On Thursday, January 10, AVITEM met with the Agency for the Development of the Bouregreg Valley, a Network’s historical partner. It was in Rabat, on the premises of the Rabat-Salé Tramway Company that we met with its General Secretary, Mr Nadir Yacoubi.
Unfortunately, the Agency for the Development of the Bouregreg Valley was unable to attend the annual conference of the Mediterranean urban planners network on 17 and 18 December 2018. However, the meeting on 10 January allowed it to reaffirm its contribution to the Network.
Among the many avenues for cooperation considered, Mr. Yacoubi raised a new opportunity for the Network in its key role as promoter of sustainable territorial development in the Mediterranean:
“The question of knowledge management is essential for planners. The quantity of skills and know-how shared and accumulated over the years is a fundamental resource that is too often neglected. The capitalisation and pooling of this knowledge is a shared challenge for all actors in territorial development in the Mediterranean. The creation of a collective memory of development operations, within a planning society but also on a Mediterranean scale, is a necessary step if we wish to avoid the same pitfalls and promote a truly integrated Mediterranean territorial planning.
This issue could be addressed by the Network. The promotion of methods and tools that will enable planners to identify, capitalize, organize and disseminate their knowledge and experience could be one of the next activities that the Mediterranean urban planners’ Network intends to undertake, in collaboration with each of its members.”
This could enable the Network to embark on its first phase, which consists in valuing the contributions and specificities of each operation and to start a first transversal benchmark.