#sdg11

Capacity of a street and poverty of place traps- cartoons by Ian Lockwood

This essentially comes down to design choices- and a decision on what type of urban environments we want. Without being too binary (ok- being quite binary...): Places for our communities and children. Places for cars.

The Global conference on air pollution and health: Accelerating action for clean air, clean energy access and climate change mitigation will highlight evidence-based, coordinated multi-sectoral solutions in cities, countries and regions to prevent communicable and noncommunicable disease, save lives, protect child health and limit climate change across the world.

Second Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health

WHO's work on air quality, energy and health

The Women-led Cities side-event will discuss how women leaders of businesses, cities and communities can join forces to drive positive local transformation through inclusive leadership, economic empowerment and reduced inequality. 

Side Event at the SDG Action Weekend organized by UN-Habitat, UNCDF, Ellaimpacta, The Gambia, Bangladesh, UCLG.

To maximize the SDG Summit's impact, the Secretary General is convening an SDG Action Weekend, which will generate opportunities for stakeholders, UN entities, and Member States to convene inside the United Nations Headquarters and set out specific commitments and contributions to drive SDG transformation between now and 2030.

The SDG Action Weekend will consist of the SDG Mobilization Day on Saturday, 16 September, and the SDG Acceleration Day on Sunday, 17 September at UNHQ in New York.

The SDG Action Weekend includes a select number of high-level side-events identified through an open call that concluded in August. They are jointly organized by coalitions of Member States, UN agencies and other international organizations, and global stakeholder networks.

Local and regional governments have been at the forefront of policies supporting the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, caring for people and the planet, through public service provision, local policy fostering social inclusion, ecological transformation and the creation of alliances and partnerships.

Lead Facilitators:

Global Task Force of Local and Regional Governments

United Cities and Local Governments

UNDESA

UN-Habitat

UNDP

Local2030 Coalition

The Local and Regional Government Forum (LRGF) will highlight the commitments of the local and regional government constituency towards the 2030 Agenda. A special focus will be placed on local acceleration and local accountability through the lenses of the 12 transitions and crosscutting enablers of the High Impact Initiatives and their relationship with action taking place at sub-national level. High-impact localization policies and partnerships for the goals currently in place and new innovative commitments will also be announced as well as the specific localization needs and aspirations of local and regional governments to bring SDG implementation back on track.

More people than ever before are living in slums or other informal settlements. This isn't just a global scale problem, though — it's also a global scale opportunity.

The number of people living in slums or other informal settlements has grown by 165 million in the past 20 years, bringing the total to nearly 1.1 billion.

Unable to access affordable housing, families have no alternative to living in substandard homes, with little access to sanitation services, electricity and safe drinking water. Residents of informal settlements often lack security of tenure or land rights, living under the constant threat of eviction.

Nearly 1.1 billion people live in slums and other informal settlements around the world.

A new report models the impact of improving informal settlements, and found it would enable millions of children to attend school and increase some countries GDP by more than 10%.