As part of the gtz sustainable urban development program, the gtz- UDP team conducts a State of city surveying workshop in Homs in cooperation with the city council of Homs, the workshop aims at looking through Homs potentials and challenges.
The workshop invites decision makers such as local administration managers, urban planners, urban developers, antiquities experts, tourism executives, Awqaf representatives, NGOs and police enforcement, to meet and discuss what are the major assets of the city, and how to solve the major problems facing the city represented by:

• Environmental pollution of the "Orantes" river
• Lack of green area`s in some parts of the city.

Absence of some highly important responsible in the city was clear, still, many important decision makers were present at the workshop, such as, the director of gtz-UDP program in Syria, the director or geometrics and urban development in the ministry of local administration and environment, the mayor of Homs, Academic experts from Albaath university, city council members and representatives from the civil society associations.
The workshop featured the following presentations

• The current situation of the Orantes river
• The past master plans of the city of Homs
• The Environmental park planned to take place on an island in the river
• The new large public park in Homs
• New solid waste and natural energy solutions.

Long before this workshop the gtz-UDP team had already conducted many activities and established numerous connections with Syrian cities starting from the middle of June 2008, and the results of these "state of city" workshops" are all feeding into the results of the [Syrian State of Cities Report] that the program is working on producing covering 16 Syrian cities.