The 8th KRIHS-IDB Urban Development Academy

Date: September 4-8, 2023

Venue: Hotel the Plaza, Seoul & KRIHS, Sejong

The Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS) held the 8th KRIHS-IDB Urban Development Academy (KIUDA) from September 4 to 8, 2023. This event was converted into an online course during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been online since 2020. Almost four years after the last in-person capacity building program, ten high-level government officials from six countries joined each other in Seoul. This year, Tatiana Gallego, division chief of Housing and Urban Development at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), joined KIUDA for the first time to build a concrete cooperation with an explicit understanding of the demands of the Latin America and the Caribbean countries (LACs). During her opening remark, Gallego highlighted the importance of on-site learning with KRIHS to grant participants a better understanding of the reason behind the cooperation between KRIHS and IDB. President of KRIHS, Gyo-Eon Shim also appreciated that the participants accepted such a long trip to Korea for future collaboration. The head of the delegation, Mr. Topazio Neto, Mayor of Florianopolis in Brazil, also mentioned such high demands for knowledge and know-how sharing in the LACs to solve diverse ongoing issues, and he appreciated the opportunity to take a look into the solutions that Korea has designed. During the five-day course, participants attended lectures from experts in each sector, which included economic development, territorial planning, urban policy, smart cities, resilience in urban disasters, housing policy, housing finance, and land policy in Korea. The course also included visits to various sites, such as the Territorial Development Museum, Cheonggyecheon, public rental housing, and Sejong City. The event was also linked with the World Smart City Expo hosted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transportation, the partner of the high-level meeting in sharing the recent agenda between government officials.

KRIHS and IDB agreed to develop the presented demands for cooperation during the course by actively engaging available funding resources and programs from both the Korean government and the IDB fund. It is expected that the analysis of housing finance in the LACs will be launched as early as the next collaboration.