The Government of Mexico City, through its Secretariat for Social Development and the General Coordination for International Affairs, is convening the meeting “Local Governments’ Social Spending: Justice & Urban Equity” on local finances and the Right to the City, on Tuesday, 8th March, at 9am in the “Sala de Banderas” of the Tlatelolco University Cultural Centre. This meeting, co-organized by the Committee’s Executive Secretariat and with the support of the UCLG Committee on Local Finance and Development, will be held as a side event of the Habitat III Thematic Conference “Financing Urban Development: the millennium challenge”, taking place in Mexico City, from 9-11 March.
The event’s main objective is to strengthen the key messages for the Right to City in the Habitat III process, especially with relation to the dimension of local finances. It also intends to raise proposals to enhance public resources for local governments to invest in Human Rights and the Right to the City.
To this end, the event will take the format of a round table with two panels, aiming to encourage debates between speakers and participants. The first panel is entitled “Public Spending and Right to the City” and intends to identify how land regulation and taxation may enable the public control of land and offset speculative processes. The second panel, entitled “Social Spending and Participatory Democracy”, aims to raise fiscal transparency and participatory democracy practices and mechanisms (participatory budgeting) that contribute to building cities oriented to the common good.
This side event will rely on the participation of Eng. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Mexico City’s General Coordinator of International Affairs; José Ramón Amieva Gálvez, Mexico City’s Secretary for Social Development; Josep Roig, UCLG Secretary General; Dr. Martha Laura Almaraz Domínguez, Mexico City Government’s Deputy Secretary for Citizen Participation; Dr. Patricia Ramirez Kuri, Urban and Regional Studies Department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM); Jordi Borja Sebastià, Urban Geographer, Open University of Catalonia (UOC), President of Observatorio DESC (Observatory of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of Barcelona); Dr. Mariana Fix, Professor of Economics at University of Campinas (Brazil); Dr. Manuel Canto Chac, Political Scientist, Head of Political Research and Public Management at the Autonomous Metropolitan University-Xochimilco; René Darbois, Deputy Mayor for Water, Energy and Sustainable Development of Metz (France); Bachir Kanouté, ENDA, President of the African Participatory Budgeting Network, Turd-Od Lkhagvajav, Transparency International Mongolia; Nathalie Le Denmat, Coordinator of the UCLG Committee on Local Finance and Development; and Dr. Alicia Ziccardi Contigiani, Economist, Director of the University Program on City Studies.
Additionally, the Committee had the chance to propose some speakers for the official session of the conference, aiming to advocate for a stronger presence of the Right to the City in the Thematic Conference and its final declaration.
Please click on the links below to access the following documents:
- Side event registration form (in Spanish)
- “Financing Urban Development” Thematic Conference registration form
- Presentation of the side event
- Schedule of the side event