Initiative Habitat III - Cities and territorities in transformation

Cities change as the world changes
Cities change because the world changes. But make no mistake.

Cities are not in crisis; they are going through irreversible transformations. We are facing three major uncertainties: ‹

• Uncertainties regarding the generic ‹
• Uncertainties on development and the economy ‹
• Uncertainties of territories in the network society

Urban transformations don’t bring about insurmountable technical and urbanistic problems: they bring political questions, to which there are no purely technical answers.

If a crisis exists, it is a crisis of representation, of the image, of the appropriation of the city by its inhabitants. The uncertainties arise from the inadequate or inappropriate technical or conceptual planning responses to the realities of the people who live in the city.