On September 11, 2007 an unprecedented gathering of international policy professionals and a diverse team of scholars and local community leaders will convene to plan how to apply global thinking and best practices to the historic South Shore community on the south side of Chicago.
Mr. Gavin Power, Deputy Director of the UN’s Global Compact, will be the keynote speaker at the forum. His remarks on the increasing connectivity of events at the world’s conference table and practical issues in local communities will kick off the program. The over-arching themes of human development and sustainable development are at the center of the planning process. “Mr. Power works with over 600 major corporations and over one hundred member countries and the question of how to better maximize human capital continues to be at the center of the dialogue,” said Dr. Alice Palmer, Co-director of the PEOPLE Programme and moderator of the forum.
Joining Mr. Power will be local bankers, labor leaders, business owners, community activists, program administrators, and a team of urban policy and development scholars, each of whom is an expert at asset-based urban planning. “I am very excited about applying the sharpest thinking in the world on improving human conditions right into our back yard,” said Dr. Stephen Alexander, noted urban planning expert from the Egan Center at DePaul University in Chicago. Organizers hope that by demonstrating how when best practices are employed, the community can more fully package its many physical, natural, social and economic resources to grow more healthy and self-sustaining.
Over sixty people are expected to attend what the event’s hosts are calling an ‘interactive planning session’. The organizing group, led by members of the PEOPLE Programme, will conduct the forum in the solarium at the South Shore Cultural Center—made famous during a scene in the popular 1980 film “The Blues Brothers.”
If the program is as successful as anticipated, the PEOPLE Programme aims to use the South Shore community as a testing ground for many of the best practices that will be discussed during the event, and possibly apply the lessons to other communities in Chicago and beyond.
