Round table on "Improving How We Live Together in Cities"

Celebrating the International Day of Living Together in Peace (16 May), proclaimed by the United Nations in 2017, the Delegation of Canada to UNESCO, in cooperation with the International Observatory of Mayors on Living Together and the Permanent Delegation of Algeria to UNESCO are organizing a round table on ”Improving How we Live Together in Cities” with the participation of local actors and members of civil society.

This celebration is the opportunity to mobilize efforts of the international community in favor of peace, tolerance, inclusion, mutual comprehension and solidarity and to express a profound desire to live and to act together, unified in difference and in diversity in order to build a sustainable world based on peace, solidarity and harmony.

The round table seeks to highlight initiatives led by different social actors involved in the promotion of living together through their networks and the occasion to share experiences and lessons learnt. This round table will contribute to the preparation of the Mayors Summit on Living Together that will take place in Düsseldorf (Germany) in August-September 2019.

In the afternoon, and in collaboration with UNESCO, initiatives of two UNESCO Chairs will be launched:

- UNESCO Chair on Landscape and Environmental Design (Montreal): the launch of the publication “L’université et la ville: Stratégies pour un modèle de partage”
- UNESCO Chair on “Urban policies and citizenship” (Lyon): the launch of the research-action initiative of PoliCité.

The publication “L’université et la ville: Stratégies pour un modèle de partage”, launched in cooperation with the city of Evry, is the result of a project which implements an interdisciplinary and intercultural reflection and leads collective work on an urban situation that, while not unique within the international or French urban landscape, still questions the role of the research center in the public space. The PoliCité project is an action-research initiative aimed at generating a process of collective reflection on urban inclusion, diversity, mutual respect and dialogue between youth and institutions. This project has resulted in the creation of a comic strip by youth that shows that pedagogy and inclusive dialogue can be transmitted through art.