National Urban Assessments- A Strategic Planning Tool for Sustainable Urbanization

Guiding questions:
How can urbanization be managed sustainably especially in rapidly urbanizing countries in Asia and Africa? Can national urban assessments and strategic systems planning be effective instruments to guide balanced, land- and resource efficient, low-carbon, green, climate-resilient, inclusive, and competitive urban development in developing and rapidly urbanizing countries? How effective were these in India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Georgia, Philippines, People’s Republic of China? How can benefits from urban development be captured and equitably shared through regional cooperation amongst countries? What types of policies and market-based instruments can enable sustainable, low-carbon and resilient, green and inclusive urban development, engaging both public and private sectors? How can SDGs be localized at the city level through Integrated Urban Action Plans (IUAPs), or Green City Action Plans (GCAPs)?

The event will bring together people from international financial institutions, national and local governments, NGOs, academia and professionals of urban and regional planning, human geography, environment, civil engineering, climate, social science, policy, finance and economy.

Impact stories and lessons learned:
Panelists will share stories from national urban assessments and systems planning, and implementation of urbanization policies. What worked and what didn’t.
Sepang Municipality Malaysia will share the role of local government in tackling urban poverty to ensure equitable access to urban services for all.

Policies, and national programs:
The case studies will summarize how national urbanization plans and policies were developed, localized and operationalized, or report on related key challenges they wish to overcome. The panelists will provide an overview and share lessons from across countries on national urban system planning and policies. The organizers will share experience from planning and program support and report its current actions and future plans on policy and program support to national planning and urban region coordination and administrative reform for South-South sharing.
Replication:
Nationwide urban assessments, planning and development guidelines, integrated with socio-economic development, land and natural resource use and ecosystem protection will bring many benefits for countries, their cities, and citizens. It is a powerful instrument providing a blueprint for intersectoral planning at the national scale cascading to the city scale through IUAPS, or GCAPS. Lessons from national assessments suggest that there is a need to provide guidance to cities to ensure localization of climate change mitigation targets are achievable through action plans and their incremental implementation.
The participants can discuss the significant benefits of replicating based on the cases presented and identify opportunities for collaboration and scaling up.