Healthy Cities: Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystems

April/08 Three year strategic programme development for UNDP-ACT Cyprus bi-communal peace programme.

July 4/08 Jane Samuels presented the Removing Unfreedoms Tools of Change work and film to the office of UNDP Paraguay.

Paraguay is living a historical moment with the peaceful transfer from a government of one political affiliation to another next August. The victory of the “Patriotic Alliance for Change� (PAC) � in the hands of the former bishop Fernando Lugo � over the Colorado Party � in office for the last 61 years � was facilitated by an irreconcilable division in the governing party.

April/2008 Preston Road New Deals for Communities in the city of Hull explores a joint programme with the Participatory budgeting Unit (UK Department of Communities and local Government) and capability approach to participatory governance.
The programme of activities will build on the work of the NDC to implement a participatory governance approach to enabling the people to be the agents of change. This follows a more extensive assessment and recommendations of NDC work to date by Jane Samuels including many building projects and housing initiatives.

Jan/08 Sierra Leone assessment misson to collaborate with Wherever the Need--programme in Sierra Leone to fund and facilitates community-led, sustainable and environmentally friendly projects. Using participatory leadership strategies, Tools of change will support the aims to supply water, sanitation and diversified livelihood options to enable those most in need find solutions to poverty that takes into account culture and background.

Nov 9th/07 The Commonwealth Commission report Civil Paths to Peace, published today, focuses particularly on causes and ways of preventing the terrorism and cultivated violence that have been in the ascendancy for some years, and afflict or threaten the lives of billions in Commonwealth countries and the rest of the world. The report does not argue that military initiatives are never justified, but does argue that when they are based on wrong information or weak reasoning, or inadequately linked to civil measures, they can generate immensely counterproductive results. Systematic civil initiatives, at the national as well as global level, are essential for successfully confronting organised violence and terrorism.

Oct/07 Jane Samuels
Regeneration, Environment and Development

JULY/07. Jane Samuels presentation for the design of a participatory renewable energy approach to micro-regeneration resources for architects in the UK. A key goal was to address an interconnected view to all renewable energy systems while focusing on human ecology, governance and development. Systems include reed bed/water sewage and management, Wind turbines and photo voltaics, ground source heat pumps and biomass woodchip boilers. The programme was required to address the need of legislative up-dates to planning and payback costs so that participatory approaches and decision-making reflected appropriate options for all stakeholders.

DUAC Delhi: Seminar on the Master Plan 31st March 2007
by Romi Khosla

31st March 2007. Well it is a great pleasure to be invited here to this condolence meeting to pay respects to the great role that planners once played in deciding the fate of Delhi. Let us be under no illusions. Neither the DUAC nor any of us here is of the slightest relevance to the future of Delhi.

From May 21st to June 5th 2007, an international group of practioners led by Jane Samuels and Ian Worrall travelled across Anatolia to explore the relevance of the life of the 12th century Sufi Poet Rumi and his humanist values to the role of culture for international devolvement strategies.

MARCH 15/07 NEW YORK, lecture and seminar by Amartya Sen hosted by the Graduate Urban Plannning and Architecture School at NYCC. THE URBANITY OF CALCUTTA.

Sept/06 Sida engaged Jane Samuels to review their global Urban policy objectives and targets of the forthcoming draft in view of Amartya Sen’s Freedom and capability approach. Over twenty pages of recommendations were provided, many of them adopted and published in their policy document - Fighting Poverty in an Urban World.

Dec/06 made up of key agency partners who have made change in their services as a result of engaging with neighbourhood management

June/06 Jane Samuels advised The Shoreditch Trust in London exploring Amartya Sen’s five freedom governance charter in their delivery plan.

Shoreditch Trust is a community-led regeneration agency funded through the UK’s Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s New Deal for Communities programme until 2010. The Shoreditch Trust housing team assists in developing sound policymaking in Shoreditch by enabling the voice of the community to be heard and reforming and reinvigorating the appropriate delivery of essential services such as improvements to housing and environment, related services, increased supply of affordable housing, participation and influence of communities, and sustaining communities as they undergo change.

A key goal in their work is to enable a long term governance framework that includes all stakeholders. They believe there is an increasing awareness that governance charters can bring development opportunity to an effective level of operation, integrating differing inputs and the myriad of players and stakeholders at differing levels, including local government, tenant resident associations and developers.

News Feature on Romi Khosla;For the past six years, he has been a UN consultant to war-devastated countries. He recently presented a new international policy for cities, Removing Unfreedoms, Expanding Development Frameworks, to the United Nations' World Habitat Day in Brussels based on the work of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.

Jan/07 UN HABITAT SLUM UP-GRADING Facility. Removing Unfreedom Design Associates completed a review for SUF to explore Amartya Sens freedom governance tools of change to the action planning guidelines of its new global facility located within UN-HABITAT.

March/05 The director of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum Carl Wright endorses the Removing Unfreedoms proposal set out at the UN-World Habitat Day 2002 with with an in-depth policy approach for their 2005 policy document including the framework on Amartya Sen's five freedom as governance charters published in the book edited by Jane Samuels. The policy paper, Deepening Local Democracy sets out to review ten countries and their governance objectives within the five freedom instruments of changes and replicates the Removing Unfreedom framework for integrating arrangements with top down and bottom up governance indicators.

Project Activities: Launched as a discussion paper at the UN-World Habitat Day in Brussels 2002. Portions of the text appear on this web site. The author, UN advisor Romi Khosla, with contributions by Jane Samuels, Sikandar Hasan and Budhi Mulyawan proposed a Five Freedom development framework for new governance charters. The proposal suggested the need not only to modify current urban policy frameworks and evaluations that deal with development, but also to share them across the globe. The development initiative was titled "Removing Unfreedoms" as these are the vital concerns emphasised by Amartya Sen.

Oct/05 The Princes Foundation, Politics of Place course in Urbanism invited jane Samuels to introduce the Removing Unfreedom project and a current evaluation of the UK Deputy Prime Ministers --New Deals for Community programme in the city of Hull.

April-05-/06The UNDP Cairo office has volunteered to explore an expanded approach to development using Amartya Sen’s concepts of "removing unfreedom" and human development capabilities approach.