Valencia, Spain — June 2026. The City of Belluno and the Unione dei Comuni Valle del Savio have formally joined the Inclusive Cities for Sustainable Families project, signing the Venice Declaration during the initiative’s 7th Annual Technical Meeting, held in Valencia from 15 to 17 June 2026.
The signing ceremony took place in Valencia, where urban policymakers, technical experts and civil society leaders from across Europe, Argentina, Brazil and beyond gathered for three days of peer learning and policy exchange.
With their signatures, the two Italian local governments commit to placing families at the centre of their urban and social policies and to reporting annually on their progress through the project’s monitoring framework. Belluno, capital of the eponymous Dolomite province in the Veneto region, and the Unione dei Comuni Valle del Savio — the union of municipalities in the Savio valley of Emilia-Romagna, which includes Cesena, Bagno di Romagna, Mercato Saraceno, Montiano, Sarsina and Verghereto — join a growing international network of cities and territories, from São Paulo to Toruń, working to implement Sustainable Development Goal 11: making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
A meeting shaped by the Doha Summit
This year’s technical meeting carried particular weight, coming just months after the Second World Summit on Social Development held in Doha in November 2025. Participants focused on translating the Summit’s outcomes into concrete local action, in line with the New Urban Agenda promoted by UN-Habitat and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Discussions over the three days addressed the challenges reshaping urban family life: the growth of single-parent households, population ageing in cities, rising demand for caregiving and childcare, the digital divide, and mental health pressures linked to social fragmentation and economic stress. Delegates reviewed the annual monitoring reports submitted by existing signatories, shared innovations in family-oriented urban policy — from care economy mechanisms to community-based mental health models — and worked on strengthening the project’s Good Practices Platform.
The meeting also looked ahead to the 2026 International Urban Forum in Baku, exploring how the network’s experience can feed into the global follow-up on the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Venice Declaration
Launched on World Cities Day 2018 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the Venice Declaration commits its signatories to ten points of family-responsive urban policy, spanning affordable housing, accessible childcare, inclusive education, intergenerational spaces, healthy lifestyles and digital inclusion. The project is coordinated by the International Federation for Family Development (IFFD) in cooperation with the Veneto Regional Council and the European Local Inclusion and Social Action Network (ELISAN).
For Belluno, the accession creates a notable link back to the declaration’s namesake: the city, historically part of the Republic of Venice, now carries the Venice Declaration’s commitments into the mountain communities of the Dolomites. For the Valle del Savio, the signature builds on Emilia-Romagna’s strong tradition of municipal welfare and inter-municipal cooperation, extending it into an international framework of exchange and accountability
