Peter Kearns's blog

While in Europe recently, I had a very intereting two day visit to Bielefeld, one of the cities participating in PIE, organised by the Education Bureau of the city. While I observed much of interest, three things stood out for me from the visit. These were the innovative Learning Report prepared for the city by the Education Bureau, a visit to the History Museum of the city, and a visit to a school project called the Luttergarten.

This paper has been prepared to promote discussion of ways in which a number of ideals  directed at better life in cities can be integrated in more holistic and connected strategies so that there are value added outcomes in terms of the quality of life and the sustainability of cities.

It has become evident that Learning Cities and Healthy Cities share a good deal in common, and that community learning strategies can contribute much to Healthy City objectives. This convergence of interests owes much to the strong interest among Healthy City initiatives in the social determinants of health following the work of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Commission on Social Determinants of Health.

This note from the Director of the University of Queensland Boilerhouse Community Engagement Centre in Ipswich comments on some responses to disadvantage in Ipswich a city west of Brisbane that has suffered a number of forms of disadvantage and adversity, including floods in 2010:

The Green Growth Leaders (GGL) is a global alliance of cities, regions, countries and corporations sharing a vision of building prosperous green economies and communities. Their web site has a good deal of information on innovative policies and strategies including country reports (the report on China is the most recent). See http://greengrowthleaders.org