Tag: Import-Documents-10-06-2025 EN

Local Economic Development and Job Creation in MENA

Posted on by erik

Local Economic Development (LED) remains a top priority for the MENA countries as a driver for economic stability and job creation for a region with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. While many resources are invested in fostering local economic development in the MENA countries led by governments, however, there is often a lack of systematic access to practice-oriented solutions.

More than 40 local urban practitioners from 22 municipalities and 10 countries from the MENA region and Germany took part of the virtual dialogue event organized by the Connective Cities project. The dialogue event consisted of five virtual sessions held between the Sep 29th – Oct 7th 2019, focusing on facilitating the exchange of know-how and experiences through peer-to-peer learning among municipal representatives and urban practitioners. Moreover, the dialogue event aimed at enriching the analysis and planning capacity of the participating municipal representatives to address existing challenges of implementing LED and job creation programs.

Throughout the Dialogue event, participants showed tremendous commitment to the program with a level of excitement that remained high till the last day of the dialogue where they learned how to present their LED project concepts in less than 3 minutes; an activity that reflected their understanding of project development process as well as the peer-to-peer exchange methodology.

This report reflects in detail the main results of the virtual dialogue event.

Cities SHIFT: Capacity building and networking for climate- and people-friendly mobility report

Posted on by erik

“With the pressing issues of congestion, air pollution, inequality, and climate change, the question is no longer if a sustainable and ecomobile transportation system will exist but when. Effective implementation can be realized by making an informed decision. This is imperative because you cannot manage what you do not know. This report demonstrates how the EcoMobility SHIFT+ tool can be adopted to assess and measure the transportation system of six cities in China, India, and Uganda. The EcoMobility SHIFT+ is a useful tool for local authorities to measure, assess, and act to improve ecomobility. Furthermore, evaluation and monitoring is an essential step in the process of developing sustainable urban mobility plans.”

Climate Resilience and Urban Development

Posted on by erik

Many cities in the Latin American region have been pioneers in the implementation of environmental measures and policies, as well as in resilience building and adaptation of their territories to the incre- asing effects of climate change. Planning for the future is key for the well-being of our communities, and we need to continue working with and for them in order to mitigate and adapt to the impact that climate change will continue to have on our territories in the coming decades.

This peer-learning note summarizes good practices of Latin American cities with a focus on four different thematic areas: risk assessment, comprehensive planning, finance, and citizen engagement. The practices were discussed during our ConnectiveCities peer-learning event hosted by the city of Niteroi, Brazil between November 26-28, 2019.

More information: 

• Read the Peer Learning Note 26 about Climate Resilience and Urban Development in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.
• Short documentation with all presentations and pictures of the events

Untreated and Unsafe

Posted on by erik

Cities must ensure universal access to safe, reliable, and affordable sanitation so that all urban residents can lead productive, healthy, and thriving lives. New analysis of 15 cities in the global South shows that on average, 62 percent of sewage and fecal sludge is unsafely managed somewhere along the sanitation service chain.

Global monitoring efforts have resulted in an underestimation of the urban sanitation crisis and the risks to public health, the economy, and the environment. New data and analysis at the city and sub-city level is needed to galvanize action.

Sewers are convenient, safe, sanitary, and work well in dense urban environments and in multistory buildings. From the perspective of the household, sewer connections and services are often less expensive than on-site sanitation options.

In the absence of universal access to sewers, cities need to find an optimal combination of off-site and on-site sanitation options. On-site sanitation systems place enormous responsibility on households and private providers, and thus require strong government capacity to regulate and enforce sanitation standards to ensure public health and safety.

Citywide upgrading of informal settlements can improve low-income households’ access to urban sanitation. City governments should work with community organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and federations to improve and extend sanitation to informal settlements and address affordability.

15 Pathways to localise the Sustainable Development Goals

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This publication illustrates how the 15 pathways of the Basque Declaration can be used by towns and cities to localise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In this publication, the 15 pathways of the Basque Declaration are illustrated with stories taken from the Transformative Action database of the Sustainable Cities Platform. Each of these stories are former applications to the Transformative Action Award 2017-2019 and have been reviewed by a jury of experts, which includes representatives from the European Committee of the Regions, the European Investment Bank, UNESCO Etxea, the City of Aalborg (Denmark) and ICLEI Europe.

The purpose of these stories is to provide local governments and other local stakeholders with inspiration for action, rather than the formulation of yet another action plan. The examples also give insight into how to implement the goals using an integrated approach across sectors and departments. For each story, the most relevant pathway and SDGs are indicated, based on an independent assessment by ICLEI Europe. They show the diversity of approaches across topics, geographical locations and local cultures.

The Power of Cities

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“The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified urbanization as one of the key challenges for public health in the 21st century. It is typically discussed in negative terms, including infectious outbreaks, unhealthy lifestyles and environmental threats. Yet cities offer significant opportunities to improve public health through health-enhancing policies and actions. […] City leaders are key allies in delivering national public health objectives among large parts of the population. City leaders have the means, opportunity and obligation to protect the health and well-being of their people by defining priorities, uniting stakeholders around common goals, and ensuring accountability for outcomes. City leaders’ commitment is important not just for the health of cities, but for global health as a whole. […] Cities are the main implementation sites for national health policies and programmes – without their support, global targets are unlikely to be achieved. This report is a call for city leaders to rise to the challenge and show the world how local action can help solve global health problems.”

Resilient cities, thriving cities: The evolution of urban resilience

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“This report uses the decade-long experience of the Resilient Cities Congress series as a proxy to track the evolution of the global resilience debate over the last ten years, creating a solid base to build the next decade of bold action.
It explores a variety of resilience approaches; for example, how multi-stakeholder planning has contributed to finance and boosted local resilience, or how leveraging nature-based solutions has enabled cities’ adaptation to climate change and improved people’s quality of life. The report also provides successful examples of social cohesion benefitting physical resilience, especially in informal settlements.”

Understanding Infrastructure Interdependencies in Cities

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“Modern urban infrastructure and their systems of operation are highly interdependent. They are formed of multiple connections, feedback and feedforward paths, and intricate branching where services or information are transferred across city sectors. This means that if one system fails, it can have cascading impacts on other systems. Climate change can compound these impacts significantly. Some systems may be directly affected by climate change events – such as roads during flooding. Other systems may be affected indirectly, such as the health sector and the financial sector if there are power outages. The interdependencies of city systems combined with climate impacts can lead to a ripple effect of disruptions. Understanding infrastructure interdependencies and critical failure points is therefore vital to achieving long- term climate resilience across a whole city.”

Urban Girls Catalogue

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The Urban Girls Catalogue is a guide in inclusive urban planning, a deep dive into the process behind#UrbanGirlsMovement and an encyclopedia of good examples that showcase how feminist and participatory urban planning can lead to improved living conditions for society at large.
These are the results from #UrbanGirlsMovement, where we have composed a catalogue featuring: Global good practices of feminist urban development (part II); the results from the pilot case #UrbanGirlsMovement Botkyrka (part III); lessons learned from the entire initiative (part IV), as well as guidelines and policy recommendations for implementing parties and local, regional, national and global policy-makers (part V). The aim of this catalogue is for you, the reader, to find the necessary arguments for challenging set norms in your specific urban development context.

Towards a Financing Mechanism for Slum Upgrading at Scale in Nairobi

Posted on by erik

In 2017, the County Government of Nairobi declared Mukuru to be a Special Planning Area (SPA), paving the way for the preparation of an integrated Local Physical Development Plan (LPDP) for this large informal settlement in collaboration with its residents and partner organizations.
The SPA covers Mukuru Kwa Njenga, Mukuru Kwa Reuben and Viwandani which together accommodate around 300,000 low-income residents, many of them living in extreme income poverty.
Implementing this ambitious integrated plan will require finance for a wide range of infrastructure services and affordable housing as well as complementary financial interventions to support micro- and small enterprises.
This publication sets out a financing mechanism for the envisaged upgrading investments in informal settlements in Nairobi, pejoratively called “slums”. Mobilizing the vast amounts of capital required will face critical challenges, with affordability and land tenure at the forefront.
An important aspect of this report is how the upgrading of Mukuru and other informal settlements in Nairobi could be linked to these institutional innovations which seek to deliver infrastructure services and affordable housing at scale.
International experience on slum upgrading finance is examined early in the report in order to draw out general trends that provide a useful backdrop for Nairobi. The cases of India, Morocco and Egypt are set out and a general approach to slum upgrading finance presented.