development with a focus on cities in the New Urban Agenda as being critically important to individual nations and inseparable from the global quest for sustainable development.4 Further, “inequality remains an enduring challenge for towns and cities in the 21st century. The benefits of urbanization are unequally shared and, in many contexts, a substantial proportion of urban dwellers are not able to access them. Privatization of public space, uneven investment in assets and services, and gentrification can lead to displacement and exclude whole groups of citizens.”5 With regard to services, in many places a “joint understanding of the sectoral interdependencies in service provision (water, waste management, energy, transport, etc.)” is lacking, thus making mobilization of effective infrastructure plans and financing programs for their equitable and efficient provision difficult if not impossible. 6 Finally, “today, creating enough opportunities for decent and productive work for all is a major urban challenge.”7 These realities, the presence in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Development of a stand-alone goal on the development of cities and human settlements (as well as other relevant SDGs) and the Paris Agreement to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change for which cities and human settlements will the a central locus of attention, underline the necessity of giving priority to encompassing a new paradigm within New Urban Agenda. Such a paradigm must not only offer universal guidance but can and should also be adapted locally, according to member state contexts and conditions. A new paradigm is required because current development practices threaten member states’ abilities to reap the economic, social and environmental benefits of urbanization.8 For example, sprawl, pollution, and traffic congestion limit cities’ ability to attract investment and employment. The unregulated functioning of land markets reinforces the physical segregation of different income groups and places the poor in substandard living and working conditions, with almost a billion people living in slums today and the potential for doubling that number tomorrow. Haphazard, fragmented, low-density growth intrudes on vulnerable peri-urban and rural areas, displaces important ecosystem services and agricultural production and diminishes balanced territorial development. 9 Addressing these and other challenges, as articulated in the Habitat III Policy Papers and the Declarations of the Habitat III regional and thematic conferences, will require, among other actions, new urban governance that “consists of a set of institutions, guidelines, regulatory and management mechanisms in which local governments are key, but not exclusive, components… [and] based on open-decision-making, with the active participation of local stakeholders and with the aim of defining the best policies for the common good.”10 Further, national urban policies will play a major role in generating “transformative outcomes in terms of how different levels of government work 4
Habitat III Policy Unit 8 Urban Ecology and Resilience pp. 2 ff. Habitat III Policy Unit 2, Socio-Cultural Urban Frameworks, p.8.t. 6 Habitat III Policy Unit 9 Urban Services and Technology, p. 9. 7 Habitat III Policy Unit 7 Urban Economic Development Strategies, p.7. 8 Habitat III Policy Unit 5 Municipal Finance and Local Fiscal Systems, p. 7, Habitat III Policy Unit 1 Right to the City and Cities for All, p.4. 9 Habitat III Policy Unit 6, pp. . 10 Habitat III Policy Unit 4 Urban Governance, Capacity and Institutional Development, p.5. 5
5