Guadalajara 6 March 2017-- As a follow up of the Habitat III Special Session in Quito, last October, the City of Guadalajara (State of Jalisco) in collaboration with UN-Habitat recently launched the Laboratory of Policies for Safer Cities.

The initiative, launched under the auspices of the Safer Cities Programme, will enable the city to take stock of prevention policies, facilitate learning and drawn out innovations as well as to develop a new urban safety policy in the context of the New Urban Agenda and push 2030 Development Agenda. The event also doubled up as the first of a series of urban thinkers’ campuses on Safer Cities in Guadalajara.

Mayor of Guadalajara, Enrique Alfaro who is also the co-chair of the Global Network on Safer Cities said: “the municipalities must follow the guidelines emanating from this institution. Improvements have been made in prevention, but the perception of citizenship indicates that much remains to be done (...) the studies that the Lab does will not be left on paper, but will translate into realities that promote a safer city”.

“The desire to innovate and engage the enormous human capital in Jalisco and aware of the critical mass existing in Guadalajara, allow us to share the city knowledge on crime prevention, standardize strategies and promote those policies based on the evidence in the framework of the Campuses but also in the Lab, as this project has the goal to develop new tools and indicators that will enable us to better evaluate and monitor crime and violence, which will contribute not only to improve the security, inclusion and social cohesion in Guadalajara and its Metropolitan Area, but also in other cities around the world” says Juma Assiago, Coordinator of Safer Cities Programme.

The event counted with the participation of Mayor Alfaro, Director General of IMEPLAN, Dr. Gutiérrez Padilla, General Manager of the Metropolitan Agency Marco Valerio Pérez Gollaz, Dr. Franz Vanderschueren as a Technical Chair of Global Network on Safer Cities and the representatives, professors and deans of the University of Guadalajara.

The University, as a permanent actor in the city, will play a key role in the process of research and knowledge management. This institution will guarantee us that the support for the monitoring of the Sustainable Development Objectives and the implementation of the New Urban Agenda leads us to achieve the objectives that we are setting up in the medium and long term.

“I want to say that I am particularly pleased to come here to Guadalajara, because there is no city or urban agglomeration that has created this metropolitan agency process in the perspective of security (...). Prevention is fundamental on the part of the local authorities, in coordination with the civil society, the University, the churches, the entrepreneurs... We must always move towards better security for all” said Dr. Franz Vanderschueren.

UN Habitat Safer Cities Programme continues with its Urban Thinkers Campus on Safer Cities by this year in Durban (April), Montreal (June), Geneva (July), Seoul and Barcelona (November).