Summer University 2013: URBACT Talk - Furio Honsell: Leadership and European Networking or, “how to turn a bunch of keywords into concrete practices”

Leadership and European Networking
or, “how to turn a bunch of keywords into
concrete practices”
Furio Honsell
{M, } uni {cipal,vers} ity of Udine
Mayor of Udine (ITALY)

Leadership & European Networking
UDINE pop 100,000
Greater Udine pop 180,000
FRIULI pop 1,000,000

DIFFICULT TIMES
– Economic downturn, recession, austerity
– Political dissatisfaction
– Anti-establishment movements
• The recession is extremely virulent
– It acts as a multiplicative factor mostly for the worst
– Inequalities and inequities increase dramatically
(reverse “spirit level” effect)

The CSDH – closing the
gap in a generation
The Marmot Review – Fair
Society Healthy Lives
The Spirit Level
A Fair Society
•Study evidence of low sense of control, self efficacy and self esteem in population in unequal areas
•Almost everyone benefits from greater equality; usually the benefits are greatest among the poor but
extend to the majority of the population

Lorenz curve, Gini coefficient

• BUT We live a very important discontinuity, a time of
paradigm revolution, an opportunity to improve, go
beyond across borders, sectors, nations, professions
– intersectoral, interdisciplinary, international, interprofessional
– transectoral, transdisciplinary, transnational, transprofessional
• the scope of many of our principles (development vs
progress) and concepts (e.g. citizenship, care, well-
being, prevention) can change for the better
• More holistic approach: whole-of-{society, government}
• How to achieve Unlimited Progress without
Unlimited Growth?

WHAT ARE THE MAIN THREATS, CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES, STRATEGIES
IN TIMES OF AUSTERITY and FRUGALITY?
Democratic and Scientific methods:
two of a kind
• “Promoting knowledge is much more an ethical issue than it is a
metaphysical issue, and moreover it is a duty and the hope of
humanity”

The Mathematics of Politics
What matters is the first
derivative, that is, the
increase not the
absolute amount

Scientific and democratic methods:
an interesting analogy
• Science and Democracy, scientific method and democratic method
• Public debate
• Incremental growth
• Foster progress rather than achieve perfection (Sen’s Principle)
• It is not necessary to eliminate all conflicting positions until only one is left
– Promote justice and equity and eliminate injustice and inequity
– Accountability, transparency
– Innovation
– Literacy
– transnationality
• Good explanations correspond to actions which increase justice and equity

Strategic standpoints
• High commitment, engagement
• Provide objectives (meaning, sense, points) to citizens
and motivation to workers
• Break up the stabilization triangle in a number of
wedges to reduce
• “best care at lower cost”
• “sometimes less is more”
• “doing more with less”

STRATEGIES
• Avoid fragmentation of services
– it leads to duplication
– continuity costs and coordination costs
• Efficiency: reduce waste of human, economic, and financial
resources
– Reduce gulf between research and practice,
– Hospice, the right of a swan’s song
– Various rebound effects – over treatment over diagnosis
– Bureaucracy
– Excessive cost of technologies - tenders
– Frauds and abuses – transparency and control
• Third sector, NPO’s and voluntary workers

social capital as a common good
• Services of general interest
• Avoid Tragedy of Commons
• What is a citizen? Community welfare. mutually supportive. resilient.
• Care should not be category –specific: elderly, physically or mentally disadvantaged disabled,
marginalised , addicted, chronically ill, immigrants
• Collective responsibility of each and everyone towards all
• Equity (do not leave anyone behind) , equal opportunitie, sustainibility, solidarity cohesion
• The “bus” principle: the for-all movement e.g. sports for all
• Prevention and promotion, rehabilitation
– Literacy, lifestyles
• turn interaction into integration, in society but also within service providers
• take into account – be accountable

The European Dilemma:
nations vs cities, liberism vs solidarity?
• efficiency  market competitiveness
• freedom + transparency  liberism
• Trasymachus in Plato’s Republic :
– “justice is what suits best the strongest”,
– “power goes where power is”,
– “justice goes where power is”,
– “it rains always where it is already wet”
• Constitution  reduce the excess of power
• Human rights  Customers Rights, Subscribers Rights
• Sustainibility  the Rights of the Environment of
• the Rights of Future Generations
• In Need of a European Constitution

GOLDEN RULES
THINK OUT OF THE BOX
ONLY TRUE ARTISTS ARE ABLE TO COPY

• When should a settlement/hub be called a city?
– The ontological issue
• public institutions, services or size
– The psychological issue
• relations, community, identity, attachment, security, history
• The numbers of a city:
– 100.000 pop, 0.5t, 9t, 100m3
, 278m2
, 200 l, 46y, 1:4, 1:8
• The numbers of a political agenda:
– 33%, >0, 100%, 500-steps, 20-25, 202020, 252525, 90%
CHALLENGES OF URBANIZATION
KNOW YOUR CITY!
NUMBERS PROVIDE COMPARISON, SET TARGETS

THE CENTRE or
HYPERCENTRE?
Imgres1.htm

Immagine1.jpg
Immagine1.jpg

The “rogge”The “rogge”
waterwaywaterway
system:system:
brought freshbrought fresh
water forwater for
drinkingdrinking andand
washingwashing, as, as
well aswell as energyenergy
for operatingfor operating
mills and othermills and other
machineriesmachineries

A street or a square?A street or a square?
pedestrian streets?pedestrian streets?
why preserve old buildings?why preserve old buildings?

6 4 2 0 2 4 6
0-4
5-9
10-14
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
40-44
45-49
50-54
55-59
60-64
65-69
70-74
75-79
80-84
85-89
90-94
95-99
100-
M - F
1871
20011936
• UDINE POPULATION
PYRAMIDS
• snapshots of
demographic change
6 4 2 0 2 4 6
0-4
5-9
10-14
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
40-44
45-49
50-54
55-59
60-64
65-69
70-74
75-79
80-84
85-89
90-94
95-99
100-
M - F

1:4, 1:8, 1:20
31 dicembre 2011
-5.000 -4.000 -3.000 -2.000 -1.000 0 1.000 2.000 3.000 4.000 5.000
0-4
5-9
10-14
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
40-44
45-49
50-54
55-59
60-64
65-69
70-74
75-79
80-84
85e +
NATALITY AND MORTALITY BETWEEN 1968 & 2006NATALITY AND MORTALITY BETWEEN 1968 & 2006

OLDER PEOPLE IN UDINE, ITALY & EUROPE
Udine
(2011)
Italy
(2011)
Europe
(2010)
Average age 46 43 40.9
Senior citizens 24.9 20.3 17.4
Old age index
Population (65+)
211.7 144.5 111.5
Population (0-14)
Dependency ratio
Population [(0-14) + (65+)]
57.8 52.3 49.3
Population (15-64)
Old dependency ratio
Population (65+)
39.3 30.8 25.9
Population (15-64)
Exchange rate
Population (60-64)
163.4 130.3 -
Population (15-19)

PERCENTAGE OF OLDER PEOPLE LIVING ALONE
Age Males Females Total
% over 65 21,2 52,1 39,6
% over 75 10,5 35,9 25,6
% over 85 3,8 15,6 10,8
centenaries 14 49 63

Beautiful cities vs Ugly cities
• have to exhibit rules and
principles, which produce joy
when we become aware of
them
• allow to read off the history
• promote well-being
• are rich in green areas
• foster sustainability
• are functional
• balance between empty and
full volumes
• ensure safety
• are chaotic (even if
chaos has its
regularities)
• increase discomfort
• induce traffic
• are noisy
• induce solitude and
isolation
• are unsafe

Principles underpinning the new
UDINE City General Development Plan
• Reduces potential inhabitants from 125,000 to 115,000
• Flexible and telescopic
• Promotes re-use of brownfield and industrial and military unused
sites
• Ensures eco-corridors, green and blue networks
• Provides Cycle and pedestrian paths
• Reduces functional promiscuity: fun areas, call-centres, penny
arcades
• Avoids linear glueing between urban settlements
• Promotes urban densification
• Limits farmland usage:
• 1,840,000 m2
transformed into green areas
• 290,000 m2
residential areas not re-assigned
• Building potential reduced by 1,000,000 m3

Principles underpinning the new
UDINE Urban Mobility Plan
• Sets the 252525 goal for the mobility mode distribution
• Reduces excessive use of private vehicles, above all by
commuters
• Cancels parasitical traffic
• Designs mobility and radial circulation corridors
• Encourages the use of alternative means of transport
• Promotes a ‘Slow town’

GENERAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN GREEN AREAS DISTRIBUTION

Perception and paradigm shifts

The missing card

Memorize
one of the
following…
Done?

Now I’ll make it disappear!

Socio – political
manipulations and fallacies
often deriving from
innumeracywe overestimate rare events
Fooling with percentages
Minorities viewpoints
The progressive – tax swindle
Xenophobic Paradox

Percentage shares of equivalised total gross and post-tax income, by
quintile groups for all households, 1978 – 2007/8

BEWARE PREJUDICE
• Suppose immigrants are 10% of the overall
population
• Suppose that Mrs. X.Y. has quite a good
reaction time and has a reasonable probability to
recognise an immigrant if she sees one,
notwithstanding the predicament. Let’s say she
can identify an immigrant in 80% of situations.
• How likely is it that she is right and that the
mugger was indeed an immigrant?

The Xenophobic paradox
• Suppose immigrants are 10% of the overall population
• But suppose that 15% of pickpocketers are immigrants,
while 85 are locals.
• Mrs X.Y. will identify correctly the mugger as an
immigrant only 12% of the times while she will
mistakenly identify a local mugger as an immigrant in
20% of the remaining 85 cases, that is 17%.
• THIS IS USUALLY DISREGARDED
• The probability that Mrs. X.Y. was mugged by an
immigrant is therefore 12/(12 + 17) which is less than
50%.
• Even if the lady is almost always right, she is more likely
to bear false witness than not.

I always liked taking up challenges solving puzzles
• For my first 30 years (1958-1988) I was driven by intellectual
and social curiosity and Iiked solving puzzles, such as:
– An explorer chased by a bear runs for 10 miles South, 10 miles East and
10 miles North before succeeding in getting rid of the beast, only to
realize that he was back to the very spot where his run started from.
What is the colour of the bear’s fur?
• I enjoyed the adventures of knowledge and research, in
Mathematics, Logic and Theoretical Computer Science,
Semantics, Formal Languages in Pisa, Torino, Edinburgh,
Stanford, Paris

A first turning point: from puzzle solving to
problem solving
• But in 1998 I felt the urge to pay back what my country had bestowed
onto me in my public education. I had to go back to Italy
• … in Udine a young developing university – I was appointed professor in
1989
• I had been only once in Udine before, hitch-hiking, on an occasional stop
• The paradox effect of the 1976 Earthquake – the knowledge factory - I felt
a missionary
• Most of my colleagues left – but I remained – mostly for the sake of the
students

Another turning point
• In such a developing university it was inevitable to have to
assume responsibilities
• 1995 Dean and Rector-VC from 2001 to 2008
• The University had 17.000 students and nearly 1000 members
teaching staff when I left as VC
• I think I did a good job – but I think also that that time was of
special fast changes and fast growth.
• But the tide was changing

Yet another turning point
• I must say I felt the recession coming, because, at least in Italy,
there were cues of a deep moral and ethical recession
• I felt that my duty was to take the offer of running for Mayor of
the city of Udine
• I thought I could address political issues meaningfully just by
acting as a responsible citizen, as a thoughtful scientist, a
rational person, a problem solver, and knowledge manager.
• So I resigned as President of the University and ran for mayor
• THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN AND WHAT HAPPENED IN
THE NEXT 5 YEARS WERE A DEVASTATING EXPERIENCE

The role of the Mayor
• Well … he has very little effective power
• Planning and control not execution
– Elected officials vs professional administrators
– Majority (?) vs Opposition
– Conflict, deliberate opposition or just friction, inertia
• The MAYOR is held responsible for everything
• the abundant but extremely rare snowfall
• the increase in petty theft,
• the lack of jobs for the young
• the noise made by the local pub,
• any speeding cars, any hole in the road
• the water company which fells unnecessarily a tree
• the right to justice of a father and a brain dead lady
• 28 afghan political asylum seekers sleeping in a park

5 YEARS OF SOLITUDE
• Meetings and decisions to be taken every half hour about issues for which
one has very little time to understand and ponder
• Decisions which often have dramatic little impact because they end up
absorbed by the slackness, sluggishness, bovinity, laziness, tropidity of the
bureaucracy (nobody’s government e defencive mechanism of professional
administrators for breaking up responsabilities thus resist accountability)
• Crises which break out unexpectedly but to become the top-local news on
the papers with the opposition capitalizing on the impossibility of an
immediate solution
• Often under police investigation

• Truth does not matter, but rather opinion
• Media and public opinion are often superficial
• Washing away prejudice is extremely difficult
• Urgencies and today-ness use up all the time – no
energy left for planning or strategy
• Conflict, especially malevolent conflict, manipulation,
stigma are everyday’s experience
• Opportunistic views, racism, xenophobia,
fragmentation

The main difficulty – A golden rule
• Defend plurality of opinion, interest, diversity
– Planning a city for disabled/disadvantaged people
in fact helps you planning a better city for-all
– Copernican revolution (put to use scientific
metaphors) it is not people themselves who are at
pains in coping with the environment because they
are handicapped in some ways, it is the
environment which makes them disabled

A case in point: the Roma informal settlement
• It was there long before I first learnt that there was a city called
Udine on the map
• But they became the scapegoats, the symbol of the mounting
opposition to my social and protective policies
• I knew that they were the most disadvantaged minority, but to
the eyes of the vast majority of my population they were the
priviledged. They could break the rules and nothing would
happen to them, they would get all social benefits
• And I was the culprit
• It makes a huge difference if you can tell your peers that you
are part of an international network that is comitted to
promoting health, houses, education, jobs

TRANSNATIONAL CITY NETWORKS – MOVEMENTS
• Healthy Cities (1400 cities)
– increase healthy life expectancy
– promote healthy lifestyles, tackle obesity, etc.
• Age-Friendly Cities (115 cities)
– add life to years, not only years to life
– promote the idea that what is good for old age is good for all age
– foster accessibility and contrast the idea of an ‘enemy city’
• Learning Cities (450 cities)
– promote lifelong learning and smart initiatives
• Active Cities (50 cities)
– encourage physical exercise and sports for everyone
• Covenant of Mayors 202020 for sustainability (5000 cities)
– Renewable sources, efficiency,reuce carbon footpint
• Giona – Playing Cities (40 cities – national network)
– To promote playing as a tool for learning, integration and socialisation
• Local Agenda 21 (7000 cities)
• URBACT ROMA NET NETWORK (10 cities)
– To promote wellbeing and social inclusion of the Roma population and disadvantaged groups
• Welfare  well-being  happiness : can we invert arrows?

the Science of Political Administration
• SWOT analysis
• Transnational networking between CITIES
– Europe is a network of CITIES vs NATIONS
• URBACT METHODOLOGY
– LAP
– LSG
• Active learning (learning by doing)
– The fish bowl environment

Roma-Net
139 Members of Local Support Groups

Roma-Net
Integration of Roma Population
ROMA SETTLEMENTS IN UDINE
Integration of Roma population

IMPACT
• Amazing tangible benefits
• LSG brought together, health care workers, care-givers,
NGO’s, municipality workers, residents, roma people,
• Reduce by over 50% Roma population living in informal
settlements
• Achieve totality of children included in some schooling
programme,
• Achieve 100% vaccination programme

UDINE
HEALTHY CITY
80 CO2kg/person x hr flight
0,1 CO2kg/km
20 CO2kg/tree x year
Energy budget
District heating
Building regulations,
Increase thermal insulation
Turbines
Orientation
Direct light
Geothermal
Solar

Environmental policies of municipality of Udine
development of action plans and long-term programs to address critical
environmental issues
ISO 14001 and EMAS – environmental management & Audit Scheme
Certifications
policies for energy saving
development of regulations and specific projects to address energy saving issues
in the building sector
A significant part is represented by:
Local Energy Plan and Covenant of Major Initiative joined since 2009
New energy building code and ClimaHouse certification
Obtained in for the entire local authority organisation as elements of
excellence in management of critical environmental aspects and
good practice for both private and public actors.

INNOVATION
• New generation network:
Fiber To The Cabinet
– Through the sewage & street
lighting pipes
– 50Mbps
– European Digital Agenda 20
Mbps by 2020
• Open data

ENERGY DAY: Frugality, education, integration
Archimedes Screw, Cochlea Archimedea

eco

UDINE
joined the Healthy
Cities movement
HEALTH
ENLIGHTMENT
in 1995

Social determinants of
health across the
lifecourse

World Health Day 2012
Copenhagen, 2 april 2012

Slogans
ADD LIFE TO YEARS
NOT YEARS TO LIFE
What is good for older people
is good for other people
You can’t help getting older,
But You don’t have to get old
But the hard truth is:
People with high income benefit more from
public funding than people with low income

You don't stop laughing because you grow old,
You grow old because you stop laughing
Where are their partners?

HEALTHY AGEING SUBNETWORK
of the
WHO HEALTHY CITIES PROJECT
working to empower older persons,
increase their participation & social inclusion in the community
& promote their health and quality of life

Core theme Phase IV HEALTHY
AGEING PROFILES (2004-2008)

POPULATION
OVER 65 & BUS STOPS
POPULATION
OVER 65 & GPs

POPULATION
OVER 65 & PHARMACIES
POPULATION
OVER 65 & GREEN AREAS

COMBINING Healthy Ageing with the
Innovation Partnership On Active and Healthy Ageing

Age-friendliness community assessment
• Collaborating cities involved: 33
cities (22 countries)
• Objective: to identify age-
friendliness features of the physical
& social environment and elicit
suggestions for improvement
• Results published in
COMBINING Healthy Ageing with the Age-Friendly Cities Programme

Age-friendliness community assessment
applied to Udine
• Methodology adopted: Vancouver Protocol
• Period of assessment: January – December 2007
• Topics: What is it like to live in Udine as an older person?
• People involved: about 100 people
• 8 focus groups (10-12 people each group):
– 4 with older people divided according to Age (2 groups aged 60-74 & 2 aged >75) &
Income (2 groups with low income
– & 2 with high-middle income)
– 1 with caregivers
– 1 with voluntary sector
– 1 with public sector
– 1 with private sector

Dublin Declaration 2011
Age Friendly Cities Conference

HEALTHY AGEING STRATEGIES
• To promote healthy lifestyles and allow older people to
remain PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY & SOCIALLY ACTIVE for as
long as possible
• To actively involve older people in INFLUENCING &
MONITORING city policies regarding health and urban
environments
• To tackle SOLITUDE & ISOLATION by offering opportunities
of socialization and participation in city life

Shortening the
supply chain:
“0 km Markets”
Are healthy eating
habits more
expensive?

1. Hands on the wall
2. On the tip of your toes
3. Eyes closed &
lift your hands
GENTLE FITNESS

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AT HOME
The aim is to stimulate the elderly
towards a regular physical exercise
and encourage them to participate
to physical activity programmes

- Offering opportunities of
socialization and tackling
solitude
- Turning our environment into
a more attractive place where
to be physically active
- Encouraging healthy
lifestyles in adult and old
age, to prevent or delay the
onset of physical disability
WALKING GROUPS

KEEP PHYSICALLY &
MENTALLY MOVING
Walk together up to the library
and then read a book and have a
healthy snack

PEDIBUS
An intergenerational
activity
“Which vehicles have the
smallest carbon footprint: black
cars or blue cars with little
white clouds painted on?”

BEFORE
School entrance
AFTER
School entrance
BEFORE
AFTER
Urban planning improvingUrban planning improving
house to school route’shouse to school route’s
through Children’s and Seniorthrough Children’s and Senior
Citizen’s City CouncilsCitizen’s City Councils

HEALTH PYRAMID
CONSUMERS AWARE OF THEIR
CHOICES FOR HEALTHIER LIFESTYLES
Social marketing and health info
point in a supermarket

MINDS ON THE MOVE
MOVE YOUR MINDS…
• is an integral part of
the comprehensive
strategy aimed at
improving the quality
of life of older people
in Udine
• provides opportunities
for people to meet
and share learning
activities in a useful
and entertaining way

• Music
• Story telling
• maths & logic games
• memory games
• English words in common
use
• cards games
• calligraphy
• information on physical &
mental health
ACTIVITIES:

Giving support to
older and frail people
in their everyday life,
especially those living alone,
with disabilities or economic
difficulties
NO ALLA SOLIT’UDINE

Althought, worldwide, care for frail
elderly people, is provided by the family,
changes in family structure and
increasing participation of women in the
paid work force are gradually
eroding the capacity of the family to
provide care
Now
Before…
&

Provision of services
for the everyday life:
• Listening
• Commissions
• Support for visits in the
hospital
• Company
• Advice
• Professional and legal
advice
• Medicines
• Information
• Injections
• Doing the shopping
• Transportation
• Repairs
• Other
Richieste pervenute - anno 2011
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
consulenza legale
consulenza abitativa
volontari
parrucchiere- barbiere
altro
prenot. esami-visite e prest.
compagnia/passeggiata
accompagn. da casa progr.
spesa
pedicure
affiancamento in struttura
riparazioni
affian. in struttura progr.
farmaci
ritiro referti
segnalazioni
accompagnamento da casa
commissioni
ascolto
consulenze
compagnia/pass. program.
trasporti
comunicazioni varie
spesa programmata
informazioni
trasporti programmati

modern-city leadership vs modern city-leadership
Capacity building
– Self esteem, self efficacy, empowerment
• Values: scientific and democratic
– Accountability, trasparency,
– Responsibility, sustainability
– Innovation, opportunity
– Sometimes less is more
– Transnationality

{Hum,Urb}anism is the science of the Future.
• Since 2000 half population lives in cities
• Progress (not development) depends on cities
• Active citizenship, relations, participation
• Promotion of civil rights, equity, sustainability
• Networks: learning cities, healthy cities, age-friendly cities, Covenant of
Mayors 202020.
• To unravel the signs of history and the smartness of cities
• Cities are a stage, a gym, a laboratory
• The main principle is to pursue beauty
• Cities are increasingly intolerant
• Take on ones shoulders the collective future

Integration takes time and
effort.
More than one piece!
Involve
Involve
Involve

Summer University 2013: URBACT Talk - Furio Honsell: Leadership and European Networking or, “how to turn a bunch of keywords into concrete practices”

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