Can an urban context educate? A case study: the Charter of International Network of Educating Cities (RICE)

As pointed out by Jean-Pierre Pourtois a city will be educational if generously offers its full potential to its inhabitants and teach them how to use it. The cities represented at the 1st International Congress of Educating Cities, held in Barcelona in November 1990, (http://www.edcities.org/) propose to collect in a Charter the basic principles that should guide the educational choices of a city, convinced that the development of its inhabitants cannot be left to chance. The city has also a wide range of initiatives having different origins, intentions and responsibilities. It includes formal institutions, non-formal interventions with established pedagogical objectives, beside offers or experiences of a contingent nature, or born with commercial criteria.The educating cities will develop a system of bilateral and multilateral cooperation to achieve the exchange of their experiences. In a spirit of collaboration educating cities will support each other with regard to study and investment projects, either in form of direct cooperation or as intermediary of international organizations. In this paper I present a case study: the Charter of international Network of Educating Cities.