Preserving cultural heritage while upgrading urban areas can be a challenging task for cities. Analyn Rubenecia and Chenzi Yiyang describe how the city of Yangzhou, China, designed its urban renewable project with an integrated approach. This puts Yangzhou on the right track toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Cities are irrefutably linked to human history and development. To learn more about the relevance of cities for global sustainable development and for achieving a better world, URBANET provides you with a short explainer video by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
In less than a week, the 9th session of the World Urban Forum, the largest international stakeholder gathering of passionate urbanists, will kick off in Malaysia. Franz Marré looks ahead and shows why WUF9 is an important platform for strategic discussion and arena for innovation.
Around 20,000 urbanists are poised to gather in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for the ninth session of the World Urban Forum. However, WUF9’s preparations for a quadrennial report will not be taking place in a vacuum. The conference comes only at the beginning of a busy year, writes Gregory Scruggs.
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 New Urban Agenda calls upon nation states to implement National Urban Policies to achieve integrated and coherent sustainable urban development. In the first part of this article, author Rene Peter Hohmann displays current discussions on National Urban Policies and their possible categorisation as this question remains open. To reflect on the various policy intentions that national governments may pursue under an umbrella of National Urban Policies, this second part will examine a variety of case studies more closely.
National Urban Policies are recognised as an effective and necessary tool to achieve sustainable and inclusive urban development as envisioned in the New Urban Agenda. However, it is still unclear what constitutes a National Urban Policy and how such a policy could help catalyse the implementation of the New Urban Agenda. In order to bring some light into these discussions, Rene Peter Hohmann reviews the current body of academic literature as well as policy assessments to analyse and categorise a sample of 19 countries with an explicit National Urban Policy in place.
What does a sustainable urban future look like? In a new video, municipal officials, urban experts and local residents from around the world talk about urban challenges, solutions for climate-friendly cities and future needs for low-carbon urban development.
This month, the New Urban Agenda (NUA) celebrates its first anniversary. What has happened since its adoption at Habitat III in Quito? We asked Billy Cobbett (Cities Alliance), Mei Yi (Mayor of Jingdezhen, China), Eugénie L. Birch (Professor at the University of Pennsylvania), Yang Jun (Mayor of Suzhouto), María Alejandra Vicuña Muñoz (Minister of Urban Development and Housing of Ecuador) to take stock of the past 12 months’ implementation actions.
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!
At the "Co-producing sustainable cities?" conference in September 2016, we talked to Günter Meinert of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ GmbH) about his hopes for the Quito conference.
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.
According to Franziska Schreiber and Kaj Fischer from the think tank adelphi, innovative participation processes make cities more livable. URBANET talked to both urbanisation experts about how municipalities and residents can work together to shape their city.
Against the background of Habitat III in Quito in October, “Considerations for the Follow-up and Review of the New Urban Agenda” develops recommendations for the follow-up and review of the New Urban Agenda. These recommendations reflect lessons learned from relevant international agreements and urban initiatives, and also consider how all relevant actors can be encouraged to participate in the follow-up and review of the New Urban Agenda.
The UN Major Group for Children and Youth is the officially mandated space for young people to participate in UN processes. How does their involvement play out in regard to the Habitat III negotiations and the New Urban Agenda? And what are their demands?
