World Habitat Day Celebrated in Orissa

This year far away from Washington D.C. in United States of America the venue for the 2009 World Habitat Day observation, Urban Professional of Orissa in India celebrated World Habitat Day (WHD) at Bhubaneswar on 5^th October 2009. The United Nations has designated the first Monday in October every year as World Habitat Day to reflect on the state of human settlements and the basic right to adequate shelter for all. In 2009 United Nations chose the theme Planning our urban future to raise awareness of the need to improve urban planning to deal with new major challenges of the 21st century.

In Bhubaneswar a workshop was held on 8^th of October 2009 to mark the closing session of the World Habitat Day. At the outset Video address of Dr. Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN-HABITAT was played. Followed by Mr. Piyush Ranjan Rout, Executive Director of City Managers’ Association Orissa shared the outcome of the annual publication of the UN-HABITAT Global Report on Human Settlements 2009: Planning Sustainable Cities. After brief discussion participants concluded that:

·   There is a need of raising importance of Urban Agenda at the highest level of Government, International Agencies, Academics, Media and NGOs etc.

·   Best Practices sharing amongst elected representatives, policy makers, city officials, planners etc.

·   Development partnership with various international institutes to localized capacity building programmes in India.

·   Support in implementation of toolkit developed by UNHABITAT and other agencies at the city level i.e. Local Agenda 21, Climate Change, Safe Cities, Slum Upgrading, Global Urban Observatory, Sustainable Cities programme etc.

The participant of the workshop includes town planners; representatives of NGOs, The participants of the conference include representatives of Cities, University, Government, Directorate of Town Planning, Non Government Organization, local government association and researchers.