On December 16, 2024, a scientific symposium took place in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region, titled " Symposium on Citizen Participation in Development Planning in Kurdistan". This symposium was organized by the College of City and Regional Planning at the University of Duhok, with the attendance of Dr. Layla Mohammad Raswol, Dean of the College of City and Regional Planning, Dr. Bashir Said, Head of the Spatial Planning Department, and Dr. Johannes Lückenkötter, the Project Coordinator from TU Dortmund University, Germany, for a number of senior urban planning specialists and decision makers within the ministries of Municipality, Planning, and Tourism.

This Symposium is part of the project under (DAAD TAZIZ Network, 2023-2026), which involves collaboration between the College of City and Regional Planning at University of Duhok and Dortmund University in Germany, with support from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The aim is to strengthen local community involvement in urban planning processes and capacity building in the Kurdistan Region.

The program of the project includes a series of workshops, activities, and training sessions for engineers, planners, government officials, and non-governmental organizations, to enhance local participation in the urban planning process.

In the opening of the symposium, Dr. Layla Mohammad Raswol, Dean of the College of City and Regional Planning, spoke about the importance of community involvement in city planning processes and the ways to solve the challenges that arise during these processes, referencing successful examples from countries like Germany.

The event also included important topics, such as a World Café activity, in which participants worked on three distinct cases of local community involvement in government planning, discussing the challenges and terms for ensuring effective participation in development planning processes, and opportunities and needs of participatory training to parties in relation in Kurdistan.

The project is expected to continue until December 2025.

UOD Media, December 22, 2024.

Nibar Haji

Translation: Fatima Mahmood