Asian City-Regions: The New Urban Agenda

As the world’s population becomes predominantly urban, academics and practitioners are challenged to find sustainable solutions to increasingly complex urban problems. Sustainable cities require a balance between environmental protection and economic development ensuring equitable outcomes. Achieving such a delicate balance requires tackling complex urban problems that may lead to unsustainable development paths. This century will see a substantial majority of the world’s population living in urban centers. The Habitat III Conference therefore has, as its mission, the adoption of a New Urban Agenda—an action-oriented document which will set global standards of achievement in sustainable urban development, rethinking the way we build, manage, and live in cities through drawing together cooperation with committed partners, relevant stakeholders, and urban actors at all levels of government as well as the private sector. This networking event aims to gather policy makers academicians, local governments, professionals urban planners, practitioners and who study urban areas to create a space where ideas are exchanged and disciplines transcend their usual academic boundaries. Understanding today’s complex urban problems requires a variety of theoretical frameworks and methods. The Asian City-Regions have traditionally looked at urban planning problems from an intra-disciplinary quantitative perspective. The networking event welcomes innovative technical approaches, but also encourages diverse views, implementation and way forward of The New Urban Agenda. We seek to create a learning environment where participants can share their perspectives and discuss trans-disciplinary ideas to propose solutions to today’s increasingly complex urban problems. This high-level networking event is to gather relevant policy makers and government representatives to demonstrate on how The New Urban Agenda coming on the heels of the crystallization of the Post-2015 Development Agenda. We believe that your participation will contribute to fruitful discussions, and that the networking event will result in accelerating our actions sustainable urban development in the Asia City-Regions.