What is the New Urban Agenda?

The New Urban Agenda is the outcome document agreed upon at the Habitat III cities conference in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016. It will guide the efforts around urbanization of a wide range of actors — nation states, city and regional leaders, international development funders, United Nations programmes and civil society — for the next 20 years. Inevitably, this agenda will also lay the groundwork for policies and approaches that will extend, and impact, far into the future.

What does the New Urban Agenda cover?

The New Urban Agenda, coming on the heels of the crystallization of the Post-2015 Development Agenda, seeks to create a mutually reinforcing relationship between urbanization and development. The idea is that these two concepts will become parallel vehicles for sustainable development.

The agenda thus seeks to offer guidelines on a range of “enablers” that can further cement the relationship between urbanization and sustainable development. This includes, on the one hand, “development enablers” that seek to harness the multiple, often chaotic forces of urbanization in ways that can generate across-the-board growth — national urban policy; laws, institutions and systems of governance; and the broad urban economy.

“Operational enablers”, on the other hand, aim to bolster sustainable urban development — or to allow it to take place at all. When implemented, they result in better outcomes for patterns of land use, how a city is formed and how resources are managed. The New Urban Agenda underscores three operational enablers, collectively being referred to by the UN-Habitat leadership as the “three-legged” approach: local fiscal systems, urban planning, and basic services and infrastructure.

What priorities guide the New Urban Agenda?

Beyond the specific technocratic solutions of economics and governance, several core ideas form the ideological underpinnings of the New Urban Agenda. Democratic development and respect for human rights feature prominently, for instance, as does the relationship between the environment and urbanization.

Similarly, the New Urban Agenda includes significant focus on equity in the face of globalization, as well as how to ensure the safety and security of everyone who lives in urban areas, of any gender and age. Risk reduction and urban resilience likewise play prominent roles. And the new agenda places key importance on figuring out how to set up a global monitoring mechanism to track all of these issues and concerns although the specifics on this remain up in the air pending debate by the U.?N. General Assembly in 2017-18.

Meanwhile, the core issues of the Habitat Agenda — adequate housing and sustainable human settlements — remain on the table, as the number of people worldwide living in urban slums continues to grow. Indeed, in the time since the Habitat Agenda was adopted the world has become majority urban, lending extra urgency to the New Urban Agenda.

There is also an increasing recognition that cities have morphed into mega-regions, urban corridors and city-regions whose economic, social and political geographies defy traditional conceptions of the “city”. The New Urban Agenda thus was forced to address these trends in urbanization while also recognizing that cities and metropolitan areas are the major drivers of national economies.

Features of the New Urban agenda (NUA) of UN habitat-

• Providing basic facilities to citizens like safe drinking water, sanitation, healthcare, nutritious food, education etc.
• Ensuring that the needs of women, children, senior citizens, differently-abled people, marginalized sections is being taken care of by the local authorities.
• To protect the rights of refugees, migrants, internally displaced people and ensure that they receive timely access to basic facilities.
• Promoting renewable energy, greener and better public transport, sustainable management of resources.
• Better quality infrastructure, local response etc. to improve resilience of cities to reduce the risk and impact of disasters.
• Take measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change by involving local government and civil society.
• Innovation to be the main driver of urban development
• Sustainable development through building of sustainable economies and environmental conservation
• Right to City a LeFebvrian concept which propounds equal access of all facets of urban life to all its dwellers marks a paradigm shift in the way Urban development be approached
• Devolution of powers for local governance and financial independence so as to truly reflect the demands of the society
• Resilient Infrastructure build so as to withstand the pressures of immigration, natural disasters, security concerns etc.
• Good governance be made integral part of city by judicial mix of technology in administrative and political reforms
• Disaster preparedness: Urban should include Disaster preparedness and infrastructure should include disaster resistance.

Lessons for India’s Smart cities mission-

• SCM does not pay much emphasis on strengthening local level governance, which it can incorporate from the NUA.
• With an emphasis on promoting civic engagement and strengthening participatory local governance, the NUA mirrors the commitment of the smart city for civic participation—where the citizens of the city have been involved in the mission at every step through polls and calls for suggestions to redevelop their cities.
• The emphasis on “inclusivity” and “sustainability” by the NUA can be integrated into the civic participation aspect of SCM.
• The NUA objective of establishing measures to help the migrants, internally displaced people, women, children, marginalized sections etc. can be included in SCM.
• More focus be given to the development basis the local requirements and funding rather than complete dependence on Center as one size fit all would not be the best way for development of Indian cities.
• The NUA aspires to integrated and vulnerable section—responsive housing policies, aspects that many of India’s smart cities need to pay close attention to.

Conclusion-

As India strives to leave a mark on a world that is becoming increasingly urban, it would do well to follow a comprehensive and well chalked out strategy for our cities. Though a commendable step in the right direction, the SCM has its own pitfalls and shortcomings. With urbanization gaining prominence in the global policy discourse, it is important, now more than ever, to focus on local governance. Currently, there is an inadequate emphasis on the functioning of urban local bodies when it comes to centrally motivated schemes like the SCM. India is a signatory of the SDGs. Paying further attention to the aspects of resilience and local governance outlined in the NUA and the allied action framework can ensure that Indian cities respond to more than just competitive sub-federalism. Indian cities, catalysed by learnings from the NUA, can become competitive global cities.