1913 2013
10 | Centenary of the international municipal movement · Centenaire du mouvement municipal international · Centenario del movimiento municipal internacional
A Short History “The historical sense involves, not only the pastness of the past, but of its presence” T.S.ELIOT, 1919
The world of the early 20th century was a chaotic, dispersive and unknowable one: • Regional wars (Russia-Japan, Serbia-Austria, Balkan wars, the Boxer rising...) • Colonialist and imperialist expansions (Britain in Central and South Africa; France in North Africa ...) • Revolutionary uprisings (1905 Russian, 1911 Chinese and Mexican...) • Solid and widespread social and political writings and struggles (social democrat and Socialist movements in Europe and Russia, and the writings of Lenin, Kautsky, J.Jaures,G.Sorel, R.Luxemburg, B.Croce ...) • A new intellectual and cultural climate (Dadaism; E.M.Forster, Kafka, D.H.Lawrence, T.Mann, M.Proust, and J.Joyce in novel; Tchaikovsky, Puccini, ... in music; C.Chaplin in film; H.Matisse in painting; R.M.Rilke, E.Pound in poetry; S.Freud in psychoanalysis ...) • And anti-war and pro-peace movements.
The Birth of IULA In this climate of flux, a new voice for democracy and peace in the world was raised from below, by municipalities, cities, local authorities and their associations from different countries of the world in Ghent, Belgium at the International Congress of the Art of Building Cities and Organising Community Life during the Universal Exhibition of 1913 (27.07 - 01/08 1913). And thus, seven years before the League of Nations and long before the United Nations (UN), the international Union of Local Authorities (IULA), then the International Union of Cities (Union Internationale des Villes - UIV) came into existence as the world’s premier local government organization. The aim of the new international municipal initiative was defined as: “the promotion of inter-community cooperation in the name of democracy and peaceful agreement in the construction and administration of cities.” Emile Braun, then mayor of hast city Ghent, in his opening speech of the Founding Congress, made the following remarks, which remain valid today: “You have come from France, Germany, Great Britain...; you have come from farther a field: from Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Russia; and from farther still, from North and South America, from Japan, China, Egypt and from... Africa. All of you fulfill similar functions in your cities... functions which the citizens... have made you responsible for: to watch over their safety and health; the prosperity of their affairs, and the education of their children...You have come together to deliberate... on the major problems that arise from the universal nature of the conditions of present-day life, which are more or less the same everywhere...”