Porto Alegre, March 1, 2004 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The Porto Alegre Municipal Government will make a presentation in Italy of four themes related to city planning. The projects will be presented on March 2-5 in the city of Florence at the 2nd Seminar to Evaluate Urban Planning Instruments: the Multidisciplinary, Integrated Approach, sponsored by the URB-AL. The themes that will be introduced refer to Citizen Participation, such as the Participatory Budget and participatory planning; Social Inclusion; Expropriation; and Economic Promotion.

The URB-AL is a cooperative network uniting representatives of 18 Latin American countries and 15 countries from the European Union. Porto Alegre and the city of Rio Claro (SP) will be representing Brazil at the seminar. The Porto Alegre Municipal Government will be represented by the architects Cláudia Damásio and Maria Tereza Albano, of the Secretariat of Municipal Planning. The first seminar, which permitted the selection of projects from the city, took place last October in Nicaragua. The seminars are part of a cooperation project approved and financed by the European Union and coordinated by the Region of Tuscany (Italy). (DAS)