Strengthening the New Urban Agenda to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals

The High-Level Meeting on the implementation of the New Urban Agenda comes at a critical juncture for urban development. Africa and Asia are rapidly urbanizing, while urban populations in other parts of the world are stagnating or shrinking. All cities are faced with substantive challenges on how to ensure a livable future for urban residents in social, economic, and environmental terms. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed systemic inequalities in cities everywhere, highlighted pre-existing urban challenges, created new vulnerabilities and pushed hundreds of millions of people back into poverty. Urban areas are also responsible for most of the global resource consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions, with a drastic disparity among levels of income. The world’s richest one percent create double the CO₂ emissions of the world’s poorest 50%, who are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Sustainable urban development has the potential to address or reverse many of these negative trends. The New Urban Agenda contains recommendations and commitments that can enable governments across the world to fight inequalities, achieve equitable low or net-zero urban transformations, and improve the quality of live for all.

And yet, the New Urban Agenda is poorly represented in the global discourse and receives little attention by member states and other relevant stakeholders. The High-Level Meeting, convened by the President of the General Assembly offers an opportunity for Member States to take stock of actions taken and put forward new commitments to revitalize the implementation of the New Urban Agenda.   

The High-Level Meeting in this way will build upon the cumulative actions and future commitments of governments as well as of local and non-State actors underscoring the importance of the New Urban Agenda as a catalyst for sustainable development.