As climate change intensifies, cities find themselves at a crossroads. Gülfem Cevheribucak highlights how urban areas can become champions of sustainability by rethinking mobility and governance. What changes are needed to make this vision a reality?
Multi-level dialogue platforms are enhancing sustainable urban development. From city networks to EU partnerships, Rene Peter Hohmann illustrates how collaboration across government tiers is shaping the future policy environment of our cities.
Good governance is key for achieving the national CO2 emission reductions, known as Nationally Determined Contributions. But the “how-to” remains undescribed. Scott A. Muller presents us with local experiences to close this gap.
Secondary cities perform essential sub-national functions within national economies as centres of government administration, education, health, resources, and industry production. Both national policies and international programmes need to be adapted accordingly, write Rene Peter Hohmann and Brian Roberts.
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.
Over the course of seventy years, stakeholders have become increasingly involved in UN processes. Non-state players have taken on advocacy or advisory roles for their specific issues, and have helped shape norms and debates about global concerns. Eugénie L. Birch traces the path that has led to increasing stakeholder engagement and explores its effect on the New Urban Agenda.
The city of Kochi in India is a Smart City, meaning that it is well connected and accessible, and over time is being developed into a clean, green and healthy city that is governed in a smart way. In an interview with URBANET, GP Hari from Kochi Metro Rail Ltd talks about how the city is tackling the Smart City approach and what the future might bring.
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.
In a four-part series, URBANET takes a closer look at specific projects that contribute to making cities more liveable. This fourth and last part describes how a Tanzanian and a German municipality partnered up to contribute to climate protection - and to also collaborate on other issues.
Town twinnings play an important role when it comes to mutual understanding and learning processes. In an interview with Imme Scheit, head of administration and deputy chief officer of the mayor’s office in the city of Bamberg Brigitte Riegelbauer explains how these partnerships can be successfully implemented.
If the New Urban Agenda is to be a success, it is of vital importance that cities form partnerships and learn from each other. Such activities are already under way: in this article, URBANET presents an example of municipal knowledge sharing between cities in the Maghreb region and cities in Germany.
Strengthening cities as actors for sustainable development is one of the main targets of the New Urban Agenda. Inter-municipal partnerships, which enable cities to learn from each other, where at the heart of yesterday's discussions in Quito. Read URBANET's report to find out more!
In September 2016, Cities Alliance organised a workshop in Accra, Ghana, to encourage mutual learning between Cities Alliance’s members and active partners in Africa and to create synergies and increase collaboration efforts. The official delegation from Mozambique used this opportunity for an extended study trip in order to exchange with their Ghanaian peers.
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.
