National Urban Policies (NUP) can help achieve target 11.a.1

This indicator is based on the notion that the development and implementation of NUPs should support participation, partnership, cooperation and coordination of actors as well as facilitate dialogue. NUP and Regional Development Plans (RDP) promote coordinated and connected urban development. A coordinated effort from government through a NUP or RDP provides the best opportunity for achieving sustainable urbanization and balanced territorial development by linking sectorial policies, connecting national, regional and local government policies, strengthening urban, peri-urban and rural links through balanced territorial development.

This indicator provides a good barometer on global progress on sustainable NUPs. It serves as gap analysis to support policy recommendations. The indicator can identify good practices and policies among countries that can promote partnership and cooperation between all stakeholders. This indicator is both process oriented and aspirational and has the potential to support the validation of Goal 11 and other SDGs indicators with an urban component. The indicator has the ability to be applicable at multi jurisdictions levels, i.e. covering a number of areas while taking care of urban challenges in a more integrated national manner.

The explicit introduction of NUP in the wording of indicator 11.a.1 brings emphasis to a policy process that can better satisfy the requirements of target 11.a through sectorial, territorial and jurisdictional integration and coordination steered by the national level. This is so because evidence shows that NUP can support positive economic, social and environmental links by ensuring at the highest level of government the coherent alignment of sectorial policies to support sustainable and inclusive urbanization^{^[2]}. With the World increasingly urbanizing, it is becoming clear today that how cities are managed and planned has ramifications well beyond their boundaries and that urbanization is a key force for national and sustainable development.

Urbanization has indeed historically been a catalyst for economic growth and social progress, and even holds the possibility for the protection and more efficient use of natural resources, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, this positive impact is not automatic, particularly in developing countries – where rapid and/or unplanned urbanization can bring about negative economic, social and environmental externalities with increasing congestion, sprawl, informality, social exclusion and conflict – if the provision of services and infrastructure does not keep up with natural and internal population growth, equitable distribution, migration patterns to the city, etc. Governments need to be sensitive to the fact that urbanization is a nation-wide and multi-sectorial issue. Therefore, NUPs provide the framework to harness urbanization dividends and mitigate its negative externalities. A NUP calls attention to the impact of sectorial governmental policies on the sustainable development of cities and encourages and enables the vertical and horizontal coordination of government departments and their policies to best support it.

This consideration in turn also encourages more cooperation and coordination between different levels of government to support the development and implementation of a national vision for urban development, effectively strengthening national and regional development planning. The urban policy process is led at the national level to ensure the articulation and coordination of different sectors and government levels but engages both top down and bottom up processes. For a successful implementation, a NUP must create an enabling, collaborative and cooperative institutional environment, mobilizing different levels, assessing and building their capacities, and establishing jointly defined and transparent responsibilities for implementation. Subnational governments are key implementation partners due to their proximity to citizens and role in delivering services and infrastructure. As such, a NUP does not replace regional and local development policies and plans but strengthens them and relies on their horizontal alignment and vertical articulation, especially to tackle cross boundary challenges such as sustainable resource management, infrastructure development, climate change adaptation and mitigation, or urban-rural linkages.

Finally, NUP is an overarching framework articulating and aligning subnational and local plans and policies under a common vision for urbanization that also makes it particularly suited to consider the urban-peri-urban-rural continuum. This urban and rural consideration is a key element of data disaggregation and administrative delineation in territorial planning. However, the importance of urban-rural linkages (through flows of people, natural resources, capital, goods, ecosystem services, information, technology, ideas and innovation) is increasingly being acknowledged for sustainable and integrated territorial development. The New Urban Agenda (NUA) for instance stresses the need to reduce urban and rural disparities to foster equitable development and encourage connectivity. Target 11.a is the only one that explicitly considers urban, peri-urban and rural areas under a city-centric SDG 11. NUP is the adequate framework to strengthen and direct urban and rural flows towards the most sustainable patterns of consumption and equitable resource distribution, as they can strike the balance between competition and solidarity between territories of a country.

Urban Policies are more broadly instrumental for the implementation and monitoring of global agendas

NUPs therefore enable a cross-sectorial approach, and the horizontal and vertical institutional coordination needed to address the challenges and opportunities of urbanization, which are increasingly recognized as going beyond the boundaries of the city. Intergovernmental agreements have indeed shown a new interest in urbanization for sustainable development. This is illustrated of course in Agenda 2030 with its introduction of a standalone urban SDG-11, but many other SDGs also have clear urban dimensions and implications. Following the Agenda 2030, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development (Habitat III) adopted the New Urban Agenda, a roadmap for the next 20 years setting new global standards for sustainable urban development. Finally, although the Paris Agreement on Climate Change does not explicitly mention cities, the management of urbanization is still essential to addressing climate change, as is illustrated by the fact that two third of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) contain clear urban references and content.^{^[3]} As an instrument for governments to harness the dynamics of urbanization for national development, NUPs have therefore been identified as a key tool for the implementation and monitoring of such agendas.

The Policy Paper on NUPs prepared for Habitat III for instance explained that a NUP should constitute an important part of any serious attempt to implement the SDGs and should become a key instrument to measure the achievement of the SDGs. As explained above, NUPs are a particularly appropriate framework to achieve target 11.a, and more generally can be instrumental in creating the necessary enabling framework to implement the urban development objectives of SDG 11. For instance, the NUA explicitly identifies NUPs as essential to achieve the urban paradigm shift it advocates for, recognizing the leading role of national governments […] in the implementation of inclusive and effective urban policies and legislation for sustainable urban development (NUA – 15.b). Moreover, the Urban-Rural Linkages Guiding Principles provide practical approach and actions to enhance territorial cohesion including via policies.^{^[4]} Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) set of urban and rural policies are additional frameworks that are very important to enhance social, economic and environmental links across urban-rural and peri-urban territories.^{^[5]}

Finally, NUPs can also be an instrument to coordinate the urban components of NDCs across scales and sectors and mainstream the principles of climate change adaptation and mitigation for the implementation of the Paris Agreement.^{^[6]}

Qualifiers for a measurable process indicator

Given their instrumental role for the implementation and monitoring of global urban agendas, the adoption of a NUP by a national government can be considered as a strong indicator of political commitment to promoting sustainable urban development. It also makes them particularly well suited for measuring target 11.a through a process indicator. As a process indicator, 11.a.1 is indeed supposed to assess the progress made towards creating an enabling environment that will ensure achievement of the outcomes and impacts of the targets of the Sustainable Development Agenda. Its definition sets the foundation on how target 11.a can be achieved, through measurable means. The proposed revision of the indicator therefore supplements national urban policies and regional development plans with 3 qualifiers that indicate the means of successfully reaching the requirements of target 11.a.

The first qualifier is that policies and plans should respond to population dynamics. Grounding policies and plans in the most current and comprehensive spatial and demographic data and projections is indeed a prerequisite for a successful implementation. The challenges posed by rapid urbanization indeed stem from the fact that policy and planning framework and their implementation are outpaced by population growth, coupled with policy priorities that may not prioritize inclusive development for all current and future urban residents, which together result in straining the provision of infrastructure and services, and causing socio-economic and environmental damages. Forecasting demographic trends and needs in the diagnosis phase of policies and plans enables governments to plan ahead for urbanization and provide adequate land and infrastructure in a more cost-efficient and less socially disruptive way than trying to catch up, repair and upgrade uncontrolled expansion. This process of developing urban policies and plans can also be the occasion to improve national data collection on urban areas, and serve other SDG 11 indicators, as well as provide a baseline for monitoring the outcomes of such interventions.

The second qualifier requires policies and plans to ensure balanced territorial development, in a direct answer to target 11.a.1’s reference to the urban, peri-urban and rural continuum. Policies and plans should adopt a broad territorial perspective and consider the linkages and flows from urban to rural areas not only to avoid and reduce social, economic and environmental disparities between territories but also to promote distinctive strengths and encourage beneficial interactions for the most efficient path to sustainable growth for the country. Such a perspective for policies and plans is achieved by higher territorial scale than cities, through regional plans and national policies.

Finally, the third qualifier is to increase local fiscal space. As integrated NUPs and RDPs introduce a more coordinated and decentralized articulation of responsibilities for urban development, ensuring that subnational and local governments have the adequate financial resources to carry out their responsibilities is essential to the successful implementation of policies and plans. The transfer of competences from central to local levels must therefore be accompanied by a commensurate devolution of financial resources and autonomy. Moreover, in times of shrinking governmental budgets, the capacity of local governments to expand and diversify endogenous financial resources and revenues and not rely too heavily on central transfers should be increased. This involves more fiscal power and capacity, better land value capture mechanisms – which go hand in hand with a clear and enforceable land policy framework – and innovative financial partnerships, for instance collaborating with the private sector for service and infrastructure delivery. In all cases, fiscal policies and mechanisms must remain subordinated to the established urban policy and planning objectives: central transfers must be embedded within the NUP framework, and take into account territorial equity; and local fiscal systems must be closely tied to local territorial plans so as to incentivize sustainable patterns of development.

²

UN-Habitat and OECD, 2018, Global State of National Urban Policy. ↑

³

UN-Habitat, 2016, Sustainable Urbanization in the Paris Agreement. Comparative review for urban content in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). ↑

⁴

UN-Habitat, 2019, Urban-Rural Linkages, Guiding Principles: Framework for Action to Advance Integrated Territorial Development (https://urbanrurallinkages.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/url-gp-1.pdf). ↑

⁵

OECD, 2019, OECD Principles on Urban Policy (https://www.oecd.org/cfe/Brochure-OECD-Principles-Urban-Policy.pdf) and OECD Principles on Rural Policy (https://www.oecd.org/rural/rural-development-conference/documents/Rural-principles.pdf). ↑

⁶

UN-Habitat, 2016, Addressing Climate Change in National Urban Policies. ↑

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Rætta metadátur: 11.a.1