The Caribbean Lo­cal Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Project (Car­iled) has hailed the suc­cess of the three day con­fer­ence CUF 2013: [R]Evo­lu­tion, the third An­nu­al Caribbean Ur­ban Fo­rum, host­ed in Port-of-Spain last week.

The con­fer­ence, de­signed to ad­dress spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy is­sues with­in the Caribbean ur­ban sec­tor, was host­ed by the Gov­ern­ment un­der the lead­er­ship of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, and or­gan­ised in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, the T&T So­ci­ety of Plan­ners and the Caribbean Net­work for Ur­ban and Land Man­age­ment (CNULM), with sup­port from the Eu­ro­pean Union's Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and In­no­va­tion Pro­gramme.

Con­fer­ence themes in­clud­ed Lo­cal Gov­er­nance & Com­mu­ni­ty En­gage­ment, Her­itage and Cul­ture in In­ner Cities, the Green Ur­ban Econ­o­my Post Rio +20, the Evolv­ing Caribbean Ur­ban Agen­da, and Pro­fes­sion­al Plan­ning, Prac­tice, Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing in the Caribbean.

At­tend­ed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 19 coun­tries, of which 13 were from Cari­com mem­ber states, the con­fer­ence opened with a fea­ture ad­dress from Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, who high­light­ed the role of lo­cal gov­ern­ments in ur­ban plan­ning, and drew ref­er­ence to the Cana­di­an mod­el of gov­er­nance where there is de­vo­lu­tion of pow­er to mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties.

The min­is­ter al­so out­lined pol­i­cy changes un­der­way in T&T, where there is a mov­ing trend to­wards strength­en­ing of lo­cal gov­er­nance through co-or­di­na­tion and in­te­gra­tion at the lo­cal lev­el. Car­iled, as an ad­vo­cate for lo­cal eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment projects in the Caribbean, sup­ports lo­cal gov­er­nance, com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment and knowl­edge trans­fer in ur­ban plan­ning and over­all growth of mi­cro, small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es.

The agency's keynote pre­sen­ter, Kadie Ward, drew ref­er­ence to how her­itage and cul­ture cre­ate sto­ries, and to the role that sto­ries play in de­vel­op­ing pos­i­tive city brands and at­tract­ing in­vest­ments of tal­ent, busi­ness and oth­er el­e­ments of growth for ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties.The clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny fea­tured es­teemed Caribbean au­thor, Earl Lovelace, who re­mind­ed par­tic­i­pants that "land­scapes rep­re­sent the ex­pe­ri­ence, his­to­ry, strug­gles and dreams of in­hab­i­tants", and from it, in­hab­i­tants de­vel­op a sense of cul­ture.

Lovelace re­it­er­at­ed the role of cul­ture in any form of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry plan­ning, em­pha­siz­ing that com­mu­ni­ties need­ed to ful­ly un­der­stand the over­all cul­tur­al, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic land­scape be­fore be­ing able to plan for the fu­ture. The con­fer­ence closed with pre­sen­ta­tion of the CUF 2013 Res­o­lu­tion by CNULM Di­rec­tor, Dr Asad Mo­hammed.