In Lagos, Nigeria, Public Private Partnerships (PPP) are common in urban planning projects. But whom do they benefit: people or profit? Dr Taibat Lawanson argues that the city's urban development strategy focusses too much on PPPs and thus favours profit over people – and calls to the state government to shift its focus back to a policy that benefits all citizens.
While the SDGs represent truly global goals, their implementation relies on local efforts. The initiative “SDG Indicators for Municipalities” by various stakeholders in Germany offers an extremely useful tool that allows to measure progress while paying attention to the specifics of individual municipalities.
Why should urban, regional and national decision-makers alike pay attention to the Talanoa Dialogue? This process, which was initiated by the Fijian COP23 Presidency, presents an exciting opportunity to align the national and subnational spheres of climate action. Throughout 2018, URBANET will report on the issue in a new series of articles.
The international community has come a long way when it comes to sustainable development. The next step is to continue the partnerships that helped create these frameworks and bring them down to the level of implementation.
Inequality and insufficient political and social structures in developing countries and and in the megacities of the Global South are still a huge problem, and change only occurs slowly. To enable cities to share their experiences and their efforts to bring about change, Janice Perlman founded the Mega Cities Project.
There is a growing recognition that the ambitious goal of transforming fast-growing cities into major globally attractive hubs of the world economy cannot be reached without including the urban poor as cooperation partners in housing and urban development processes. This situation, combined with pressure from civil society groups, has opened new space for the encounter between civil society and state organisations. Peter Herrle, Josefine Fokdal, Astrid Ley and Sonja Nebel assess this situation in their Cities Alliance background paper, of which an extract is published here.
Multi-stakeholder partnerships and the capacity to lead change collectively are decisive if we aim for the creation of a sustainable urban future. In an interview with Urbanet, Petra Kuenkel, Executive Director of the Collective Leadership Institute, presented her insights on the success factors of urban development partnerships and their implications for the New Urban Agenda.
The vibrant, multi-level partnerships that have been formed in Accra through the Cities Alliance Land, Services and Citizenship programme show why inclusive partnerships are our best chance of achieving sustainable development.
Cities Alliance is a global partnership for urban poverty reduction and the promotion of the role of cities in sustainable development. A joint video highlights the crucial role of partnerships in achieving poverty reduction in cities and implementing the New Urban Agenda.
