The platform aims to harness the experiences and knowledge of partners in order to have a transformative impact on the urbanisation process.
The World Bank has established a new Urbanisation Knowledge Platform that aims to become a global hub for urban knowledge exchange.
The cross-sectoral, collaborative initiative seeks to involve a number of partners, including Cities Alliance. The idea is to harness the experiences and knowledge of these partners in order to have a transformative impact on the urbanisation process.
It also aspires to strengthen knowledge sharing between cities and towns, who can engage each other more easily than exchanges among nations.
While the specifics of the platform are still under design, the knowledge exchange is expected to focus on four key themes:
- Economic. Developing countries are now undergoing a -rural-to-urban transition, and the question is how that transition can best be facilitated to promote economic growth. There is a pressing need for knowledge on how urbanisation is affecting the economies of developing countries, and on how policymakers can best engage with it.
- Social inclusion and mobility. This theme will explore how to improve the equity and inclusiveness of increasingly divided urban economies and incorporate the urban poor into a city’s economic fabric. Potential areas of discussion include structural urban poverty, land use and urban transport, and slum integration.
- Environmental. This theme will explore how urbanisation can be managed to improve sustainability, such as mitigating environmental costs and adapting to environmental change during urban growth.
- Governance. With a focus on creating accountable cities and towns, this theme will explore issues such as decentralisation of governance, governance for service delivery, and cities and green growth.
The World Bank has also launched a knowledge platform aimed at fostering green growth. The platform, being developed jointly by the World Bank, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the OECD, aims to bring together proponents of sustainable development to promote and implement green growth policies by exchanging knowledge, information, and experience.
Learn more about the Urbanisation Knowledge Platform and the Green Growth Platform
