The Urban Best Practices is an online repository of inspiring breakthroughs on the implementation of the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals. It contains practices which have been vetted and made available by different international award schemes. It has a comprehensive search functionality and serves as a useful reference tool for knowledge, success stories and lessons learnt that can be replicated and scaled up. Should you wish to add your Best Practices here, please contact us.
Urban Innovation and the Implementation of the New Urban Agenda
This report showcases how local governments are demonstrating how impactful urban innovation can be and how important it is to engage cities as partners in efforts to implement the New Urban Agenda. This report is meant to be read alongside the 2022 Quadrennial Report. It highlights shortlisted and award-winning finalists from the last two cycles of the Guangzhou Award (2018, 2020) that are also part of the Best Practice Database on the Urban Agenda Platform. These initiatives have been selected to illustrate how cities and regions are attending to the three transformative commitments of the NUA, and how a focus on changes in governance, planning and financing practices take ideas and turn them into action and transformative change. This report also harvests cases from every region of the world, demonstrating how no one region or country has a monopoly on innovation.
On World Cities Day 2022, the latest edition of the Shanghai Manual has been launched, a collection of best practices to inspire innovative action in cities and local governments. The Shanghai Manual was established in 2011 following the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai China. The primary purpose of the Manual was to serve as a tool to support mayors and urban managers in achieving sustainable urban development in cities. The Shanghai Manual plays an increasingly critical role in supporting the efforts of mayors and urban administrators in advancing sustainable urban development. The ideas and principles of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and New Urban Agenda have been integrated into the Shanghai Manual, with focuses on topics such as achieving inclusive cities, innovative cities, creative cities, low-carbon and resilient cities, and livable cities. Using exemplary urban best practices, the Shanghai Manual provides practical and tangible solutions to contemporary challenges related to urbanization and sustainable urban development across the world, with a focus on best practices across core themes of society, economy, environment, culture and governance through the lens of an annual specialized theme in line with the World Cities Day.
To access previous editions of the Shanghai Manual, please click here.