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Prague Institute Board of Directors Meeting
Washington, DC, December 12, 2002
The purpose of the Prague Institute is to make a better world for
everyone. The main goal of the institute is prosperity and quality
of life for all people and communities together with world peace
and a globally sustainable living environment.
The Prague Institute was born in response to today's high level
of urbanization. This change has occurred so rapidly that a half-century
ago only one-third of the world’s population was urbanized,
and a half century from now nearly two-thirds of the people on this
planet will be urban residents. Urbanization and urban development
are so fundamental to the world’s economy, society, and environment,
that making a better urban world and improving urban life really
means making a better world for everyone, including all of the people
living and working in rural areas.
The following are the major themes around which the activities
of the Prague Institute revolve.
1. Bringing the Urban World Closer Together
The concept of "Global Urban Development" reiterates
bringing everyone together in one unified conversation about the
future of the urban world, and indeed, of the world itself. This
is a new idea in the world and represents a genuine paradigm shift
as it is about treating the entire urban world as one place and
one phenomenon within a unified policy framework. No person, nor
any institution, has ever done this before. The general state of
urban policy in the world is divided very sharply into three separate
and distinct urban networks. The first and largest network is focused
on urban policy in developing countries, which sometimes also includes
the transitional economies of Eastern Europe. This network is led
by international institutions such as the World Bank and United
Nations-Habitat. For example, the UN-Habitat’s World Urban
Forum brings people together from all over the world, but it is
not about the whole world. It is mainly about urban policy in and
for developing countries. The second network is urban policy in
the developed world, excluding the US. This is the world of the
OECD. The third network is urban policy in the US, which is the
most insular and least international of the three.
The Prague Institute is breaking down the barriers between these
three different networks. Starting with US urban policy professionals,
the institution has built the first Global Urban Development network,
uniting all three of the world’s major urban policy constituencies.
2. Prague as a Global Crossroads and Symbol of Urbanism
The Institute is located in such a way as to bring the entire world
together on neutral ground and to have the popular image of Prague’s
historic "Old Town" serve as a symbol for the Institute.
Prague is chosen as the headquarter because there was need get the
Institute outside of the US and outside of Western Europe, and establish
it in a location that carries no negative political baggage anywhere
in the world.
Prague appears to represent a genuine crossroads that bridge the
gap between west and east in Europe, between north and south in
the developed and the developing world, and because of its leading
transitional economies that are now struggling to develop democratic,
participatory, and market-based institutions.
3. Standing for Principles and Values
The values and principles that the institution stands for are emphasized
in brochures and websites as well as in the form of the organization.
For this reason the Prague Institute is organized around three themes.
These are:
1) Treating People and Communities as Assets. This simply means
everyone and every place count. People are the world’s greatest
resource – all people. They have the talent, the energy, and
the commitment to solve their own problems and create better communities.
They just need to be fully included in the process and make sure
they all benefit from the results.
2) Facing the Metropolitan Challenge. This means that bringing
the whole world together starts with bringing the entire urban world
together, region by region. The real urban world is organized into
metropolitan regions. The vitality of the global economy is now
based primarily on the dynamic role of these urban regions, yet
governments are not organized to reflect this new reality. We are
living in an urban world with an anti-urban mentality in terms of
public policy, with very few exceptions to this general fact. The
Prague Institute is dedicated to getting international institutions,
national governments, state governments, and provincial governments
to recognize the importance of investing in urban regions in order
to genuinely improve the overall economic, social, and environmental
health of the world. We are deeply committed to creating new mechanisms
of public-private-civic governance, which will enable urban regions
to work together more effectively through increased cooperation
across municipal, local, and community boundaries.
3) Celebrating our Urban Heritage. This theme emphasizes that that
cultural and environmental values are absolutely fundamental for
strengthening economic prosperity and quality of life in the world.
Under this theme issues that makes urban life special and truly
worth living will be addressed.
4. Engaging in Strategic Policy
We are engaging in what we call "Strategic Policy." The
Prague Institute is not primarily an academic "think-tank"
churning out volumes of scholarly research, nor is it a consulting
firm operating hundreds of individual projects all around the world.
We will be doing research and education, as well as action-oriented
practical work. Our purpose is literally to redefine reality to
change the definition of what is possible and how it can be achieved,
or create new possibilities for improving urban life. Every project
will be designed to develop new ideas about how to do things better
beyond what is already being done, and to demonstrate that these
ideas can be successfully implemented not only in one or few places
but can be replicated on a very large scale globally.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the above four themes together constitute a new
platform that will enable the Prague Institute to do something vital
that has not yet been accomplished such as to have an urban policy
institute actually serve as an engine for worldwide transformation
by helping generate successful large-scale solutions for the enormous
global urban development challenges of the 21st century.
Prague Institute for Global Urban Development,
Contact Person: Dr. Marc A. Weiss,
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,
Kozi 7110 00 Praha 1
Czech Republic
Email: MarcWeiss@pragueinstitute.org
Web: http://www.pragueinstitute.org/
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