UN Awards Tehran as Best City in Successful Urban Management
TEHRAN (FNA)- UN Under-Secretary General and UN-HAIBTAT Executive Director Joan Clos in a ceremony granted the United Nations' Award for Best Successful Urban Management Experiences to the Iranian capital, Tehran, and Austria's capital city, Vienna.
The UN also provided both Tehran and Vienna with access to its data bank of successful urban experiences, including plans of over 4,000 research and executive activities.
Other world cities can access this data bank through Tehran and Vienna.
Clos presented a tablet of the UN successful urban management experiences to the Iranian officials after visiting the Tehran booth on the sidelines of the World Urban Forum.
The World Urban Forum kicked off in the Italian city of Naples on September 1 and will last for 7 days.
The world's population has now grown to 7 billion, and the coming two decades of will be unprecedented moment in human history: This global population will grow from 50 per cent urban today, to 70 per cent.
"The world is faced with many challenges including environmental and financial crises. Another new challenge is the increasing poverty in the world's urban areas both in developed and developing countries. This is one area we must urgently address," Clos said, addressing the Forum.
Clos said the challenge of urbanization was yet another area that required serious redress, saying that the alternative of sitting back and doing nothing would see the world's urban centers facing serious slum problems.
"There is no alternative but to face the challenge head on," he declared.