Urban Thinker's Campus - Asia

Learning globally from local best practices in pursuit of Equitable Economic Growth

The unfolding of COVID-19 pandemic and its specific geographic development within city regions has brought to the forefront the socio-economic cracks of current urbanization patterns. Poor neighborhoods and particularly dense informal settlements are disproportionally at risk of becoming contamination vectors. With the health crisis, the fundamentals of cities are again back on the discussion tables: What cities do we want to live in? And how can we best achieve them?

Furthermore, in order to achieve the SDG targets and overcome their fragmented nature, interventions are needed to create synergies between sectors, unlock creativity and smartly deploy resources and capacities. As it has been increasingly proved, cities are fundamental in achieving multi-sectoral interventions that tackle several SDGs simultaneously. This implies working with municipalities through a multi-stakeholder approach, engaging civil society, private sector organizations, universities and multilateral institutions in the formulation of best practices about the role of cities enabling the achievement of sustainable development goals on the ground.

Among the most crucial themes that impact the daily management of municipalities addressing the pandemic, is the challenge of guaranteeing affordable housing and land, as well as the planning mechanisms that municipalities can develop in order to guarantee such rights. As the New Urban Agenda established, housing is at the center or urban development and there is an urgent need to map and develop diagnosis of informal settlements, as well as to establish adequate policies that are able to promote integration to the city and leave no one behind, as part of National Urban Policy frameworks.

Addressing these multi-disciplinary challenges imply integrating issues such as participatory multi-level governance, coordination of public policies, city-wide planning, disaster risk management, community building and resilience strategies.

The Urban Thinker Sessions on Affordable Housing and Land in Asia and Sub Saharan Africa will address how local best practices that ensure affordable housing can be replicated and promoted, as well as what can be learned from some of the most promising housing and slum upgrading projects in Africa and Asia. Furthermore, it will provide guidelines on how practitioners can get involved in order to improve current trans-national learning experiences and how to systematize good practices accordingly.

Stay tuned, more information will be provided soon.