Providing Safe Inclusive and Accessible Public Spaces in Cities in the Emerging Economies: Lessons and Experiences

The event is co-organised by Nairobi City County, the World Bank, UN-Habitat, and Project for Public Spaces (PPS).The event will take stock of best practices from various cities, showcasing innovations on building urban safety, and city resilience through public spaces, and sharing experiences and strategies on how to provide, improve and secure safe, inclusive, vibrant, and accessible public spaces.It draws from the experiences of Nairobi’s Public Space Revitalisation Program, World Bank’s Urbanscapes initiative, UN-Habitat’s Global Program on Public Space’s work across the world, Project for Public Spaces work across the world and the city of Bogota’s experience in enhancing quality of life through a people-centred approach to urban development and the transformation of public spaces.This side event is envisioned as a learning exchange that brings together city leaders and the new players in the urban agenda including but not limited to academia, private sector and development partners, Civil Society Organizations and youth organizations.It will provide a unique opportunity for cities, learning, implementing, and development partners to share their experiences so they can learn from each other and possibly find solutions from the challenges they face in implementing urban safety and city resilience policies and practices, with a special focus on public spaces.The key outcomes of the side event are:Formation of a network of learning and implementing partners– This is envisioned to be an inclusive team including cities & local governments, research institutions, NGOs, CSOs and CBOs from across the world. This is aimed at fostering knowledge exchange, leveraging resources and sharing ideas, lessons, and best practices, and importantly lobbying for theprioritization of public spaces in the agenda of cities.Innovative low cost high impact practices, and experiencesacross policy, legislative, regulatory, financing and planning aspects on the creation, protection and management of public spaces from cities across the world, particularly the emerging economies.Recommendations for implementation of the New Urban Agenda, particularly focusing on public space, and importantly, a list of good practices that can be shared and replicated among cities.