Spotlight: Habitat III pledges hopeful message for cities with landmark agenda

As the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, also known as Habitat III, concluded on Thursday, eyes are now turning to what impact it will have.

Most countries of the world are signatories to the New Urban Agenda, Habitat III's carefully negotiated flagship document, which lays out crucial policy choices for urban development in the world for the coming two decades.

In 1976, 38 percent of the world's population lived in urban regions. The number rose to 45 percent by 1996 and now stands at 54.5 percent.

Habitat III clearly identified the main challenges that urbanization has brought about around the world.

"The New Urban Agenda is an ambitious agenda which aims to pave the way towards making cities and human settlements more inclusive, ensuring that everyone can benefit from urbanization, and paying particular attention to those in vulnerable situations," said Joan Clos, executive director of the UN Human Settlements Programme.

"It is a vision of pluralistic sustainable, and disaster resilient societies that foster green economic growth. Above all, it is a commitment, a commitment that we will all together take the responsibility of one another and the direction of the development of our common urbanizing world."

Clos encouraged national, sub-national and local governments to use the New Urban Agenda as a key instrument for planning and policy development for sustainable urbanization.

The New Urban Agenda itself supports the massive expansion of city planning to incorporate the perspectives of far more stakeholders, including national, regional and local governments, the civil sector and the private sector, in order for it to have a long-lasting impact.

It even diversifies the notion of a city, as the document said that urban corridors, city-regions and mega-regions have characteristics that separate them from traditional cities while still being saddled with urban problems.

Much like many UN agreements, the impact of the New Urban Agenda will be determined by the speed at which governments choose to follow its recommendations.

Few countries have grappled with rapid urbanization as much as China, whose participation at Habitat III was much awaited.

On Monday, Chinese Housing and Urban-Rural Development Minister Chen Zhenggao pledged that China would strive to promote global cooperation to help build sustainable cities.

"China is committed to actively participating in and promoting the process of sustainable urbanization," he said, adding that Beijing will work toward "the effective implementation of the New Urban Agenda in China to continue to improve the quality of human settlements."

To that end, China will "strive to create harmonious, livable, vibrant and unique modern cities, so that people live a better life," added Chen.

China has been striving in recent years to control its urban sprawl,rolling out measures to lower pollution and vehicle traffic.

In July, Clos traveled to China, where he met with Chen and complimented the achievements of China with regard to planned urbanization, which has generated many experiences that are valuable for other developing countries, the UN agency said. Endi