The 10th world urban forum held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab of Emirates, this year, was a joint initiation of UN habitat and the government of Abu Dhabi, UAE, with the theme: “Cities of opportunities: connecting culture and Innovations”. One-week long forum was scheduled with many important programmes that tried to cover various aspects of achieving sustainable development within the realm of the theme of WuF10. The event revolved around programmes like Youth assembly, women assembly, grassroot assembly, exhibitions stalls, book launches, documentary shows, social tours of Abudhabi, discussions forums and presentations from various representatives of the participant country. On Abu Dhabi declaration of Wuf10, the global world has recommitted the statement of NUA and are convinced that culture of any city is an integral part of city development process and pledged the world cities to be obliged to include innovative approach to integrate culture in development agendas identifying culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development and key component of generating local identity.

 
Resonance of wuf10 for Nepal and how Nepal is progressing towards adopting decade of action for implementing NUA?

At the national level:

With national vision of prosperous and happy Nepalese, Nepal envisions to be graduated to developing country status by 2022, which means Nepal has to meet the criteria of economic development and progressive human development index. SDG Status and road map (2016-2030), does highlights for the ambitious targets set by global community for developing country like Nepal, but also commits to be obliged by the global common vision and continue to work on to meet the SDG Targets. At national level, country experienced the historic and remarkable transformational leap by complete restructuring of the nation from a constitutional monarchy to a federal system, in 2015, with promulgation of new constitution. Four years since the promulgation of the Federal constitutions, at national level the country is in the process of materialization of Federal system in its governance structure. While the country itself has the huge challenges of adoption and operationalization of Federal system, till the grass-root level, the increasing trend of urbanization has further accelerated the challenges in urban development process. Though country has the history of almost 5 decades of realizing modern urban planning history, the establishment of the Ministry of Urban Development in 2013/14 suggests that a rational planning approach through comprehensive plans and policies for the contemporary urbanization process is new and has just been 5/6 years old.

At urban level:

Since the adoption of NUA in 2016, the will to put the commitment in action through national policies, plans and programs can be reflected through various government level policies, projects and actions, though it is not without any challenges. The adoption of National Urban development strategy (NUDS 2015) is an important step that holistically tries to materialize the commitments of NUA and SDG 11 through its major five guiding principles of Inclusivity, sustainability, Resilience, efficiency, and Green assets and technology with a vision of obtaining balanced urban development in total 753 urban centers which accounts for more than 60% of the urban population. With the fact that among 753 urban centers, most of them are newly formed/declared urban centers (only after 2015), and have tremendous challenges as well as opportunities in adopting and implementing the modern urban planning process at grassroots levels.

It’s a great opportunity for newly identified urban centers to draft their vision, strategies and action plans in coherence to NUA and showcasing the achievements and actions in the real sense to abide by the common vision shared by NUA and sustainable goals. Among those new urban centers, many still possess the rural settings where the need of basic infrastructural services become a priority but in the other hand, these urban centers have many paradigms of development guidance of sustainable developments such as Urban-Rural continuum, Environmental/ecological sustainability, Social-cultural sustainability, to name the few. In case of many Nepalese cities, social and cultural aspects are its major strength, such as our Living heritage, Physical manifestation of cultural/ religious domain, Proactive community-based activities (Guthi, community forests, various communal groups), and indigenous living style that adopts a sustainable way of living with nature. Similarly, Smart city initiation projects are one of a good example, how policymakers and planners initiated to localize the concept of Smart City in Nepalese context, where the smart city project was geared up right from the grass-root level of researching the meaning of “smart city: in terms of Nepalese context” rather than adopting Copy paste solution. As part of the process, the Government succeeded to document the Indicators of Smart city in the Nepalese context that comprised 4 pillars, 30 components, and 125 indicators. Wuf10 gave us a great platform to learn what’s happening in other cities around the world. We have examples of middle east cites, Asian cities, European cities, Latin American cities and so on. But what matters the most is we focus on our own context to understand where our cities lie and where we want to head. Mostly many cities around Nepal have a multidimensional relationship of culture, nature and social coexistence. Many historic cities in the capital center, evolved through century-old history, are already blessed with the basic theoretical principle and components of sustainable cities, resilient cities and climate-responsive cities in terms of pedestrianization, compactly built forms, use of local materials, social-cultural manifestation in physical design and climate-sensitive design. As we understand the planning history of Abudhabi has been 5 decades old, similar to modern planning history of Nepal, what we can learn from this city is how to integrate culture, history, and innovation in the modern planning process. For example, the Masdar city visit was a lesson learned in terms of adopting historical planning principle in the contemporary planning process, such as compact planning, neighborhood concept, integrating traditional wind tower techniques to innovative modern wind towers to generate renewable energy, but to the other side, this city has also questioned planners or policymakers about what sustainability really means?? The city might showcase itself to be physically sustainable but for me, it seems to lacks many human aspects of social and cultural vibrancies, because of which, a city for me is mysterious and abandoned.

Major concerns:

For a developing country like Nepal, the sustainable city should not be a theoretical buzz word to participate in western driven influences for integrating with INGOs or NGOs but it should be a comprehensive lifestyle we adopt as a responsible citizen of the earth, concentrating on how cities are at the grassroots level. By recognizing culture as an integral part of sustainable development the world has indeed recognized the foremost prioritization of planning cities for people. As highlighted in the forum, the culture as the creative capital, the major challenges that cities of Nepal face is to foster the creative knowledge of today’s generations, with a growing trend of out-migration of youth to foreign lands, country’s urbanization process is surely lacking the intellectual and energetic knowledge and energies to reinforce and rejuvenate development activities in the country. On the Abudhabi declaration of Wuf10, the global world has recommitted the statement of NUA. For many of historic cities like that of Kathmandu valley, the city's physical domains are the holistic manifestation of many rituals, social and cultural beliefs and are the soul of the city. But amidst its significant historical urban settings, Kathmandu valley, today, stands as the city struggling against its past and present and future needs, witnessing major outcomes of modernization in terms of lifestyle changes in the people. However, for the communal city like Kathmandu or Patan or Bhaktapur, the sense of feeling of community is still the predominant strength and we need to focus on our social strength.

What we lack in our planning and designing process in reference to Wuf10 lessons learned:

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  1. Acknowledging planning as a process and not as a fixed product.
  2. Weak in researching, revisiting and reviewing the document and ambiguity in vertical and horizontal integration in many cases.
  3. Identifying planning principle in responding to universal design approach irrespective of age, sex and any natural physical weakness of the human or let’s say we lack behind in creating human-centric design approach for catering the aspects of “live no one behind “
  4. Patriarchy is the base of inequality, the challenges lie in embedding the concept of equity in social institutions which are mainly trapped by patriarchy dominance.
  5. Challenges of having a scientific database management system in order to instill capacity building in terms of the tech governance system. Incorporating youths and their innovative knowledge should be part of the formation of tech- governance system at the national to the local level.
  6. As the world is heading towards recognition of digital rights as human rights for developing cities of Nepal, where technology and innovations are sweeping in in a slow crawling manner there’s a need of policy formation and regulatory formation to regulate the use and Implications of the digital world and digital literacy on rights and responsibility of using digital technology.


 

Some further recommendations we can incorporate in our planning process in reference to Wuf10 lessons learned:

  1. Diversity is the strength of the city in terms of generating creative knowledge and can be part of identity formation.
  2. Adopt a strategy to integrate youth, women, children, differently able people in development trajectory.
  3. Local governments are indeed the major actor in materializing the principle and vision of NUA in the local grassroots level.
  4. Cultural Mapping: community strength, rethinking history, promoting and linking creative knowledge of past with present for future generations.
  5. Technology as a tool for cultural promotion in order to keep the creative knowledge alive in the present generations. E-library, digitization, digital center
  6. How we perceive the culture of the city can be different from the different conditions of the city in the relevance of their stories of evolution.
  7. Recognition of innovation and technology to instill relics of past to youth and making culture more accessible through innovations
  8. One needs the mindset of apathy and language of humanity for the materialization of aspects of inequality “Addressing inequality through culture and innovations”
  9. Importance of grassroots as they are the ones to come up with innovations and service delivery and face the challenges.
  10. As per Abudhabi declaration, local governments urge for the need to develop a sustainable development model that is strongly anchored in culture and human rights, so what it can mean to Nepalese context:

  • Harness traditional knowledge
  • Foster indigenous knowledge
  • Identify and Promote prevailing tangible and intangible heritage
  • Prepare SDG Road maps in local levels 
  • Incentives for attaining SDGs
  • The need for awareness /education of local people regarding available policies or its implications
  • Regardless of any status: people have a role to play for achieving a sustainable city


Thus, grounded in humanity and human dignity, Wuf10 indeed led the world commitments to embrace changes for future generations without forgetting the contributions of past and celebrate diversity, humanity as a key component for building progressive cities.

 

Reflections on World Urban Forum 10 (wuf10)  as a participant from Nepal  (from Feb 8th till Feb 13th 2020)

"Cities of opportunities: connecting culture and Innovations”.

​Brinda Shrestha, Architect/Urban planner, Nepal.