Actions to achieve Sustainable Urban Development

Why actions matter in achieving the 2030 Agenda

We have less than seven years remaining to reach the Sustainable Development Goals. In 2020, the United Nations Secretary-General called upon a Decade of Action to accelerate and mobilise solutions at local and global levels and fully engage partners, people and communities across all sectors to leverage transformative changes. Therefore, it is crucial to collect and monitor committed actions and advance the progress and achievement of the Agenda 2030.

For more information: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/decade-of-action/

WUF 11 – The Katowice Declared Actions

The eleventh session of the World Urban Forum (WUF11) took place in Katowice, Poland, from 26 to 30 June 2022 under the theme Transforming our Cities for a Better Urban Future.

The theme’s relevance is stark as the world comes together to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable, especially after the devastating effects of Covid-19 and the refugee situation due to the crisis in Ukraine.

The WUF11 concluded with the Katowice Declared Actions. These declared actions will carry the sustainable development agenda forward to the next World Urban Forum in Cairo, Egypt in January 2024, and beyond. They include recommendations and commitments that representatives of government, civil society and the private sector take back to their home cities for further discussion and implementation. WUF11 Katowice Declared Actions are voluntary actions and commitments that support the NUA implementation and accelerate the SDGs’ attainment. 

WUF 10 - The Abu Dhabi Declared Actions
The Tenth Session of the World Urban Forum (WUF10) debated issues related to rapid urbanisation, building inclusive and resilient cities, and taking steps to accelerate their work towards the New Urban Agenda as an accelerator to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in the Decade of Action. WUF10 began with a call to action and concluded with the Abu Dhabi Declared Actions committed by different partners and stakeholder groups.

The Abu Dhabi Declared Actions comprises actions committed on a voluntary basis by governments, partners, individuals, communities, and the business sector from cities and countries around the world to accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The Actions were produced in consultation with the WUF10 Advisory Group representatives from diverse urban development partners. The Actions are strategic level goals that will result from implementing new initiatives from various institutions and actors.

For more information on the Declared Actions, please visit here.

The first report on the implementation of the Abu Dhabi Declared Actions: one year of implementation was published in 2021. The report details successes and highlights actions partners are engaging in to fulfil their commitments.

Actions At-a-Glance

Actions

New School City and Urban Environment NSCUE

Twenty years ago, Sciences Po has created a specific curriculum dedicated to Urban Developpement in the south for young professionals to respond to an increasing demand for strengthened policy and professionals responses to that global challenge. It is designed to complete existing academic studies and technical to design cities. In between, it is necessary to build an institutional, economical social and environmental comprehensive approach to build governance and policy adapted to each situation. One of the main question is to provide basic services, in particular concerning utilities and mobility, which are crucial for livable cities in a fast growing urbanization. To address that challenge, the cursus was partly based on academics and researchers with a senior professionals panel specialized in the main topics as water supply, waste management, energy services and global mobility solutions. It’s completed by an specialized six month internship overseas and professionals individual and collectives reports on real cases ( urban studies, bidding offers, sectoral on site reports). Twenty years after, more than 250 alumni are now working all around the world, for largest environmental companies, major international consultants, IFI’s and UN agencies, National and local authorities and NGO’s. The recent crises, as Covid29 pandemics and the war in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, are focused on urban battles. To address those topics, and Based on that success story, Sciences Po Rennes, Together with other Universities in Brittany has decided to launch next September 2022 a “transition” academic program including urban sanitary, resilience and environmental specialization, with a double combined cursus for training technical and policy makers. That new offer is divided in four domain as , urban health, urban resilience, urban sustainable utilities and urban engineering, which offer specializations for the different Master degrees. 2./ One of the main activities during the two years cursus of students is to prepare and realize a collective mission abroad, during an international summit as World Water Forum, Africites summit, or next October Codatu-MobilizeyourCity & climate chance summit in Dakar. With national fellows, our students are mandated by the conference secretary to report on the main sessions, to promote practical tools for project assessments and organize panels of international experts and stakeholders.
Source: World Urban Forum

Urban legislation

Bills and laws on SDGs and New Urban Agenda.
Source: World Urban Forum

Global Youth Data Hackathon for Safer Cities

Sexual and gender based violence is a global pandemic which affects 1 in 3 women on an average at least once in their lifetime (UN Women). In India, the number of cases seems to be higher. The National Crime Research Bureau statistics indicate that there is a rape somewhere in India every 15 minutes. Yet, the incidents are highly under-reported because of the shame and taboo associated with it. The survivor is fearful of bringing shame to herself and her family. Red Dot Foundation has been crowd mapping sexual and gender based violence for the last eight years on their globally awarded reporting platform Safecity. The dataset is anonymous and crowdsourced. It has reports by location, time of day and day of week as well as categories of sexual violence. Through this virtual Data Challenge we will collaborate with 300 youth to collect, collate and analyse data and understand patterns and trends emerging that could either point to contributing factors of gender and sexual violence and discrimination, or identify correlated features that need to be challenged and then come up with innovative feminist solutions. We will train them to be effective bystanders and local actors of change where they will host local trainings for their community and recommend solutions to be implemented for a safer city or neighbourhood.
Source: World Urban Forum

CURE Framework

I have developed a resilience framework since 2021, whose purpose is to reimagine how urban environments can become green, thriving and resilient places to live, work and visit. My actions are to launch this framework and to use it to help improve the world's urban environments. It will be accompanied by a website, with many case studies of good examples, and also a mock-up of how an app could work. It will be relevant to all stakeholders involved in urban environments.
Source: World Urban Forum

Pattern Languages for New Urban Agenda

The Promise of Pattern Languages We celebrate the adoption by acclamation of the New Urban Agenda by all 193 member states of the United Nations, representing a landmark achievement in urban history. However, six years later, implementation remains an overwhelming and unmet challenge. We have not yet delivered on the New Urban Agenda’s call “to deliver on capacity development programmes… by means of peer-to-peer learning, subject matter-related partnerships and collaborative actions” (New Urban Agenda, para. 149). We are still struggling with “creation, promotion and enhancement of open, user-friendly and participatory data platforms using technological and social tools available to transfer and share knowledge among national, subnational and local governments and relevant stakeholders, including non-State actors and people” (New Urban Agenda, para. 161) in order to achieve an “urban paradigm shift” (New Urban Agenda, para. 7).
Source: World Urban Forum

Anjar Akrimullah

We try to engage youth to understand their city issues by building their capacity, enhance their awareness of sustainable urban issue, while also supporting them in using open mapping platform to understand how they interact with their environtment in terms of spatial aspect.
Source: World Urban Forum

The NGO Working Group to End Homelessness (WGEH) at the United Nations seeks the alleviation and eventual end of homelessness, in collaboration with like-minded organizations, and academic centers.

The WGEH will build on the foundation of the previous experience, expertise, learning and research on homelessness, working in integrated and intersecting ways with other organizations and groups. An essential aspect of the WGEH is our inclusion of the voice of people who have experienced homelessness and housing insecurity. We ensure that the challenges faced by people who are homeless are addressed by highlighting effective policies as well as best practices and bringing a particular focus on women and girls, on mental health and trauma. The core goal of our collective advocacy is to build political will to make preventing, assessing, measuring and systemically ending homelessness a global priority. We advocate for homelessness to be addressed through the human rights framework, particularly the principles of human dignity and non-discrimination and the right to adequate housing. We support the UN’s description of homelessness as “a condition where a person or household lacks safe habitable space, which may compromise their ability to enjoy social relations, and includes people living on the streets, in other open spaces or in buildings not intended for human habitation, people living in temporary accommodation or shelters for people experiencing homelessness, and, in accordance with national legislation, may include, among others, people living in severely inadequate accommodation without security of tenure and access to basic services” and advocate for its inclusion in other UN documents and resolutions and the overall adoption of this description as a global definition of homelessness. We advocate for local and national governments and NGOs to collect better homeless data that aligns with the UN description of homelessness. We continue to raise the visibility of homelessness through advocacy, events, panels and presentations, and observance days such as World Homeless Day.
Source: World Urban Forum

Cities for tomorrow

As a UN SDGs NGO Major Group for Africa, NGO: ADET will impact Aneho city by it innovation challenges, its transformative strategies for modern city with better resilience in climate challenges, gender and renewable energy promotion, housing rehabilitation,safety and disable securing, local economy growth, electric cars and charging station promotion, water and sanitation promotion, youth livelihoods promotion, municipal, local government and decentralisation promotion with migrants inclusion and public space promotion or regeneration for a better city we want for the next generation.
Source: World Urban Forum

woking group about Megacities planning

Working group to produce recommendations for planning of megacities (commons issues, tools, methods....)
Source: World Urban Forum

Sunbuilding

5mega watt solar plant
Source: World Urban Forum