Bogotá, October 27th, 2012
[10:01:38 p.m.] Constanza Saavedra Valdés: The Program begins to face its future as of today
URB-AL III faces the sustainability challenge The third edition of URBsociAL concluded yesterday with a call for maintaining the network constructed during the URB-AL III Program. The closing ceremony was attended by the Secretary of the Mayor’s Office of the District of Bogotá, Jorge Rojas; the Foreign Affairs Director of the Diputación de Barcelona, Jordi Castells; Vittorio Tonutti, from Europe-Aid (European Commission); and Massimo Toschi, International Cooperation Advisor of Regione Toscana. During the closing of the Program, the innovative contribution made by URB-AL III to change the paradigm of cooperation initiatives was confirmed: We have gone from a unidirectional model to a peer-topeer dialog between continents. It is with this spirit that the main actors are invited to continue to work for sustainability and replicability of the results achieved in their territories. Public institutions will share this responsibility by incorporating social cohesion into their agendas as a central axis of the public policies designed. • 1
An agenda for continuity
A
mong the recommendations of the Bogotá 2012 Agenda to promote sustainable development are the promotion of territorial competitiveness, the strengthening of basic social services, the construction of an active citizenship, reduction of territorial unbalances, and institutional strengthening. Likewise, within the framework of this document, the organizing institutions undertook to give top visibility to the results obtained by the program.