United Nations Radio

Half of the world's people now live in cities, according to UN HABITAT, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme. Within two decades, nearly 60 percent will be urban dwellers.

As cities continue to grow in size, harmony between people as well as their spatial and social environments will be increasingly important. Creating harmonious cities was the focus of the 4th World Urban Forum, held in Nanjing, China, which ended this week. Civil society groups, youth groups and women's organizations were all represented at the conference, which was attended by nearly 8,000 people. Among the topics discussed was urban crime. Forum participant Timothy Challen, founder of the Kilimanjaro Initiative, experienced crime first hand in 2003:

Challen 1:Five years ago, I was the victim of gun crime in Nairobi. I was attacked by some young people from disadvantaged communities. And this experience made me realize there are some differences in our cities in terms of wealth, health, job opportunities and also to some extent stigmatization. And it made me realize that if we want to sort out some of the problems that we do have in our cities and in our communities as a whole, we need to get everybody to work together.

Narrator:Mr. Challen decided after the incident that he had two choices - to go back to Geneva where he is based and pretend the incident never happened --

Challen 2:And my fear in that was that was that I would be come a bitter person. I don't think you can push things to the side and forget about them and pretend they never happened and continue on.

Narrator:-- Or to try and understand what happened and try to prevent it from happening to someone else. Mr. Challen chose the latter. He returned to Nairobi and came up with the idea of the Kilamanjaro Initiative:

Challen 3:Meeting people there, youth groups, I noticed there is a lot of hope. These people have dreams. And I think it's very important that we give them the capacity to reach their aspirations. Now how do you go about doing that? I think it's through education. It's through engaging young people into community activity. For the Kilimanjaro Initiative we used sport as a tool do that.

Narrator:The Kilimanjaro Initiative now sponsors climbs up Mount Kilimanjaro by groups, including local youth, as a way of building strength and character. As the 4th World Urban forum in Nanjing drew to a close, HABITAT Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka said the conference had been successful and had gotten everyone thinking about how to bring harmonious cities:

Ana:The exchanges here have been truly rich. Our talks covered many subjects. This included territorial balance and promoting social equity in urban development, making cities more productive and harmonizing the rich environment, preserving the cultural heritage of cities and addressing the needs of all generations.

Narrator:HABITAT Executive Director, Anna Tibaijika.

(duration: 4'12")