Re-imagining the United Nations’ Response to a Twenty-first-century Urban World

Abstract

Two years ago at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, all 193 member countries of the UN unanimously agreed, at the highest political level, on the importance of sustainable urbanisation as one of the keystones of the 2030 Sustainable Development agenda (United Nations, 2015). Even the UN system, which is better known for its glacial pace of change, is starting to shift from a fragmented twentieth-century orientation to an integrated, multi-level and multi-stakeholder, contemporary response to the global processes of urbanisation. Sustainable urbanisation and addressing the local-to-global urban agenda are increasingly being seen as necessary conditions to enable the successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and to ensure that ‘no person’ and ‘no place is left behind’. This goes beyond a narrow focus on ‘urban’ SDG 11, ‘sustainable cities and communities’, which emphasises housing, planning and mobility; embracing the delivery of most other SDGs such as ending poverty, reducing inequality, providing basic universal services of education, health, energy and water; and protecting the local and global environment (Revi, 2016). As we enter the first (urban) era of the Anthropocene, the UN may be well placed to play a pivotal role in using sustainable urbanisation to enhance peace, security and sustainable developmental opportunities for all citizens of its member countries and their sub-national governments. Marking a significant departure from the past is the emergent role of local authorities, which have often been marginal to these processes despite usually being responsible for day-to-day service delivery and development implementation. A step forward in this journey is the recently concluded UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel (HLP) report on the New Urban Agenda (NUA) (UN-Habitat, 2016) that was adopted by the Habitat III conference in Quito in October 2016 (UN, 2017a). It provides the UN with a low-risk test case for institutional reform, beginning with one of its weakest, most marginal and least credible institutions: UN-Habitat (UN-H).