As part of the announcement of a UN Habitat office in Montreal, Shin Koseki met Ms. Maimunah Mohd Sharif, the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the Human Settlements Program of the intergovernmental organization. A first meeting between Ms. Sharif and Mr. Koseki — holder of the UNESCO Chair in urban landscape and professor at the School of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture of the University of Montreal — was held last december in downtown Montreal; accompanied by the UN Habitat management team and Raphaël Fischler, Dean of the Faculty of Planning at the University. A second meeting Friday morning, organized by Montreal International, also brought together public organizations, large companies and institutions, including the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape, around Ms. Sharif and her team.
These meetings affirm the spirit of collaboration that exists between the UN agency and the UNESCO Chair in Urban Landscape. Recent achievements include the white paper on AI governance in cities, published by UN Habitat and Mila, part of which Shin Koseki was co-author and chief scientist. He presented the preliminary results at the World Urban Forum held in Katowice last June under the umbrella of the international organization. The local representatitives of UN Habitat are also involved in the series of research-action summer workshops organized by Shin Koseki – WAT UNESCO – in Hanoi and Cambodia.
The Faculty of Environmental Design, where the offices of the UNESCO Chair are located, is also developing several projects in collaboration with UN Habitat. Some of its leading professors carrying out research and cooperation projects with the organization, particularly in Africa, Central and South America and Southeast Asia are Gonzalo Lizarralde, Danielle Labbé, Giorgia Cardosi and Michel Max Raynaud, the founder of RESEAUD. These projects and those of the UNESCO Chair thus showcase excellence and sustainable innovation on the green and resilient development of cities around the world.