From left: Professor Ralph Horne,RMIT University, Elizabeth Ryan, Cities Programme, Sra. Margarita Maria Ángel Bernal, CEO of EDU, FPAA President Joáo Virmond Suplicy Neto, and Diego Sierra, past Colombian FPAA President.

Cities Programme Collaborates with Architects from across the Americas

The Pan American Federation of  Architects Associations (FPAA) and the Global Compact Cities Programme recently established a collaborative partnership. This was formalised at the World Urban Forum in Medellin, Colombia. This commitment was undertaken by President, Joáo Virmond Suplicy Neto who travelled from Curitiba in Brazil to sign the Memorandum of Understanding with the Cities Programme.

The Pan American Federation of Architects Associations is a nonprofit organization which aims to unite Architectural organizations from all parts of North, South and Central America including the Caribbean across all racial, religious or political boundaries. The FPAA was started in 1950 in Montevideo, Uruguay which still continues to be the head office of the organization.

FPAA consists of representatives from 33 countries within the Americas and the Caribbean, and includes more than 600,000 architects that are influential in their relative fields. The executive committee is made up of elected representatives from governments, universities, NGOs and businesses from the region who are active in the field of architecture. These representatives are committed to the development of their cities together with the leadership of their governments.

Through this agreement the two entities, FPAA and the Cities Programme, recognise shared objectives relating to improving the quality of urban life and that the complexity of challenges facing cities requires intersectoral collaboration across all spheres of urban life: the economic, ecological, political and cultural. The two organisations have committed in broad terms to jointly promoting and sharing resources, networks, methodologies and expertise, and to undertaking research and collaborative projects.

The occasion was appropriately marked by being held in the offices of EDU, Medellin´s innovative urban development agency (Empresa de Desarrollo Urbano) in the company of EDU staff and the organisation’s CEO, Margarita Maria Ángel Bernal.

The team then toured EDU´s most recent urban social transformation infrastructure project, ‘Jardin Circunvular’. Whilst only two or so kilometres into the planned 300 km long paved ‘camino’ , this project, which runs along the mountain edge of Medellin and aims to both curb urban sprawl and connect and rejuvenate communities, impressed all and was regarded as ‘inspirational’.

The commitment to the partnership was initially made when the Cities Programme´s Rosane de Souza from Brazil, met with FPAA in Trujillo, Peru in 2013.

> via citiesprogramme.com