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cal – to citizens. The renovation programs of the developed world, about
which much has been said (and which have so many resources) will only
be viable if people get involved in them. Housing projects in emerging
countries will only be viable if people take ownership. We have seen how
thousands of new homes in emerging countries are abandoned by their
dwellers, who return to their slums. Dialogue with citizens on the local
level is crucial. Communities worthy of the name are essential. Only on
them can we build a market and a building policy that live up to the
challenges ahead. They are the ones which will bring, to a large extent,
the sensitivity and local character needed for building, both related to
the practical needs and priorities, and in relation to cultural identity
and connection to the anthropological foundations on which new de-
velopments should be built. We need this dialogue on the local level.
We need, where possible and practical, concerted national strategies,
for a long enough period to ensure their vision and continuity.
And meanwhile we need a dialogue on a global scale. The one we
are having at this conference needs to be transferred to other global
forums tackling the big issues that affect us (the new agenda for the
further development of the Millennium Development Goals, the new
urban agenda, the post-Kyoto global energy roadmap, the biodiversity
preservation agenda, the agenda to control demographic explosion).
This global dialogue requires active involvement of this Conference’s
actors, working together. One of the main messages emerging from this
Conference is that we need and want to work together.
We will need to develop our annual Global Vision Report much
further; we will need to update it constantly. We have to turn it into
a mechanism that helps us work together.
To be honest, we will not know if this Conference has been a suc-
cess until one year or two or three have passed, which is when we
will be able to ascertain if the momentum of three days in Barcelona
(preceded by many months’ work) results in mechanisms to do so, to
work together in the global dialogue, so that we can provide the global
sector roadmap which we are proposing and promoting.
We are summoning these local dialogues, the global dialogue. We
are inviting you all to join this Barcelona Manifesto and work accord-
ing to its spirit.
