WARSAW MEETING WILL SHARE EXPERIENCES IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Press Release
DEV/2112
HAB/117

WARSAW MEETING WILL SHARE EXPERIENCES IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT

NEW YORK, 16 May (DDSMS) -- Mayors and senior officials of a number of large cities in central and eastern Europe are to attend a United Nations meeting on metropolitan and municipal governance in Warsaw at the end of next week.

The Colloquium is organized by the United Nations in collaboration with the City of Warsaw, the Polish Municipal Development Agency, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat). It is part of the Metropolitan Governance Programme of the United Nations Department of Development Support and Management Services and is one of the regional activities in preparation for the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) in Istanbul next month.

Among those attending will be senior officials from Bucharest, Gdansk, Krakow, Ljubljana, Minsk, Moscow, Poznan, Prague, Riga, Sofia, Tallin, Vilnius, Warsaw, Wroclaw, Zagreb, as well as representatives of other cities and United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations, specialists in public administration and experts on urban governance.

The Colloquium -- from 23 to 25 May -- will review key strategies and policies required for reorienting the administrative structures, processes and methods of metropolitan governance to meet the increasing needs for economic development at the local level. Participants will share information and experience on municipal and metropolitan governance, through presentations on administrative, social and economic reforms and measures undertaken within the past few years. They will highlight specific experiences of participating cities, particularly those which may be relevant to other cities.

The results of the meeting are expected to be presented at Habitat II along with the reports from other regional meetings.

For further information, please contact: Department for Development Support and Management Services, Division of Public Administration and Development Management, United Nations, New York, NY 10017, U.S.A.; tel: (212) 963-4684, fax (212) 963-2196.

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