I imagine people all around the globe applauding you contribution!!!
Yves was a magical person—he was a bright light.
Whether in civil society, academia, or the UN system, he was always thinking of a new way to “walk the talk”. At every urban meeting or city summit, Yves would cut to the heart of the conversation, suggesting a way forward that seemed perfectly obvious, but no one had seen.
In Quito for example, as regional coordinator of the Urban Management Program for Latin America, he empowered the secretarial staff to do programmatic work. In Fortaleza Brazil he created a local currency and bank, changing the dynamics of capital flow. And from Porto Alegre, Brazil he disseminated Participatory Budgeting to cities across Africa and Asia. He was working on project in China at the time of his death.
I first met Yves in the mid 1980s at GRET, a Paris based non-profit whose mission was “supporting international cooperation, democratic participation and poverty reduction in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.”
At the time I was a professor of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, doing research on urban social movements in the U.S. and Europe as I had been banned from Brazil, for being an “international agent of subversion” during the dictatorship. I had begun
conceptualizing the Mega-Cities Project and was looking for models that linked research, action, advocacy and public policy.
I was surprised and impressed that Yves had read my book on Rio’s favelas – The Myth of Marginality. He understood how the the struggle of rural-urban migrants in Rio’s favelas led me to imagine a global non-profit network sharing approaches to the problems marginalized communities face in common.
Fast forward to 1986 when I founded the Mega-Cities Project dedicated to “shortening the time lag between ideas and implementation in urban problem-solving.” Our areas of focus (income generation, ecological regeneration, participatory democracy and women’s rights) and our bottom-up methodology resonated with Yves’ earlier work at GRET.
Yves was thus one of the first members of our Mega-Cities Project’s Global Advisory Board, where he served along with Heads of State, like Fernando Henrique Cardoso; academic stars like Manuel Castells, Peter Hall, and Lisa Peattie; Mayors like Jaime Lerner, Manuel Camacho Solis, and Tom Bradley; Ministers, City Networks, Foundation Presidents and UN Agency Executives.
Until his death in January 2025 at the age of 72, Yves continued to generate new ideas, influence urban policies, create new connections and exude personal warmth and humor into all occasions. He loved his work and had lots more to contribute.
Let’s honor him by continuing that wonderful spirit!
