UNDP - UN Development Programme
UNDP helps eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities, and build resilience so countries can sustain progress.
About
Aligned with the tenets of UNDP’s Sustainable Urbanization Strategy, the Cities and Urbanization Network of UNDP advances sustainable urban development and supports efforts to build urban societies and economies that are inclusive, resilient, sustainable, and peaceful. UNDP is particularly mindful of contexts where stakeholders navigate the complex, interlinked and interdisciplinary challenges of rapid urbanization, while striving to achieve the SDGs and take forward the New Urban Agenda.
UNDP’s integrated support to cities and local governments are deployed through a wide range of efforts across 170 countries and territories, which includes creation of knowledge products to deepen understanding of trends and issues, convening roundtable discussions and webinars to connect experts and stakeholders on potential solutions to urbanization challenges, and identifying best practices from cities and urban settings in the Global South and Global North on cross-cutting urbanization themes (urban resilience and disaster management, governance, digital transformation, circular economy, urban poverty and spatial inequalities, municipal finance, urban informal economy, climate action and energy transformation, local economic development, and COVID-19 recovery).
The Cities and Urbanization Network at UNDP remains committed to expanding its impact on providing support to multidimensional urbanization challenges across cities and regions by establishing and deepening partnerships with leading agencies that advance the achievement of SDGs in urban contexts – which includes UNEP, UN-Habitat, Resilient Cities Network, and several other partner organizations.
In 2019, UNDP established the City2City Network to serve as a knowledge sharing platform and a repository of urbanization best practices and experiences for cities and local governments across the world. It facilitates exchange among cities from the Global South and North, while offering tools and diagnostics to support planning and aligned implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the New Urban Agenda. The Network facilitates the development of governance structures and frameworks on the following themes:
• Informal economy
• Circular economy
• Digital transformation
• Climate action and energy
• City resilience
• City governance
• Local economic development
• Municipal financing for development
• Urban poverty and spatial inequalities
In 2019, the UNDP Global Centre for Technology, Innovation, and Sustainable Development in Singapore began operations under a fresh mandate that includes a focus on Smart Cities and digitalization. The Centre provides assistance to local teams and partners on the use of technology and innovation in urban areas and supports initiatives on urban development of units across the organization.
UNDP is supporting cities in their Covid-19 recovery from business continuity measures to reopening public spaces, engaging communities to build their resilience to shocks (by restoring livelihoods, income activities through local economic development), collecting real-time data preparing analysis on the socioeconomic impacts etc. It quickly established a Rapid Response Facility followed by a Rapid Financing Facility that deployed technical and funding support to efforts on the ground, particularly in hard-hit communities across the rural-urban continuum.
tactical urbanism
and the design of public spaces in urban areas as part of its holistic COVID-19
In 2020, UNDP supported the Municipality of Guatemala in highlighting Guatemala City’s approach to tactical urbanism, territorial spatial development, and the design of public spaces in urban areas as part of its holistic COVID-19 recovery strategy. The "Handbook for the Use of the Public Space of Guatemala City during the COVID-19 Pandemic" presents agile, effective and low-cost strategies and tactical solutions to adapt the public spaces of Guatemala City for the community to be able to use it amidst the challenging circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Knowledge transfer and exchange among local actors had been an important component of efforts in this area, such as:
• “A holistic economic and social recovery plan launches in Guatemala” on the City2City Network (one contribution specifically for Urban October 2021).
• “Ibero-American experiences of Tactical Urbanism against COVID-19”, a November 2020 webinar co-organized by Metropolis and UNDP, featured local government representatives and urbanization professionals that highlighted tactical urbanism, innovative spatial development approaches, and the use of public spaces and urban planning during COVID-19 in the cities of Barcelona, Medellin, Mexico City, and Guatemala City.
• Learning from Cities in Crises: Metropolitan Perspectives on Fragility and Resilience, a February 2021 discussion with Metropolis, highlighted the experiences of the cities of Ramallah in Palestine and Diyala in Iraq.
• UNDP organized a webinar focused on “Mobility in Smart cities: Walking and Cycling” within the Smart City Training Series (April 2021), provided advice on how to plan cities to promote and support more sustainable modes of mobility in cities. Within the same series, the Webinar focusing on “Gender in Cities” (August 2021), provided insights on how to plan for inclusivity and deploy services in cities so that they are inclusive and adapted to the needs of more vulnerable groups, including women.
UNDP developed Catalyzing Private Sector Investment in Climate Smart Cities to explore innovative financing instruments and approaches for catalyzing private sector financing to fill the climate-smart investment gap in cities. The research and analyses include a close look into existing literature, key barriers in scaling-up private investment in climate-smart urban infrastructure, and innovative financial de-risking instruments and other financial instruments for private sector financing for low carbon, resilient urban investments.
In collaboration with UNCDF, UNDP is supporting municipalities to leverage the resources of non-sovereign government entities to mobilize public and private capital investment, while transitioning regional and local government finances from traditional pure grant funding to a broadened mix of financial sources, in order to address local challenges.
Smart Urban Innovations Playbook: Archetypes from Global Cities
analyses how cities across the globe have ideated and implemented solutions to solve their most urgent challenges, leveraging available resources..
Between May 2020 and May 2021, UNDP, through its Global Centre in Singapore, led a series of open capacity-buildings under the program “Smart City Training Series”.
The objective of these webinars was to provide key and basic information about the use of technology and innovation in cities to support different stakeholders - city officials, local teams and practitioners - to have the foundations to evaluate the use of certain technologies and or approaches on specific domains.
Experts were convened through webinars on a wide range of themes: Circular Economy, Introduction to Lean Data, Introduction to Big Data, Gender in Smart Cities, Digital connectivity, Human-centered design for digital public services, Data governance and Open data, Mobility in Cities: Walking and Cycling, Innovation Procurement, Cybersecurity Assessment, and Introduction to Behavioral approach in cities.
The Multi-City Challenge Africa, led by UNDP in partnership with The Govlab, and coordinated by the UNDP Global Centre in Singapore supported 5 cities (Kano, Kampala, Bahir Dar, Mutare, Accra) in 5 different countries in Africa to find innovative solutions to 3 urban challenges: waste management, city resilience, informal economy. The program included the launch of a continental challenge to crowdsource ideas from citizens, academia, and private sector. The winners were trained on how to improve the scoping and planning of their projects, and currently some of them are collaborating with the city councils piloting their initiatives.
A Guide to Circular Cities (June 2020) contains a circular city implementation framework that is designed to improve circularity in cities and support stakeholders in implementing circular actions.
UNDP recognizes that in many cities, crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic merely compound the existing challenges of sustainable urban development in fragile and conflict-affected urban environments. UNDP has remained committed to supporting advocacy and programming for specialized urban approaches to violence, fragility and crisis.
This has included support to cities such as Gazantiep (Turkey) and Tripoli (Lebanon) - struggling in the wake of the Syria Crisis - to manage conflict-sensitive municipal service delivery and planning towards social cohesion between host and refugee communities. In non-conflict but insecure settings such as Central America, UNDP’s INFOSEGURA has supported urban security data generation and infrastructure for evidence-based local and national citizen security policies. To advance programming in this area, UNDP partnered with the City of Madrid in 2019 to adapt a methodology for ‘participatory urban violence diagnosis’ in cities such as Montevideo (Uruguay), Praia (Cape Verde) and Sucre (Bolivia). At the global level, UNDP has led discourse and advocacy on the needs of such ‘fragile cities’ through steering committee roles for the World Forum on Cities and Territories and Peace and the Global Alliance for Urban Crisis.
UNDP’s Mayors for Economic Growth Facility (2021-2024) and EU work closely with local authorities to develop and implement local economic development plans (LEDPs) through inclusive growth strategies, innovation, training and capacity-building, and portfolio design and management.