Looking at peripheral cities from Getafe
- The Declaration of Peripheral Cities emphasises the need of building democratic, solidarity and sustainable metropolis and stresses the “Right to the City”.
- The mayor and FEMP’s president, Pedro Castro, declared that this meeting –gathering almost one thousand participants from 40 countries- has been very successful.
- Besides, Getafe hosted the meeting of FAL (Forum of Local Authorities) Network’s Promoting Group and the meeting of the UCLG’s Commission on Social Inclusion and Participatory Democracy. In both meetings, we made a debate related to the next World Congress on United Cities and Local Governments.
Getafe, June 13th. From 10th to 12th of June, Getafe hosted the II Forum of Local Authorities of the Periphery. Organised by the Town Council of Getafe and the Spanish Federation of Municipalities Madrid and Provinces (FEMP), in collaboration with the University Carlos III, the forum gathered Local Authorities, Experts, Academics and Social Movements in the city of the metropolitan area of Madrid in order to debate on the common problems of peripheral cities.
“We are not invisible, we exist with our own identity and values”
The Forum of Getafe gave us the opportunity to establish the basis for a movement of cities aiming at creating together their own future, the future of peripheral cities. Throughout the different round tables, the participants debated and analysed the role of peripheral cities, both as a source of culture, integrating and multicultural values, new participative policies, and defence and promotion of public services, and claimed for the Right to the City for everybody.
As stated in the Declaration of Getafe, the peripheries should not be considered the ghettos of the metropolis and cannot be an adjustment variable in budgeting, and they claim the “legitimate pride to act in order to avoid being places where population is relegated”.
“Looking at the South from the South”
The FAL-P has become a key meeting for World municipalism and includes an agenda of engagements in order that peripheral cities’ local authorities continue thinking and fighting for achieving the appropriate visibility in World Cities’ Forums. Juan Ramón Troncoso, FAMSI’s secretary general, presented this idea during the closing table and emphasized the importance of the FAL Network and the World Social Forum within this common agenda. Therefore, the FAL-P has concentrated its next agenda in the XI WSF, which will take place in Dakar next year. “The World Social Forum and the FAL go back to Africa in order to look at the South from the South”, “ the FAL Network represents the will of progressive Local Authorities and the WSF movement in their common fight for another possible World”, Troncoso said. From the local, the Local Authorities are able to build a new World by “considering politics as a value opposed to the market values, mainly in a systemic crisis like the one we are suffering”.
The third Forum of Local Authorities of the Periphery will take place in 4 years. After the last two editions in Europe, Nanterre 2006 and Getafe 2010, it is planned to celebrate it in Canoas, a peripheral city of Porto Alegre.
The FAL Network
During the meeting in Getafe, the FAL (Forum of Local Authorities and Participatory Democracy) Network’s Promoting Group also prepared the next UCLG’s Congress in Mexico and the IX FAL Network World Assembly in Dakar. The Promoting Group suggested that the World Assembly could be held before the Word Social Forum as in the past and not as in the last two editions. Besides, the main subjects to be treated will be “Alternatives from the local for the global crisis” and “The African Continent”. The date agreed for the IX Assembly of the Forum of Local Authorities is February 7th, 2011.
The FAL Network (Forum of Local Authorities for Social Inclusion and Participatory Democracy) is an international network of institutions and local authorities which is open to the participation of social movement networks and which supports the World Social Forum development, as we firmly relieve that another World is possible and that it starts in the villages and cities. The FAL-P Network gathers the voices of big cities’ peripheral cities working in networks in order to exchange experiences related to their own realities.
UCLG’s Social Inclusion and Participatory Democracy Commission
The UCLG’s Social Inclusion and Participatory Democracy Commission organised a meeting within the framework of the Forum of Getafe and worked in the proposal for the World Congress of United Cities and Local Governments taking place in November in Mexico.
