Research and Academia

The Stakeholders Roundtable has three main objectives.
• To discuss the various practices and innovations carried out by universities worldwide in linking their education programs with technical cooperation and capacity building of cities and local governments and/or communities where they are located that supports the implementation of the New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goal 11.

• To provide a forum of exchange of experience and to strengthen university collaboration in action and in education as well as action research. The Roundtable will discuss successful approaches, common features, conditions that works and lessons learned from failures and successes, and strengthen future collaboration.

• To design an agenda for future collaboration amongst universities, scholars and institutes attending the event.

In the Seventh session of the World Urban Forum, held in Medellin, Colombia in 2014, circa 400 participants attending the Universities Roundtable shared a wealth of experiences demonstrating the engagement of their universities with urban development initiatives. The roundtable demonstrated how they support local governments, working closely with communities and civil society organizations, demonstrating the value of education and research in advancing local policies aiming at the improvement of urban life.

At the Habitat III Conference (2016), the Universities Partnership Initiative of UN-Habitat (UNI), and the HESI - Higher Education Sustainability Initiative comprising UNESCO, UN Environment, UNU-United Nations University, UN-Habitat, UNCTAD and UNDESA, organized a global meeting of universities which demonstrated with concrete examples that the collaboration among higher education institutions, city governments, communities, and non-governmental organizations can achieve direct impact on the sustainability of cities.

Universities have played key roles in building a sustainable urban development agenda through various means, ranging from technical assistance to city governments, direct implementation of university programs and through innovative education and capacity building of key urban actors.

It goes without saying that one of the critical aspects of the role of universities in the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals was to keep itself abreast with development, being able to reform and innovate the curriculum and education programs and prepare a young generation of professionals for the challenges of urbanization.

An action plan was adopted by the universities in Quito to further document their practice, evaluate results, disseminate it and amongst other things establish UN-Habitat chairs for sustainable urbanization. In Kuala Lumpur, universities are expected to showcase the advance of these actions.

Q1. After Habitat III, what are universities undertaking in the field of education in support to the implementation of the New Urban Agenda towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals?

Q2. What results have been achieved to date and what lessons can be outlined?

Q3. What are the most effective manners to engage universities with city governments and communities to implement the New Urban Agenda and achieve the urban dimensions of the Sustainable Development Goals?

Q4. Are universities responding adequately to the demands and needs expressed by cities in terms of education and capacity building aimed at enabling local governments to implement the transformative commitments of New Urban Agenda and achieve Sustainable Development Goal 11?

Q5. What is the agenda for the future for universities to engage fully with the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals 11?