Implementing the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda

The human population has been growing steadily over time; a trend that has had an increasing pressure on global resources. The population is predicted to grow further, particularly, in urban areas. According to the UN Habitat more than half of the global population now resides in cities (UN Habitat, 2014). By 2050, the urban dwellers are projected to make up over 70 per cent of the global population. Therefore, urban areas provide an important locale for addressing the social, economic, political, cultural and environmental challenges in order to capitalize on urban opportunities while mitigating the risks (UN Habitat, 2013). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were affirmed in September 2015 during the 2015 United Nations General Assembly as a universal normative development blueprint for all members ascribed to the UN Charter. Of the 17 SDGs, Goal 11 is wholly dedicated to ‘Sustainable Cities and Communities: Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. The ‘urban goal’ has ten attendant targets. These targets refine the focus on key areas that need urgent attention in addressing urbanization challenges worldwide. It is in these areas where policy makers assert that the battle for sustainability will be won or lost in cities. The identification of an urban goal is an acknowledgement that ‘the current model of urbanization is unsustainable in many respects’ (UN Habitat, 2016).

Habitat III is the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development to take place in Quito, Ecuador from 17 to 20 October 2016. The outcome of Habitat III could be the tenet to promote all levels of human settlements including small rural communities, villages, market towns, intermediate cities and metropolises for sustainable demographic and economic.

According to the UN Habitat, rethinking the Urban Agenda is:

Likewise, according to the UN Habitat, implementing the Urban Agenda has the following implications:

In order to succeed in the implementation of global agreements such as the SDGs and Habitat3 it is necessary to have tools that embody the shifts in urban development and urban management that are necessary to tackle the challenges of modern urbanization. Two of those tools are the International Guidelines on Urban and Territorial Planning (IG-UTP) and National Urban Policies (NUP), which are pragmatic approaches of actualizing sustainable urban development.

The IG-UTP is a set of policy propositions to assist countries and other actors in urbanization and human settlements across all scales, in adopting measures to national and local authorities, professionals and civil society actors towards effective urban and regional planning and management (UN Habitat, 2015). In many contexts, urban planning tools—such as masterplans—have been recognized as an outdated model of urban development, which must be updated with tools and methodologies that are more participatory and inclusive. Indeed, the UN Habitat’s World Cities Report states ‘many planning regimes have been significantly altered in bids to open up to a much wider range of stakeholders, their needs and aspirations, and so have legal frameworks’ (UN Habitat, 2016, p. 125). The IG-UTP are recognized as a global tool for assessing and evaluating current urban planning systems and as a guide for urban plan development in order to support and encourage modern evidence-based and participatory urban planning practices.

National Urban Policies (NUPs) is a coherent set of decisions derived through a deliberate government-led process of coordinating and rallying various actors for a common vision and goal that will promote more transformative, productive, inclusive and resilient urban development for the long term (UN Habitat and Cities Alliance, 2015). Whether it is rapid urbanization or shrinking cities, a high level of vertical and horizontal coordination in government is needed in order to tackle complex urban problems. Indeed, there is now the recognition that there is a ‘need to move from sectoral interventions to strategic urban planning and more comprehensive urban policy platforms [which] is crucial in transforming city form’ (UN Habitat, 2016, p. 27). NUP is a strategic tool for government that can be used in order to enhance coordination and augment policy processes in a country by encouraging the institutionalization of participatory and capacity development mechanisms. In the UN Habitat and other international organizations, ‘NUPs are considered as fundamental “development enablers” that aim to amalgamate the disjoined energies and potential of urban centres within national systems of cities and as part of strategic territorial regional planning’ (UN Habitat, 2016, p. 181). Furthermore, the Expert Group of Policy Unit 3 on National Urban Policy, which was formed in order to inform the process leading up to the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III), advised that ‘due to this widespread relevance, a National Urban Policy should constitute an important part of any serious attempt to implement the SDGs and should become a key instrument to measure the achievement of the SDGs’ (Habitat III, 2016, p. 5). Moving forward, it is important to recognize the importance of NUP as a tool for both promoting sustainable urbanization and monitoring the implementation of SDG Goal 11. In the future there also remains space to further develop the evidence of the long-term impacts of NUP that is closely tied with monitoring and evaluating NUP both during the formulation and implementation but also on a more long-term basis. Considering the importance of NUP as a monitoring tool, understanding how to monitor and evaluate NUP in both the short and long term is crucial.

Overall, sustainable urbanization envisages human settlements where all residents are adequately involved in the formulation, implementation, monitoring and budgeting of urban policies and urban plans in order to strengthen the effectiveness, transparency and accountability in their development (Wunder & Wolff, 2015). A paradigm shift is needed to ensure there is actual substantial transformation of urban planning and policies at all levels of development that will change the ways in which cities and human settlements are planned, developed and managed in view of sustainability. The IG-UTP and National Urban Policies will thus provide a much needed national approach that will chart a framework on the policy front in realizing sustainable urban development in the context of SDGs and the New Urban Agenda. Both these tools offer a diverse but integrative spectrum of planning systems and instruments that will suit diverse planning regimes and environments. They therefore, offer robust base references that can be adapted across different development environments; including but not limited, to addressing national and spatial strategies, municipal finance, urban governance, capacity and institutional development.