Authors: Mahira Khan & Ashfaque Zaman
Kuala Lumpur played host to the ninth session of the World Urban Forum. Organized by UN-Habitat, the week-long event commenced from 7- 13 February 2018, boasted over 22,000 participants and delegates from 165 countries and featured over 600 events. The participants comprised of prominent figures including over 100 ministers and deputy ministers, stakeholders from civil societies, private sectors, national, regional and local governments, grassroots and community-based organizations, foundations and philanthropies, research institutes and academies, professionals, UN agencies and other international and regional organizations.
Addressing rapid urbanization and awareness of its impact on cities, communities, sustainability, climate change, policy and the overall economy were the primary objective of the event. The emphasis was on the role of sustainable urbanization in achieving the sustainable development goals 2030. The event featured inclusive, open debates, sharing of lessons learned and the exchange of best practices and sound policies for the improvement of collective knowledge. Furthermore, it aimed to enhance coordination and cooperation between different stakeholders and constituencies which will eventually work in favor of the advancement and implementation of sustainable urbanization.
This event provided crucial and invaluable insight into the best practices and course of action which will facilitate urban development in our nation. A key lesson from the event was the need to redefine the term urbanization. Urbanization has long been seen as a problem, but we should recognize it as an opportunity instead. However, redefining the phenomenon does not change the urban realities of widespread poverty, wealth disparity, inadequate housing and infrastructure, limited access to resources and amenities.
Leveraging the Lessons Learned
Hasina Mushrofa, Programme Head of BRAC Urban Development Programme (UDP) share her experience and some of the highlights from WUF 9.
Concepts at the Conclave
This conference was a tremendous opportunity for us, as we were able to showcase Bangladesh’s urban development endeavors on an international platform for the very first time. We presented and worked along with the Bangladesh government’s Urban Development Directorate, the Ministry of Housing and Public Works and partner NGOs such as Practical Action. We hosted two sessions at the conference: ‘Networking for Knowledge Sharing on Outcome of Good Practice in Bangladesh’, and ‘Towards Implementation of the New Urban Agenda in Context of the Most Vulnerable Country, Bangladesh: Problems and Prospects’. Apart from these, we participated as panelists in other discussions such as, “Leveraging Smart Cities for Implementation of the New Urban Agenda,” and “Sustainable Urban Development and Management” which demonstrated the Asian region’s best practice and lessons learned. Moreover, the world stage had a session conducted by Asian Development Bank (ADB), which facilitated the sharing of lessons learned from various projects implemented in urban centers across Asia. Alongside these, we also attended a number of training sessions and learning events on the issues of housing, climate change, renewable energy, urban planning, and design.
Innovation at Every Curb: Paving the Way for a Habitable City
We presented two of our initiatives at the convention. Washim Akhter, the Programme Specialist in BRAC’s Urban Development Programme, presented on low-cost housing models in climate-vulnerable cities in Bangladesh. He solidified his case by using three best practice examples in Bangladesh. The first involved a community-led initiative piloted in Jhenaidah, the second example was of a low-cost high-rise rental model for people living in slums, led by the National Housing Authority (NHA) of Bangladesh, and the final example was of UNDP’s Community Housing Development Fund (CHDF) model piloted in Sirajganj and Gopalganj with prospects of being scaled.
Saif Iqbal, BRAC’s Advocacy and Knowledge Management Manager in the Urban Development Programme, demonstrated how our work in the urban sector aligns with the targets of ‘SDG-11-making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ and the New Urban Agenda. He highlighted BRAC’s partnership with local and national government, academic and professional bodies and other NGOs, their work in the low-cost housing sector and also how they are working to strengthen urban governance through capacity training of local government, community mobilization, etc.
Turning Knowledge into Fruition
We need to come up with creative and innovative solutions if we are to mitigate the issues which persist in our urban reality. This will require an overhaul in the way we monitor, collect and process data, document, and scale-up good practices, adopt inclusive planning and design. The solutions to alleviate these issues will need to be non-linear and complex for them to be effective. By combining techniques/methods from diverse channels, we must create a multi-faceted approach, that is also unified and integrated. In short, we must divert all our resources, energy and channels towards achieving sustainable urban development.
WUF9 was a seven-day affair consisting of 600 networking events, parallel sessions, and panel discussions. The key learnings that I gathered were:
1. Strengthening the role of local government is necessary to build a reliable system and a dialogue that can be done through an urban platform. Capacity building of the national government is essential to increase the role, responsibility, accountability of such platforms. Bangladesh lacks a national urban policy; therefore to implement the new urban agenda we have to introduce a national urban policy alongside an urban ministry. The first attempt to approve such a policy was taken back in 2006, which was followed by another one in 2014. However, it’s saddening to see that even after more than ten years of the first attempt such a policy has not been approved yet. We also have to keep in mind that a new urbanization framework is needed to support the execution of such an agenda.
2. The 2030 agenda is one of the most critical agendas related to the urban context. Engaging in inclusive partnership and collaboration with the government and NGO will help to increase knowledge sharing, cooperation and ensure that the best practices are being scaled up properly. The role of policy advocacy is unparalleled while ensuring urban planning and governance to increase investment. It can also be used to implement integrated territorial development. Besides, institutions can also benefit from the use of the sectoral policies. However, in order to reach the goal of this agenda we have to influence the national, local, and city level policies by coming up with long, short, and mid-term plans.
3. We need to come up with some innovative mechanisms that can be used to improve the quality of our program and help us in capacity building and technical assistance. Our partnership development also has to be innovative and creative enough to support the new urban agenda.
4. We can work to make our programme more inclusive by engaging disadvantaged groups such as people with disabilities the elderly, gendered minorities, and marginalized youth. We can build upon the capacity of the youth who are the future generation of the country and utilize them for the execution of the urban agenda. They can further be engaged in volunteer works and help to form a community; this is currently of utmost importance for the nation.
5. Community ownership is crucial; when you engage the people to work for their development, the results proliferate exponentially. We must create successful partnerships and collaboration that will help to facilitate the process further. These dynamics will increase their accountability, transparency and give them a sense of ownership of their programs which will, in turn, motivate them to support the urban agenda.
Public, private investment can create avenues for more employment. The core principle behind this will require the collaboration of the national, sub-national and local in a participatory or consultative way, for the implementation of the urban agenda.
The Move to All Things Urban
The urban population is expected to double by 2050 globally. According to the predictions stated in the UN-Habitat Report, the urban population of Bangladesh will double by the end of 2030, (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) Report figures indicate differently). We have limited opportunities. A wide gap exists when it comes to using our mechanism to combine the power of youth, women, grassroots organizations in planning, implementation, and monitoring. Other problems also exist related to inequitable access to the cities, decent jobs, public space, climate change, renewable energy, planning governance. Land tenure security and housing has become a significant issue and are the center of development.
We need to focus on influencing local, city, national and even international policy and work with evidence-based issues. To influence a population, you have to provide factual data, extensive research, and model proof that your plan will work. We can learn a lot of things from this process like finding solutions to a lot of critical urban issues. We also found out that urban dynamics context varies from city to city, community to community and the reasons why people are shifting to the urban from climate affected cities which are often hit by Aila, Cidr, river erosion, landslides, and cyclones. People migrate mostly in search of better lives than those that they left behind in their villages. We have to think about their skill development, other livelihood opportunities and entrepreneurship development including business opportunities and their overall economic empowerment.
BRAC, The Consistent Innovator
We are now operating in 20 cities and helping to develop the lives of 1 million people living in urban poverty. We improve urban governance, enable community mobilization, rethink basic urban service delivery, ensure the rights and entitlements of people living in urban poverty and provide overall support for improved urban management and planning. By working in low-income urban settlements, we learned that we must lead an urban programme at the national level by working with all levels of government: from concerned national ministries, the Urban Development Directorate, the National Housing Authority to the municipal and city corporations as well. In October 2017, we brought together 100 mayors, ministers, secretaries among others. in a national convention where they collaboratively discussed affordable housing solutions for people living in urban poverty.
In addition to the national mayor’s convention, we also co-hosted a national urban dialogue on disaster risk management and a conference on urban resilience to climate change. We aim to create a national level adaptation, and mitigation plan to assess climate vulnerability of cities like Satkhira, Barisal, Chittagong, Sirajganj, and Rajshahi. We can achieve exceptional results if we can create resilient climate strategies by doing vulnerability assessments in these cities and identify hotspots. To determine the impact, we require access to data. We are trying to convert UDP into a knowledge hub and to this end, we have implemented real-time monitoring pilot project in Korail, one of the biggest slums in the country.
Now that we have initiated the process of gathering data on urban households at the national and community-level, we are now considering ways in which we can use this data to inform management decision-making and planning procedures.
Additionally, urban heritage is a tremendous issue. We need to prioritize urban preservation and maintain and increase access to public space. Since all of this is not possible for us to do single-handedly we need to influence the national and local governments and engage them in capacity training activities so that cities across the country can become smart cities.
Monitoring mechanisms need to be strengthened if we are to effectively track our progress in implementing the New Urban Agenda. We are working to fulfill the targets set forth in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-11) and section 9 of the Seventh Five Year Plan. We refer to the target indicators and monitoring mechanisms set out in SDG-11. The New Urban Agenda and SDG-11 are interlinked. In addition, we are working with the mayors of 20 cities and towns in making them better prepared, proactive and functional. We are trying to increase public investment through public service delivery mechanisms of local municipalities and city corporations. Besides, we are also working with the UN-Habitat to increase collaboration in the national and international level. We are working on ways in which we can improve knowledge sharing. Organizations like UNDP, USAID who are playing a notable role in development can all be brought together to implement the new urban development agenda. Bangladesh is about to see considerable development in this current phase of work leading up to 2030.
