In August, Our City Plans team joined a field mission in Vietnam for several days of interactive workshops, trainings, and participatory activities in the context of the Institutional strengthening and capacity building for sustainable urban development (ISCB) Project in Vietnam.
A capacity building session took place on August 8th, during which more than 40 government officials, national technicians, and other organisations/institutions - including universities - received a hybrid training on Our City Plans methodology. This was presented as part of the modules “Integrated Urban Planning” and “Consensus Building”, which aims to strengthen the capacity for implementing sustainable development and support the collective and participatory construction of better cities.
Urban Regeneration was also a module presented using principles from the UN-Habitat Flagship Programme “Inclusive Communities, Thriving Cities” and the module on Placemaking, provided specific tools and methodologies from public spaces and neighbourhood planning tools.
In collaboration with the UN-Habitat Vietnam Country Office and National Partners (AMC/UDA), Our City Plans has supported a participatory visioning exercise to define the shared vision for the Tam Thanh Community. For the purpose of determining a desired future for the city, it was a collaborative initiative with various stakeholders and local urban actors. A successful vision has a spatial dimension that reflects a city’s unique cultural and physical traits; It gives all stakeholders clear guidance and direction for their actions, promoting cooperation, and guaranteeing that all the actors are working towards the same goal.
During the same mission, UN-Habitat delivered a participatory session to collaboratively identify the future vision of the Ben Tre City. The visioning workshop was held with local stakeholders and defined a clear roadmap for developing a better future for the city.
Those activities are part of the same programme, funded by SECO (Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs), and the overall objective is to strengthen the capacities of national and local institutions to promote, plan and implement innovative and participatory solutions for urban development in Vietnamese cities.
Additionally, to the capacity building component, a specific outcome related to policy and legal framework has been developed, as well as the implementation of pilot projects to contribute to the introduction of innovative approaches, to promote cross-sectoral strategic planning and participatory urban development.