal settlements.

This brief finds that with community-driven data collection, grassroots organisations collect relevant data to help address their needs. This can be done in various ways, for instance through surveys, participatory mapping or enumerations.

Click here for full brief.

Filed Under: Big Data, Participation, Social Mobilisation, Urban Development Tagged With: Participatory Mapping

Inclusive urbanization: Can the 2030 Agenda be delivered without it? (Environment and Urbanization [28:1]), 2016

May 4, 2018

This paper, published in the Environment and Urbanization journal, reflects on the tension in ‘exclusionary’ cities created through strategies that privilege economic growth and result in many people being left behind.  It explores three levels of inclusive urbanization: eliminating discriminatory exclusion, giving the disadvantaged a bigger voice in existing institutions, and guaranteeing human rights.

It then examines how more inclusive urbanization can be achieved and how this relates to the Sustainable Development Goals (part of the 2030 Agenda). The world’s governments have committed themselves to balanced development that integrates economic, social and environmental goals, and have pledged that “no one will be left behind”. Inclusive urbanization is needed to achieve this balance, and to move the world towards the progressive realization of human rights for all.

Click here for full paper.

 

Filed Under: Participation, Research Communication & Uptake, Research Papers, Urban Highlights Tagged With: Environment, Exclusion, gender, Human Rights, SDGs

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