National Urban Policies: a policy lever to foster a New Urban Agenda?
By Dr. Rene Peter Hohmann, Cities Alliance Senior Urban Specialist
Despite a global consensus to foster National Urban Policies (NUPs) as a key vehicle to achieving the New Urban Agenda, it remains unclear what constitutes a NUP and how it can help catalyse the New Urban Agenda in all 193 member states of the United Nations.
National Urban Policies: a policy lever to foster a New Urban Agenda? addresses these two questions and explores the relevance of national polcies in the context of a New Urban Agenda for Cities. The article looks at typologies of NUPs to investigate how the policies can accommodate the commitments made at Habitat III in Quito within the New Urban Agenda.
It also reviews the current body of academic literature as well as policy assessments to analyse and categorise a sample of 19 countries with an explicit National Urban Policy in place. Based on these findings, the article closes with a number of reflections on the potential pitfalls of promoting the New Urban Agenda through National Urban Policies.
This article was first published in the September/October 2017 edition of the journal RaumPlanung.
