What Are the Housing and Urban Development Challenges?
In the context of growing urbanization in different forms, ministers and senior officials of 68 countries from the Asia Pacific Region will deliberate on challenges of urban planning and management in New Delhi for three days, beginning today, December 14.
The regional interactions under the aegis of ‘Asia Pacific Ministerial Conference on Housing & Urban Development’ (APMCHUD) will be inaugurated by India’s Minister of Urban Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation, M.Venkaiah Naidu.
With the Asia Pacific Region accounting for 60% of the world population and 55% of global urban population, the ‘Delhi Declaration’ to be adopted at the end of the three-day meet on the theme of ‘Emerging Urban Forms – Policy Responses and Government Structures in the Context of the New Urban Agenda’ assumes importance in furthering the new urban agenda adopted at the recent conference of UN Habitat-III.
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Delhi Conference seeks to address issues related to urbanization in the region in the form of new urban forms ranging from crowded city centres to peripheral expansion, metropolitan based urban population growth, megacities, mega urban regions with multiple cities of different sizes, urban corridors etc., impacting growth and urbanization.
The 6th APMCHUD, the first after UN Habitat-III global conference on sustainable development held in Quito this September, will come out with a Delhi Declaration and Implementation Plan for aligning urban development strategies of member countries with the New Urban Agenda adopted at Quito, Eucador for the next 20 years.
This new agenda seeks to foster integrated planning mechanisms, ensuring equity and citizen participation and promoting sustainable urban development.
Five Working Groups will deliberate on different Sub-Themes: Integrated Planning, Management and Governance Structures (led by India), Ensuring Access to Housing and Housing Finance in the Urban – Rural Continuum (led by South Korea), Unorganised Growth in Peripheral Areas and Slum Upgradation Aspects (led by Iran), Ensuring Sustainable and Natural Disaster Resilient Urban Development including Climate Change (led by Indonesia) and Ensuring Basic Services including Mobility for Integrated Development (led by Sri Lanka and Maldives).
Delhi is hosting the APMCHUD after 10 years having hosted the first APMCHUD in 2006 and takes over leadership of this important regional group for the next two years.
