This document is addressed primarily to policy makers and stakeholders involved in formulating, implementing, monitoring and evaluating National Urban Policy (NUP) and public and private actors undertaking public space activities. It offers guidance on how national policies for urbanization should address public space and strengthen involvement of different stakeholders in that effort

UN-Habitat has been mandated by Member states to address the issue of public space and its contribution to sustainable urban development. This includes developing and widely disseminating policy approaches on the role of public spaces in meeting the challenges of the rapidly urbanizing world. The agency’s research has already shown that the most prosperous cities are those that recognize public spaces with proper design layout, and allocate sufficient land to their development. However, public spaces in most urban areas largely remain ignored in national urban policy discourse. Where they exist, they are ambiguous, fragmented and embedded in other policies. Drawing experiences and practices from recent national urban policies and public space programme, this guide demonstrates how to mainstream public and open space into the National Urban Policy (NUP).

The guide is divided into two sections. Section one gives an overview of public space as generators of prosperous cities, the national urban policy process and the need for integrating the two. It also highlights streets as vital ingredient for cities and how their designs and management facilitate sustainable urbanization. Insights on NUPs development process; pillars and principles in support of implementation and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the New Urban Agenda (NUA) among other international frameworks highlighted.

Section two discusses how NUP can support local government policy on public space design, formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation strategies through strong leadership and stakeholder participation. Clear recommendations on how to integrate public space in each of the NUP’s development phases: feasibility, diagnosis, formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation are given. Further, analysis on how NUP can support national and local capacity development for public space has also been discussed.

UN-Habitat defines a National Urban Policy as “a coherent set of decisions derived through a deliberate government-led process of coordinating and rallying various actors for a common vision and goal that will promote more transformative, productive, inclusive and resilient urban development for the long term” (UN-Habitat, 2014a). A National Urban Policy, therefore, can define the strategic objectives, policies and priorities for action needed to promote sustainable urbanization and urban resilience. The thematic components of sustainability and resilience are multidimensional and include an important spatial dimension.

The use of strategic spatial plans at different territorial scales has been a long-standing European tradition reinforced by the landmark European Union guiding policy framework European Spatial Development Perspective and its subsequent updates. However, in the Arab states, as in many developing countries, there has often been a lack of clarity between the national policy frameworks that provide development strategies at the national and regional scales and master plans that are primarily urban infrastructure investment frameworks and landuse regulatory instruments.

The significance of a National Urban Policy is to provide a coherent framework integrating growth potential with policies promoting equity, inclusion, and resilience. It enables coordination across sectors and among actors involved at the different levels of governance, in the private sector and within civil society.

The focus of this report is, therefore, to review the state of national urban policies in the states of the Arab region against this standard. It identifies the legal and governmental articulation of the national urban policies, the main actors involved, how their objectives and priorities address the challenges of urbanization, and what achievements have been accomplished in this regard. It also considers aspects of the policy cycle, looking at the means of formulation, implementation and evaluation of national urban policies put in place. Finally, it tries to identify the factors affecting longer-term trends in national urban policies in the countries reviewed.

The objective of this review is to survey, inform and evaluate national urban policies and strategies developed by national governments in the Asia and Pacific region. The purpose of the review is to assist UN Habitat and other national and international stakeholders involved with urban policy and management in pre-dominantly middle to low income countries.

The research encompasses both a recent generation of NUPs in the region as well as a set of older national urban programs for urban development. A particular focus of this report is institutional structures, legal frameworks and foundations, and financial and technical capacity, oriented to promoting long-term policy development monitoring of urban problems and responses.

Given the intensity of the urbanization process and of its challenges in the region, understanding how urban policies have attempted to address them is of particular interest. This report aims to provide an overview and an assessment of the state of national urban policies in the Latin America and the Caribbean region, providing a comparative analysis
of policy processes and mechanisms put in place, highlighting best practices but also obstacles to achieving sustainable urban development.

Drawn from the observed “new generation of national urban policies”, the concept of National Urban Policy (NUP) is defined by UN-Habitat as “a coherent set of decisions derived through a deliberate government-led process of coordination and rallying various actors for a common vision and goal that will promote more transformative, productive, inclusive and resilient urban development for the long term” (UN-Habitat, 2014). It has been recognized as a primary governmental tool to coordinate sustainable development agendas such as Agenda 2030 and the New Urban Agenda, and specific national urban development paths.

The report is part of a series of five regional reports assessing the state of national urban policies that complement the Global State of National Urban Policies Report, conducted in collaboration between UNHabitat and the OECD. These studies are timely, as they follow up on Habitat III and Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, and accompany the Second International Conference on National Urban Policy, held in Paris, France in May 2017.

The report serves as an important tool for policy makers, practitioners and academia, providing insights in a complex region which shares a series of common social and political circumstances: a tradition of political centralization, large populations of youth demanding equal social, political and economic opportunities, extreme vulnerability to climate change, with the potential for food and water insecurity, and the destabilizing effects of political turmoil and conflict. We must not forget that cities of the Arab region are some of the oldest continuously inhabited human settlements in the world; the region continues to remain a source of great relevance when analyzing the development of national urban policies.

This Guiding Framework is designed to outline key elements and instruments of the policy process through all the five NUP phases: feasibility, diagnosis, formulation, implementation and monitoring, and evaluation. Each phase is the subject of one part of the Framework. For each phase, the Framework will recommend perspectives and approaches that can be productive in the development of NUP.

In addition, the Framework will consider the inclusion of the three NUP pillars: participation, capacity development, acupuncture projects and iterative policy design. While ti is understood that all policy processes are unique and context-specific, this document will provide a guiding framework, based on research and practical experiences, in order to provide guidance on proceeding through the NUP process.