Take-aways from HABITAT III and the New Urban Agenda

Simply put, the New Urban Agenda is a 22-page document intending to “guide the next twenty years of sustainable and transformative urban development worldwide”. The New Urban Agenda is an agreement amongst Member States of the United Nations, a shared vision on the future of our cities and rough commitments for sustainable urban development. 

 

 

 

Five points and many more sub-points enumerate a shared vision for cities and human settlements for all, a vision where “all inhabitants without discrimination of any kind are able to inhabit and produce just, safe, healthy, accessible, affordable, resilient and sustainable cities”. 

 

This vision includes equal rights and opportunities, fundamental freedoms, adequate housing, equal access for all to public goods, civic participation and engagement, gender equality, accessible urban mobility, disaster management and resilience, environmental sustainability, high productivity, competitiveness and innovation by promoting full and productive employment and decent work for all. 

 

 

They also outline the conditions for effective implementation like setting-up policy frameworks at national, subnational and local levels; participatory planning ; international cooperation ; capacity-building and sharing of practices, policies and programmes amongst governments at all levels, but without any operational plan, targets or indicators to which Member States and other policy-makers are accountable. 

 

While the document is meant to be universal in scope it is not binding in terms of implementation. The latter depends on the voluntary commitments Members States and urban stakeholders are willing to take and make visible in the Quito Implementation Plan. 

 

 

This is definitely debatable since the answer depends from one national and local context to another. While for some signing this Agenda may be a break-through, for some others this vision and principles are already considered as granted. 

 

In the European context for example, the integrated approach to urban development has a long history of European Union initiatives, policies and programmes like URBAN I and II focusing on deprived neighborhoods from 1994 to 2006 ; since 2002 the URBACT programme fostering integrated urban development through networking, capacity-building and knowledge-sharing among cities; the 2005 Bristol Accord on the importance of sustainable communities for Europe´s development; the adoption of the Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities of 2007; the 2008 Marseilles Statement calling for the implementation of the Leipzig Charter principles by developing a common European Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities also known as RFSC ; the Lisbon Treaty of 2009 including the notion of territorial cohesion ; the Europe2020 strategy and the Cohesion Policy with the European Regional Development Fund ; and only recently the Pact of Amsterdam (30 May 2016) officially establishing the Urban Agenda for the EU. 

 

This perpetual search for identifying, setting and implementing the right principles, means and tools, testifies the complexity of urban problems, challenges and opportunities and the restless spirit of urban policy-makers to protect and sustain the “urban acquis” in times of economic crisis and the rise of new extreme political forces, orientations and decisions.

 

The New Urban Agenda itself resulted after many months of negotiations among Member States and series of consultations with key urban stakeholders across the world through preparatory committees, national, regional, and global reports, policy units, issue papers, informal hearings and meetings, intergovernmental meetings, regional and thematic meetings, e-discussions, world urban campaigns fora, you name it ! A preparatory machinery that started in September 2014 with the objective to assemble as many key urban stakeholders as possible in all over the world and take into account their voices in what is now adopted as the New Urban Agenda. 

 

What came out of this admirably huge participatory approach has been an inclusive, consensual and sensitive-free document that anyone with common sense would agree on. Perhaps this is one of the weaknesses of the New Urban Agenda; the lack of unconventional and creative spirit, operational plan, targets, indicators, and way of working makes it more like a wishlist rather than an innovative and transformative agenda of the future. 

 

Despite its weaknesses and the criticism one can exercise on the New Urban Agenda, we have to recognize that this has been a federative process and document and a reminder of the values we should all stand for and keep fighting for especially in times of global economic, environmental and societal challenges.  

 

 

 

Thousands of cities across the world have been implementing the principles of the New Urban Agenda and testing solutions and policies for many years now. Many answers and solutions already exist but are not always well known at a wide scale. 

 

This is exactly where territorial cooperation can play a catalyst role. Cooperation, networking, interregional exchanges can scale up, transfer and adapt good practices and policies from one city to another. Why reinvent the wheel when national and local governments can learn from good practices and mistakes from other peers? Be it regional (e.g. pan-European) or international (e.g. amongst cities of different continents), territorial cooperation is the vehicle for cities to develop and eventually implement sustainable local policies.  

 

Take a city like Mollet del Vallès in Spain with 52 000 inhabitants for example. During HABITAT III, Mollet del Valles presented how they benefitted from exchanges with other European cities. Being part of the URBACT Diet for Green Planet network with Sodertalje (Sweden), Lomza (Poland) and Moletai (Lithuania), the city with no experience whatsoever in local food policies before decided to adapt the diet policy of the Sodertalje that was consisted of distributing healthy, balanced, organic, seasonal and locally produced food to all public canteens of the city. Mollet del Vallès gathered local producers, school teachers, cooks, dieticians, private companies, and politicians to discuss on how to improve the food quality and nutritional habits of people just as Sodertalje did. Together, they decided to change the public procurement model of the city introducing clauses for the companies distributing food in public canteens. These clauses include indicators and targets for tasty and healthy food; organically grown; less meat, more vegetables and wholegrain; seasonal food; locally produced; and reduced food waste. Mollet del Valles now delivers local and healthy cooked food to all the public canteens of the city and participates in the revitalisation of the local economy. 

 

See the video presenting the experience of Mollet del vallès in URBACT Diet for a Green Planet:

These are only few of of the hundreds examples of the impact of the territorial cooperation put in place since 2002 by URBACT, the European Territorial Cooperation programme financing and enabling cities to develop integrated local policies through networking, capacity-building and knowledge-sharing.