Kenya Conference Takes On Rapid Urbanization
urban planners and population experts are attending the United Nations
Habitat Assembly meeting this week in Nairobi. They are seeking better
urban and sustainable planning to deal with rising populations as well
the effects of climate change.
At the inaugural U.N Habitat Assembly, delegates will put their heads together hoping to find solutions to make big cities more habitable.
For Africa, urgent solutions are needed as the United Nations estimates nearly half of the continent’s populations live in slums.
The theme of the summit is "Innovation for a better quality of life
in cities and communities." U.N. Habitat Director for Africa Naison
Mutizwa-Mangaza says innovation will be key in transforming the
continent’s urban areas.
"We hope there will be a lot of ideas shared on innovations on how to
plan our cities, how to manage them, how to do transport in a more
imaginative way and so on. For me it would be how to grow African
economies using urbanization as a tool,” Mutizwa-Mangaza said.
The assembly is to be held every four years and comes as more people
are living in urban areas than rural areas, posing a challenge for urban
planners, according to Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta.
"Inadequate shelter and unsustainable human settlement remain a key
challenge. I urge partners to exchange ideas and best practices for
improving our cities. And I therefore continue to urge member countries
and partners to seize this opportunities during this United Nations
Habitat Assembly to exchange ideas and best practices with a view of
identifying practical solutions to improving our cities and human
settlements,” Kenyatta said.
At the end of the five day summit, delegates plan to come up with a
ministerial declaration with proposals on how to make cities more
inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable by 2030.
Maimouna Sharrif, director of U.N. Habitat, says coordinated action is needed.
"It means that we collectively need to get our urban growth process
right to sort, and our urban growth process and our cities right to
solve or mitigate these problems. This is important as some of these
problems do not recognize regional or national boundaries,” Sharrif
said.
The U.N. Habitat Assembly, will draw from the New Urban Agenda, a road
map on urban development adopted by global leaders in 2016.
VOA
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