In April, 1989, Kobe's Mayor Miyazaki and UNFPA's Hirofumi Ando cut a ceremonial ribbon opening the Asian Urban Information Center of Kobe. Thus less than two years after the participants of the Medium-Sized Cities recommended the creation of a network of Asian urban administrators, their recommendation was being acted upon. The roughly 20 months between the events was taken up with the detailed negotiations required for this relatively complicated organizational formation. Participants in the planning included the City of Kobe government, the Kobe Institute of Urban Research, the Hyogo prefectural government, the national government, UNFPA, Nihon University, and a number of individual Japanese and American academics, journalists and political leaders. Bringing all of these people and their ideas together, and creating a workable organization from their ideas and interests is essentially what transpired in those 20 months. Its structure, aims and planned activities were defined in the original plan document.

a) Structure and governance

The Center would have be a separate, legally defined entity with its own office, and staff seconded from the Kobe government. It would have its own budget, coming from both the City government and the UNFPA. Later financial support would also come from the central government, as the Center took on such things as training activities for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The Center would be run on a daily basis by a manager, with oversight and guidance from three units. First, it would have an executive committee, including city government officers and local academics. In addition, there would be two external advisory committees. One would be a Domestic (national) Advisory Committee of major Japanese leaders, statesmen and scholars. As the Center was oriented to all of Asia, it would also have an International Advisory Committee, made up of six members. There would be two members each from East, Southeast and South Asia, to give representation to the three major regional divisions. Within each regional division, one advisor would come from the scholarly community, and one would be an administrator. This would ensure that advice would reflect both the practical experience of the administrators and the more theoretical or scientific experience brought by the scholars.

This structure has remained in place and has been active as directed in the original plan.

b) Aims and operations
The broad aim of the Center was the collection and dissemination of information on urban problems and solutions, with a special focus on the administrators. In addition, there was interest in working out ways for assisting in training Asian urban administrators. These broad aims were given operational definition in five more specific activities.

1. Collection of information;

2. Undertaking research projects;

3. Disseminating information;

4. Establishment of an Asian urban data base; and

5. Training.