World Cities Day was established with the aim of promoting interest in urbanisation and encouraging cooperation among countries to seize opportunities and meet the challenges of urbanism, as well as to contribute to sustainable urban development worldwide.
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2022: Acting locally to be global
The 2022 celebration takes place in Shanghai (China) under the theme “Act locally to be global”. It aims to bring together different partners to share experiences and approaches to enable local and regional governments to create a greener, more equitable and sustainable cities.
Taking action at the local level is key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Since its adoption, UN-Habitat has been working to advance SDG localisation by providing technical expertise to partners around the world, leading the development of cutting-edge research, empowering local and regional governments in localising the goals, and strengthening the voice of communities and local governments in key international and UN forums on the SDGs.
Why a World Cities Day?
The urbanisation offers the potential for new forms of social inclusion, including greater equality, access to services and new opportunities, as well as engagement and mobilisation that reflects the diversity of cities, countries and the world. However, all too often this is not the way of urban development. Inequality and exclusion abound, often at rates above the national average, at the expense of sustainable development that serves all.
This is the context of General Assembly resolution A/RES/68/239, which in 2014 established 31 October as World Cities Day.
In 2014, UN-Habitat launched an initiative, Urban October, to highlight global urban challenges and engage the international community in the development of the New Urban Agenda, adopted in October 2016 in the city of Quito during the Habitat III Conference. This New Urban Agenda is the compass for addressing the challenges facing cities over the next two decades and is to be seen as an extension of Sustainable Development Goal 11 of the 2030 Agenda.