0
0
Act Local to Go Global
World Cities Day brings Urban October to an end on 31 October each year and was first celebrated in 2014. As with World Habitat Day, a global observance is held in a different city each year and the day focuses on a specific theme.
This year’s global observance is planned in Shanghai, China under the theme “Act Local to Go Global.” We want to bring different partners and diverse stakeholders together to share their experiences and approaches to the local action, what local action worked and what is needed to empower local and regional governments to create a greener, more equitable and sustainable cities.
Local action is critical to achieving sustainable development goals by 2030. UN-Habitat has been at the forefront of SDG localization since the very endorsement of the 2030 Agenda. Since then, UN-Habitat has been working to advance SDG localization by providing technical expertise to partners across the globe, by leading the development of cutting-edge research, by capacitating local and regional governments on SDG localization, and by strengthening the voice of local governments and local actors within the main international and UN-led fora on SDGs.
Background
The United Nations General Assembly designated 31 October as World Cities Day, by its resolution 68/239. The Day is expected to greatly promote the international community’s interest in global urbanization, push forward cooperation among countries in meeting opportunities addressing challenges of urbanization and contribute to sustainable urban development around the world.
Urbanization provides the potential for new forms of social inclusion, including greater equality, access to services and new opportunities, and engagement and mobilization that reflects the diversity of cities, countries and the globe. Yet too often this is not the shape of urban development. Inequality and exclusion abound, often at rates greater than the national average, at the expense of sustainable development that delivers for all.
Urban October was launched by UN-Habitat in 2014 to emphasize the world’s urban challenges and engage the international community towards the New Urban Agenda.
Sustainable Development Goal 11, which formulates the ambition to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable – underlying the relevance of UN-Habitat’s mission. Inequalities in cities have grown since 1980. The world’s largest cities are also often the most unequal, and this year’s theme is embraced by the action and implementation of the New Urban Agenda, which is putting the topic of inclusive cities as one of the main pillars of the urban shift.
In October 2016, the HABITAT III Conference, held in Quito, adopted a new framework, which will set the world on a course toward sustainable urban development by rethinking how cities are planned, managed and inhabited. The New Urban Agenda will set the pace on how to deal with the challenges of urbanization in the next two decades, and is seen as an extension of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, agreed on by the 193 Member States of the UN in September 2015.
