New Urban Agenda: Implementation Demands Concerted Effort Now
The New Urban Agenda (NUA) adopted in 2016 at the Habitat III Conference (the third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development) is to serve as a framework for global urban development over the next twenty years. The conference offered the first chance to transfer these sustainability and legally- binding climatemitigation goals to the level of the cities.
The NUA deals with the development and sustainable design of cities. The document includes almost all the topics of sustainable urban development debated in the last few years. These include the creation of inclusive and people-oriented settlements, resource and climate protection, strengthening the resilience of cities, improving living conditions for all city dwellers including those in informal settlements, and the ‘right to the city’, a controversial topic in the negotiations which refers to the discourse on the right to a collectively designed and used urban space. These important topics and positive guiding concepts were compiled for the first time in a document adopted by the international community. In addition, municipalities and cities were recognized as key actors of sustainable development, which also represented one of the key concerns of Germany’s Federal Government in the process.