World Urban Campaign

The World Urban Campaign is the world living platform on cities for sharing and learning on initiatives, actions and policies driving positive change towards sustainable urbanization. Coordinated by UN-Habitat, it is a global coalition of public, private and civil society partners seeking to raise the urban agenda. The campaign is UN-Habitat's partners' platform for the preparation of the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) to be held in 2016.
History
The World Urban Campaign was preceded by two other UN-Habitat campaigns: the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure as well as the Good Urban Governance Campaign. Those two campaigns were conceived as advocacy instruments to promote security of tenure for the poorest populations and improve good urban governance. In 2005, UN-Habitat's Governing Council requested that those two campaigns be merged in order to strengthen their common endeavor, outreach and messages.
Launch
The World Urban Campaign was launched at the Fifth session of the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 24 March 2010 as a global advocacy movement. With the slogan, "Better City, Better Life" - the campaign aims to reverse the awareness and action gap that exists in relation to urban areas. It provides a necessary environment for collaborative effort toward sustainable urbanization by all concerned actors in the urban world, from individuals to organizations of the urban poor, associations of local authorities, parliamentarians, business forums, youth associations, media, professional associations and women's groups.
The Campaign
The World Urban Campaign offers a broad platform to raise urban agenda, improve policies at the national level, and raise awareness for sustainable urbanization. It is coordinated by UN-Habitat, but owned and driven by partners.
Goals
# To unite: convince public, private, and social sectors that investing in creative, resilient, and sustainable cities and communities is essential to our shared future.
# To connect: create lasting linkages among all City Changers and facilitate the coherent and strategic coordination of partners.
# To enable: provide the means to achieve creative, resilient, and sustainable cities and communities.
# To measure: establish benchmarks, monitor progress, and share knowledge worldwide.
Principles
The Campaign is guided by the following seven principles:
# Accessible and pro-poor land, infrastructure, services, mobility and housing;
# Socially inclusive, gender sensitive, healthy and safe development;
# Environmentally sound and carbon-efficient built environment;
# Participatory planning and decision making;
# Vibrant and competitive local economies promoting decent work and livelihoods;
# Assurance of non-discrimination and equal rights to the city; and
# Empowering cities and communities to plan for and effectively manage adversity and change.
Thematic areas
The World Urban Campaign focuses on six thematic areas:
# A Resilient City: prepare cities for change, managing adversity, resilience and take action to reduce risk.
# A Green City: build environmentally sound and carbon efficient cities.
# A Safe and Healthy City: make cities livable places.
# An Inclusive City: build socially inclusive, accessible, pro-poor, equitable and gender sensitive cities.
# A Planned City: plan the cities of tomorrow for sustainable decision-making processes.
# A Productive City: make cities more efficient and better places to ensure decent work.
The Campaign works on pursuing advocacy and joint projects with partners in areas related to these thematic clusters.

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