The Urban Environment Forum is one of the important and exciting products of the City Summit, its development stimulated and accelerated by the special spirit of cooperation and partnership which was generated by Habitat II.  It is a global network joining cities and international programmes in their common commitment to implementing Agenda 21 and the UN-HABITAT Global Plan of Action at the local level.; The Urban Environment Forum will be one of the primary means through which our collective knowledge will continue to deepen - and through which the achievements of cities will be made known to, and hopefully replicated by, an ever-widening range of municipal authorities and their local and international partners. The catalytic effect of the first meeting of the UEF in Istanbul in June 1996, bringing together cities and international support programmes concemed with the urban environment, was a major breakthrough, more effectively integrating and coordinating the activities of the United Nations system with those of local communities and local authorities. The results of this meeting were synthesised in the Istanbul Manifesto, which established the Urban Environment Forum as a global coalition defined by the shared concerns of its members, and through which cities and international suport programmes an exchange experiences, learn from each other and collaborate in addressing urban environmental issues worldwide.

When cities facing similar problems begin to share their experiences in a systematic way, a potentially powerful learning process is initiated.  As this process develops and gathers momentum, it generates ever-widening circles of communication, information exchange and collaboration.  This in turn produces very real and valuable additions to collective know-how: understanding and insight which evolves and becomes stronger as more and more cities participate. 

In order to promote such a process, in late 1994 the Habitat/UNEP Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP), with support from the UN-HABITAT/UNDP/World Bank Urban Management Programme (UMP) launched a collaborative effort, the Environmental Planning and Management (EPM) Source Book Project, to capture the lessons of experience of cities in dealing with their urban environment agenda.  Because of the enthusiastic response and participation of a growing number of cities, the activities begun through this initiative "took on a life of their own", and quickly grew well beyond their original scheme.  Three very successful international workshops were held in Dakar, Madras and Istanbul, each of which was tightly structured according to a common framework so that the results would be comparable and cumulative.  The participation of so many cities not only produced a rich store of good case examples, but also pushed UN-HABITAT and UNEP into continuously broadening the scale of the workshops and their follow-up. 

The modest initiative begun with the EPM Source Book project in late 1994 had grown far beyond its original scope, developing rapidly in direct response to enthusiastic and eager participant demand, and building up extraordinary momentum in a number of important ways: 

• a very wide range of not only cities but also international programmes have become active participants, involving even more urban development practitioners from all over the world
• participants from cities and international programmes have learned to share their experiences and pool their ideas systematically and constructively, enhancing their complementarity and collective efficiency
• donors have become progressively more closely involved, with international support programmes linking in their own networks of cities
• an unusual breadth and depth of city-level experiences have been (and are still being) documented, in a systematic way, using a common analytical framework to enhance comparability and mutual understanding
• the city documentation is not only still expanding but is "alive" in the sense of dealing with real-world city experiences which are still underway and still grappling with the problems of sustainable urban development.

These developments have led, quite naturally and of their own momentum, to the establishment of the Urban Environment Forum.  The UEF will involve a wide variety of mutually-reinforcing activities, to be developed in response to clearly expressed needs, and likely to include the following: 
 

1. lnstitutionalising the Urban Environment Forum as a living process, through well-prepared and prcpedy-supported annual meetings of the participating cities and the international support programmes with which they are cooperating; this will encompass: 
•  annual meetings structured around common themes and using a common framework 
• a secretariat, for organising meetings substantively, maintaining continuity between meetings, organizing follow-up and helping with the mobilisation of technical and financial support for this exchange. 

 2. Developing and institutionalising a full-scale information sharing process, to ensure that the rapidly accumulating knowledge and experience in the cities and international programmes is swiftly made widely and effectively available; this will ultimately encompass: 
• use of the full range of forms of dccumentabon, nct only full-swle reports such as the EPM Source Book but also summary reports, newsletters, fact sheets, case study abstracts, etc. 
•  use of translation to pub[[sh documentation in different languages 
• development of regional centres for information dissemination 
• development of a Web site on the lnternet and preparation of interactive CD-RoMs 
• utilisation of UNEP-Mercure and other systems to extend access to electronic communication through the lnternet 
• preparation of local language videos 

3. Continuing and deepening the documentation process, not only by expanding the number and range of case experiences, but also by "tracking" city experiences already documented so that they may be up-dated and followed through; this will encompass: 
• regularly adding new city case examples, supported to ensure consistency with the over-all framework and hence comparability with the existing stock of information 
• periodically re-visiting older city case examples, to up-date their experiences and to capture any new or changed lessons 
• periodically revisiting hard copy, electronic and audio-visual materials, to reflect the steady accumulation of new information and new thinking, and also to allow, as the sample grows, more confident generalisations and ways of matching city needs and situations with documented experiences and lessons; this could well include revised and up-dated future versions of the EPM Source Book. 

Built up in this way as a response to energetically demonstrated demand and proven willingness to collaborate, the Urban Environmental Forum will develop into a powerful mechanism through which cities and programmes around the world can collaborate effectively - and directly- in working out appropriate approaches to urban environmental problems.  Arising out cf everwidening circles of participation, and focused directly an the cities themselves, the Urban Environment Forum will be a genuinely "bottom-up' network - something which is clearly "of and for" the urban environmental management practitioners themselves. 

It is hoped - indeed, expected - that the collaborative activities of cities and international support programmes through the UEF will quickly bring the benefits of better environmental planning and management - real and visible improvements in living conditions - to urban populations all over the world, especially the urban poor.

For more information on the Urban Environment Forum, please contact:
Urban Environment Forum (UEF) Secretariat
UN-HABITAT
United Nations Environment Programme(UNEP)
P.O. Box 30030, Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: +254-2-623225, Fax: +254-2-623715, E-mail: eleanor.cody@unhabitat.org