The A’SIMA Tunis project continues at good pace with important milestones met in this first phase: the participatory diagnosis of the City Development Strategy of Tunis (CDS). 

From January to May 2021, the CDS’ expert team has worked together with the Municipality of Tunis on the sectoral city diagnosis relative to economy, urbanism, environment and climate change, social issues and governance. These documents identify the city’s main descriptive facts and challenges concerning sustainable development taking into consideration its metropolitan context. Following the elaboration of the city diagnoses, the A’SIMA Tunis team organized the first steering committee (COPIL) as well as a round of technical consultations with the city major stakeholders in each subject.

The Steering Committer is the political decision-making organ of the CDS which pilots and validates the process and is comprised by 30 representatives of public and private institutions, socio-economic actors and CSOs, headed by the Mayor of Tunis, Ms. Souad Ben Abderrahim. The first steering committee of Tunis City Development Strategy took place on June 4th at the Municipality quarters. Ms. Abderrahim inaugurated the meeting and the work of the Steering Committee, accompanied by Mr. Josep Canals, MedCities’ Secretary General, who presented briefly an overview of the A’SIMA Tunis project. M. Khaled Laazar, head of the CDS Municipal Commission, presented the methodology of the CDS process and explained the role and functions of the COPIL. Afterwards, the CDS experts presented the results of their diagnoses and the stakeholder consultation meetings planned. A rich debate took place, showing the interest and engagement of all members of this decision-making organ and the diagnoses were approved.

Following the CoPil meeting, 5 sectoral consultation workshops took place from June 15th to 25th at the Kasbah, with a total participation of 129 people,:

• Governance workshop on June 15th  with the participation of  18 people
• Social sector workshop on June 16th with the participation of 27 people.
• Environment and climate change workshop on June 18th with the participation of 25 people.
• Economy workshop on June 24th with the participation of 19 people
• Urbanism workshop on June 25th with the participation of more than 40 people (in presence and online).

The concerned stakeholders are national and regional agencies delegates, municipal technical staff, local private companies, civil society associations as well as IOs representatives. Each sectoral expert presented the sectorial diagnosis and afterwards the stakeholders prioritized the city challenges, proposed missing ones when necessary and discussed about programmed projects. That way, the process ensures that the city-diagnosis are really anchored into the reality of the sector. The consultation workshops have allowed the CDS team to gather all relevant inputs in order to finalise their diagnoses.

In order to finalise the diagnostic phase, a two-days seminar was organised with the presence of the methodological expert of the project and the CDS team in order to collectively work on the passage from sectorial analysis to the transversal facts and challenges of the cities. The seminar took place on the 22nd and 23rd June. The team is expected to finalise the CDS diagnosis during the month of July.

You can download the program of the sessions here.