The United Nation’s New Urban Agenda has created a playbook for planning advocates. It opens possibilities for building inclusive, integrated urban planning in countries where planning has been top-down and limited in scope.
The U.N.'s New Urban Agenda is positioned as a playbook for implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. It has the potential to elevate the profile of urban planning in many countries and to spread the so-called reinvention of urban planning as inclusive, bottom-up, and integrative. Yet the New Urban Agenda has clear roots in a government-centered, modernist practice of planning that has been discredited by planning theorists in recent decades, and any global template for planning runs the risk of tone-deafness to the unique characteristics of individual countries.
"Planners and the New Urban Agenda: Will we lead the agenda, or will the agenda lead us?" an article just published (open access for a short time) in Town Planning Review, examines the origins and development of the New Urban Agenda, examines its planning components, assesses its challenges, and recommends strategies for maximizing outcomes that emphasize broad stakeholder engagement, cross-sectoral planning integration, and national and sub-national choice in the design of planning processes and solutions. Critically, the article considers the demands of corporate power, the new regionalism, and growing theorizing in the Global South, as contests to dominant planning paradigms of the 20th century that demand responses if planning is to fulfill the needs of today's cities and regions.
I urge planning agencies, firms, associations, and individual planners to seize the momentum created by the New Urban Agenda to take bold steps to promote new planning programs and to reinvigorate and redirect existing programs. We need a substantial increase in global planning capacity, broadening of the engagement of the full range of stakeholders in planning processes, recognition that planned action involves far more than plan making, and most importantly, commitment that planning must be locally or nationally determined while informed by international experience.
This is a pivotal moment in global urban development. Rapid urbanization, climate change, and economic restructuring are pressuring environmental, social, and fiscal resources near breaking points. International sharing of planning ideas, tools and methods is critical to success, but to work well must be done with respect for political, economic and cultural contexts. The New Urban Agenda, endorsed without dissent by the United Nations member states, provides a powerful framework for the needed context-sensitive, professionally-informed policy making and design.
"Planners and the New Urban Agenda: will we lead the agenda, or will the agenda lead us?" Town Planning Review 92 (4): 421-441, is available in open access for a short promotional period from Liverpool University Press.
Ottawa’s New Transportation Master Plan Sets 20-Year Planning Priorities
Canada’s capital city recently completed the first step toward adopting a new Transportation Master Plan.
The Urgent Need for Climate Action Includes Land Use Reforms, IPCC Report Says
The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report earlier this week, sounding the alarm that time is running out to make the changes that can prevent the worst outcomes of climate change.
Bringing Rurality Back to Planning Culture
Michael Hibbard at the University of Oregon and Kathryn I. Frank at the University of Florida write about their recently published article in the Journal of Planning Education and Research.
Plan to Potentially Remove Downtown Milwaukee’s Interstate Faces Public Scrutiny
The public is weighing in on a suite of options for repairing, replacing, or removing Interstate 794 in downtown Milwaukee.
‘Forward Together’ Bus System Redesign Rolling Out in Portland
Portland is redesigning its bus system to respond to the changing patterns of the post-pandemic world—with twin goals of increasing ridership and improving equity.
Can New York City Go Green Without Renewable Rikers?
New York City’s bold proposal to close the jail on Rikers Island and replace it with green infrastructure is in jeopardy. Will this compromise the city’s ambitious climate goals?
700-Acre Master-Planned Community Planned in Utah
A massive development plan is taking shape for lakefront property in Vineyard, Utah—on the site of a former U.S. Steel Geneva Works facility.
More Cities Ponder the End of Drive-Thrus
Drive-thru fast food restaurants might be a staple of American life, but several U.S. cities are actively considering prohibiting the development of new drive-thrus for the benefit of traffic safety, air quality, and congestion.
Air Pollution World’s Worst Public Health Threat, Report Says
Air pollution is more likely to take years life off the lifespan of the average human than any other external factor, according to a recent report out of the University of Chicago.
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