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Hongkong CEO Carrie Lam and Mayor Corine Mauch in the Zurich City Hall
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Last October, the City of Zurich visited Hong Kong to showcase its strengths in various areas at the ten-day “Zurich meets Hong Kong” festival, demonstrating Zurich’s merits as a city of culture, a hub of knowledge and a business location. There were also bilateral meetings between the high-ranking political delegation from Zurich and officials from Hong Kong. The Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, took part in the gala dinner and the city’s Innovation Officer participated in the conference on the theme of the “Smart City”. The exchange fell on sympathetic ears and attracted a lot of interest in Hong Kong: barely three months later Carrie Lam, on her trip to the WEF in Davos at the end of January 2018, stopped over for a return visit to the Mayor of the City of Zurich, Corine Mauch. The exchange of information on topics of interest for both cities was continued: “Urban Manufacturing” and “the Smart City” were the topics of discussion in the meeting, lasting around one hour, between the two governors and their professional staff. Both sides benefited from the experiences and the work of the other city. To be continued.
Anna Schindler, Urban Development, Department of the Mayor
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Cooperation between the Museum Rietberg and Pakistani cultural institutions
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Front (from left): Aamir Hasan, Federal Secretary, Islamabad (Head of the Delegation); Albert Lutz, Director of the Museum Rietberg. Back (from left): André Müller, Swiss Federal Government, Department of Development and Cooperation; Faisal Fayyaz, First Secretary, Embassy of Pakistan in Bern; Derek Müller, Swiss Federal Government, Department of Development and Cooperation; Muhammad Tariq, Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Peshawar; Syed Junaid Akhlaq, Director General, Department of Archaeology and Museums, Islamabad; Johannes Beltz, Museum Rietberg. © Museum Rietberg
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Thanks to the encouragement and support of the Swiss Federal Government’s Agency of Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Museum Rietberg in Zurich has joined forces with the Pakistani national cultural authorities to develop a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that lays the foundations for a future cooperation between Pakistani cultural institutions and the Museum Rietberg. The aim of the MoU is to help promote museum cooperation projects between Pakistan and the Museum Rietberg. The MoU provides the framework necessary to release publications and train museology students with an eye to future collaborations in the fields of knowledge exchange and competence development. In future, the MoU will also make cooperation much easier when it comes to lending objects for special exhibitions.
On Monday, 12 March 2018, the relevant figures on both sides signed the MoU at the Museum Rietberg: Federal Secretary Aamir Hasan, National History and Literary Heritage Division, Pakistan, and Albert Lutz, Director of the Museum Rietberg. Also present were two representatives of the SDC: Derek Müller, Head of the South Asia Department and André Müller, Programme Director for Pakistan. In addition, Syed Junaid Akhlaq, Director General of the Department of Archaeology and Museums, and Muhammad Tariq, of the Provincial Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, were also present. The latter is secretary for culture, tourism and archaeology in the border region with Afghanistan – a region that is extremely rich in cultural relics. For the Museum Rietberg, Johannes Beltz, Vice Director, Head of Collections and Curator of South Asian Art is heading the cooperation with Pakistan.
Albert Lutz, Museum Rietberg, Department of the Mayor
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Exchange on urban development themes with the City of Vienna
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For many years, Vienna and Zurich have occupied the top two positions in the Mercer survey on quality of life. Although Vienna, with its nearly two million inhabitants, is much bigger than the City of Zurich, the two cities face many similar challenges. Further, a study carried out in 2017 by the Foreign Affairs Office on the City of Zurich’s international network revealed that there is a lot of interest in further collaboration with the City of Vienna on various questions of urban development, ranging from monument protection to city logistics.
To gain an insight into current issues facing the City of Vienna and to determine themes of mutual interest, on 1 March 2018 a delegation of three people from the City of Zurich’s Office for Urban Development visited Vienna Municipal Department 18 (Urban Development and Planning), as well as the planning director of the City of Vienna and the Vienna department of the Austrian Federal Monuments Office. During this extremely informative one-day exchange, discussions covered topics such as urban planning, the concentration of development in municipal centres, high-rise building strategy and open space planning, as well changes in the retail trade, city logistics, and the smart city. In a subsequent step, the City of Zurich’s Office for Urban Development (Foreign Affairs Office) will work with the relevant departments of the City of Zurich to investigate how, and in which areas, a continued exchange can be established at the specialist level.
Christina Wandeler, Urban Development, Department of the Mayor
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Film team from Hong Kong at the Kalchbühl nursing centre
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Preparing vegetables with the residents of the nursing centre
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A five-member film team from the Hong Kong television station TVB came to stay in Switzerland at the start of March and also visited the City of Zurich’s Kalchbühl nursing centre. TVB’s programme «As Long As You Live» travels to various places around the world to compare approaches to dealing with an ageing society.
In Zurich, producer Anthony Fong Tung Shing, presenter Vinky Hiu Ying Wong and their team visited the city’s Kalchbühl nursing centre located in Wollishofen. The focus of the visit was the everyday lives of the residents.
The film team was allowed to be present during various activities carried out with the residents of the nursing centre. For example, the residents were filmed and interviewed while preparing vegetables for lunch.
In addition to the Kalchbühl nursing centre, the film team also visited ETH Zurich and then continued on to St. Gallen, where they learned about the "time exchange" and "time bank" concepts, which encourage people to make voluntary commitments and also enable various moneyless exchange transactions. It has not yet been decided when the programme will be broadcast.
Stefan Ege, Urban Development, Department of the Mayor
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