Transforming Research into Practices and Policies: Dialogues on Implementation and Evaluation of the New Urban Agenda

This session will bring together local authorities, community leaders and researchers from Brazil, South Africa and the United Kingdom to address how comparative research findings and methods in the planning process can facilitate the implementation and monitoring of the 2030 urban agenda. City planning has increasingly included different stakeholders, but multi-level governance and dialogue have not always led to inclusive planning and outcomes. Building on Sustainable Development Goal #11, and as demonstrated by the zero draft of the New Urban Agenda, there is currently a renewed discussion on the importance of new skills in city planning for shaping equitable and sustainable cities. In this event, participants are invited to imagine new ways for academic research to inform and be informed by planning interventions. Supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s Urban Transformations Network (https://www.urbantransformations.ox.ac.uk) — a premier urban research funding body working through bilateral government partnerships across global north and south to direct comparative analysis — it aims to promote lasting partnerships between researchers, community organizers and policy makers. Centrally, speakers will debate what institutional support is needed to facilitate knowledge co-production and multi-level governance, as well as identify key challenges for the communication and sharing of ideas. Making research part of urban policies and local practices is crucial for the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the New Urban Agenda post-Habitat III, and new approaches to effective synchronization between science, policy and practice are timely. The discussions, focusing on pressing thematic areas of housing, gender inequality, urban sustainability, mobility and health, include the following speakers: Councillor Parks Tau (former Executive Mayor of Johannesburg), a representative from the Prefecture of Rio de Janeiro, Vanessa Castán Broto (UCL-DPU - Environment), Cathy McIlwaine (Queen Mary - Gender), Ramin Keivani (Oxford Brookes - Mobility) and Beth Chitekwe-Biti (Slum Dwellers International, Zimbabwe).