Urban October is a time of raising awareness, promoting participation, generating knowledge and engaging the international community towards a New Urban Agenda.
http://urbanoctober.org/index.asp
Urban October was launched by UN-Habitat in 2014 to emphasize the world’s
urban challenges and engage the international community towards the New
Urban Agenda. This year the month of October will kick-off with World Habitat
Day under the motto ‘Public Spaces For All’ and conclude with World Cities Day
under the motto ‘Designed to Live Together’.
‘Transforming our World – the 2030 development agenda’ includes Sustainable
Development Goal 11, which formulates the ambition to make cities and human
settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable - underlying the relevance
of UN-Habitat’s mission. Towards the HABITAT III Conference, to be held in
Quito, the SDGs should be ingrained in the way we think of cities and plan
cities. Emerging from the debates at HABITAT III, the New Urban Agenda will
set the agenda on how to deal with the challenges of urbanization in the next
two decades.
Rapid urbanization is one of the defining challenges of contemporary societies.
For cities to realize the potentials and avoid the pitfalls of population and
economic growth, good urban planning is critical. In many countries,
unplanned city extensions and decades of car-centric urban design have created
sprawling city-regions. As these unplanned areas offer few work opportunities,
people and goods have been forced to travel long distances to employment
opportunities, leading to congestion, pollution and a generally reduced quality
of live. A lack of planning has also led to slum formation, spatial inequality
and segregated communities in many contexts, exacerbating inequality and
injustice and triggering turmoil and revolt. Over 61% of dwellers in Sub-Saharan
Africa, 24% in Latin America and 30% in Asia occupy land informally. The
lack of adequate street networks and limited and dwindling public space in
cities compound further urban inefficiencies and inequalities. Planning should
anticipate urban growth, as when land is already occupied and natural areas
destroyed, restructuring or rebuilding it becomes a very costly and difficult
process. Planning, urban design and public space structure the city, and are
powerful tools to engage with these challenges.
Cities of the future should be ‘designed to live together’ and urban planning
is the tool that will help us accomplish this. One reason is that design of the
physical environment greatly influences how people interact with each other.
Broad sidewalks and commercial street frontage foster economic activity and
make neighborhoods safer. Cities with small building blocks and short distances
between intersections are easy to walk and navigate. And cities with quality
public space invite people to come outside, communicate and collaborate with
each other, and participate in public life. This is why the mission to create
‘public spaces for all’ is one of the anchors of urban planning and design.
Descarga Guide Lines > http://mirror.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/Urban_October_2015_Guidelines.pdf
