The PIE stimulus paper on Shanghai by Professor Jian Huang (School of Education Science, East China Normal University) is appropriately titled Towards a Learning Society Experience and Reflections from Shanghai. The paper traces steps taken by Shanghai from 1999 to set in place a policy framework for a learning society linked to long term planning for education reform.

I participated briefly in the Alliance Global Conference to give a paper on our EcCowell approach. Several papers were interesting from an equity and integrated planning perspective including one from Tehran on an equity assessment called Urban Heart (Health Equity Assessment and Response Tool) which is now widely applied across Asia, Latin America, parts of Africa and elsewhere, but not in Europe or North America.

These notes and questions have been prepared to promote discussion of the ideas set out in the clarifying paper Living and Learning in EcCoWell Cities. This paper has been prepared to provide a possible framework for further exchanges between cities participating in the PASCAL International Exchanges (PIE) that go in the direction of broader more holistic and integrated strategies.[1]

A Zero-draft of the Outcome Document for the UN Rio 10+20 Conference on Sustainable Development (June 2012) has been circulated. The Rio 10+20 Conference is a follow up on the 1992 Rio Conference on Sustainable Development and will be significant in showing what has been learnt since the first Rio conference and how far countries are prepared to collaborate in addressing key sustainability issues.

Norman Longworth has long been a leading thinker and writer in the field of lifelong learning and learning cities, and has contributed much. The recent riots in England have prompted much discussion of social trends in England, and what is seen by many as a weakening of social bonds and connections, and a weakening of social, moral, and human capital in cities with growing inequality and exclusion.