Page 15 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Executive Summary

UN-Habitat, the leading United Nations agency working towards a better urban future, has provided several
basic principles related to urban sustainability in its reports. These principles can aid the provision of urban
smartness based on ICT interventions and assist with the execution and evaluation of performance related
to the sustainable development goals. For this section, the following UN-Habitat reports have been used as
the primary source to understand the basic role of urban planning and to derive planning principles for the
implementation of SDG 11:
1) UN HABITAT Planning Sustainable Cities: Global Report on Human Settlements 2009 sets 4 basic
roles for urban planning:
 addressing rapid urbanization, urban poverty and proliferation of slums
 addressing sustainable urban development and climate change
 addressing urban crime and violence

 addressing post-conflict and post-disaster situations.
To address sustainable urban development and climate change, this report sets 8 essential aims, gathered
under the policy called “Bridging the Green and Brown Agendas”:
 Development of renewable energy
 Striving for carbon-neutral cities

 Distributed power and water systems
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 Increasing photosynthetic spaces as part of green infrastructure
 Improving eco-efficiency
 Increasing sense of place
 Sustainable transport

 Developing cities without slums.
With respect to sustainable urban development, the report further addresses and includes advanced policy
on “Linking Spatial Planning to Urban Infrastructure” with 7 additional aims:
 Smart growth and transit-oriented development
 Integrating land use and transportation

 Strategic spatial planning and infrastructure planning
 Integrated urban management and development plans
 Strategic structure planning
 Linking spatial planning to infrastructure planning

 Linking mega-projects and major infrastructural developments to spatial planning.
Following on from understanding the role of urban planning for sustainable urban development aims, the
next pertinent question to be addressed is: What are the urban planning principles supporting the
implementation of sustainable urban development aims (as given above)?

This aspect is addressed in the following UN-Habitat report published in 2015.
2) UN HABITAT International Guidelines on Urban and Territorial Planning (2015), which puts forward
4 basic planning principles that should be inherent to any master planning exercise:
 Advocate physical compactness

 Promote social inclusiveness
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3 Area utilized for photosynthesis. Photosynthesis in the process through which plants and other autotrophes convert light energy from the sun
into chemical energy (using carbon dioxide and water). The chemical energy derived from this process is store as carbohydrates. Oxygen is a by-
product of photosynthesis.

U4SSC series 11