Between 7 and 9 June 2017, the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the TU Delft organised an UN-Habitat sponsored Urban Thinkers’ Campus (UTC ) on Higher Education for the New Urban Agenda. The title of our UTC was “EDUCATION FOR THE CITY WE NEED: HOW DO WE TEACH THE NEW URBAN AGENDA?”. The main conclusions of this UTC are available in an executive report available below. These results were discussed at the UN-Habitat General Assembly in Nairobi held in May 2019.
;
The New Urban Agenda is the outcome document agreed upon at the Habitat III cities conference in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016 and signed by all the UN member states.
The NUA guides the efforts of a wide range of actors around urbanisation — nation states, city and regional leaders, international development funders and civil society — for the next 20 years.
After the enactment of the document, attention has shifted towards IMPLEMENTATION: how to implement its principles?
We believe that universities have a special role in preparing young professional and critical citizens to face the challenge of making our cities sustainable, prosperous, fair and inclusive. But in order to do so, we are reaching out to stakeholders from the academic and educational worlds, as well as NGOs, companies and governmentagencies, to discuss how best to teach and learn issues related to and stemming from the New Urban Agenda.
The TU Delft UTC discussed strategies, methodologies, literature and practical exercises that can be implemented in higher education courses in Europe and elsewhere. Our attention is on social, economic and environmentally sustainable urban development everywhere, but the challenges of urbanisation in the Global South are truly urgent.
Our main question is:
How to prepare young professionals to understand and implement the New Urban Agenda in very diverse national and local environments?
This is an initiative from TU Delft in partnership with TU-Eindhoven, IHS-Erasmus Rotterdam, Arcadis and others.
