World Urban Campaign Highlights

The World Urban Campaign was launched in 2010 in Rio de Janeiro during the 5th World Urban Forum convened by UN-Habitat. The Campaign was conceived to bring together multiple voices and organizations working on urban issues, promote dialogue, create synergies towards action and advocate to elevate the urban agenda.

+250 Partners, 16 Constituencies

Everyone has a voice

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The WUC is a collective intelligence for urban advocacy made of more than 250 organizations organized in 16 constituencies:

1. Local and Subnational Authorities

2. Research and Academia

3. Civil Society Organizations

4. Grassroots Organizations

5. Women

6. Parliamentarians

7. Children and Youth

8. Businesses and Industries

9. Foundations and Philanthropies

10. Professionals

11. Trade Unions and Workers

12. Farmers

13. Persons with Disabilities

14. Older Persons

15. Indigenous people

16. Medias.

The WUC is driven by a democratic governance to ensure that everyone has a voice. The partners are represented by an elected Steering Committee made of constituency representatives, supported by working groups and managed by a Secretariat led by UN-Habitat. The current Steering Committee was elected in June 2022.

A renewed urban narrative

Since its launch, the WUC partners have contributed to developing an urban narrative around global milestones to advocate as one voice on urban issues and solutions.

2012: ‘The Manifesto for Cities’ has contributed to the lobbying effort towards the recognition of an ‘Urban’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 11: ‘Sustainable Cities and Communities’) in the 2030 Development Agenda approved in 2015.

2014: ‘The Future We Want - The City We Need’, launched in New York in 2014, has been a stepping stone towards the Habitat III Conference, calling for enabling policies, strategies and practices for sustainable urbanization and reiterating the need for an ‘Urban’ SDG.

2016: ‘The City We Need’ 2.0, launched in Prague at the PreCom 3 of the Habitat III Conference in 2016, further defined key principes and drivers of change before the Conference which delivered the New Urban Agenda.

2021: ‘The City We Need Now!, launched on 1 December 2021 in Nairobi, calling to ‘turn the SDG promise into action now’, using ‘cities and communities as accelerators of the SDG implementation’.

The Urban Thinkers Campus

A Global Conversation

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The above urban narrative has been developed through a continuous global exchange amongst partners through live and virtual assembly meetings, working groups as well as a series of Urban Thinkers Campus sessions. Since 2014, the Urban Thinkers Campus has engaged more than 30,000 participants in 280 sessions.

The enormous success of the Urban Thinkers Campus lies in the creativity and the dynamic engagement of the WUC partners as well as the synergies and collaborations built over the years. Urban Thinkers Campus are open events made of Urban Labs, Urban Thinkers Plenary sessions, Urban Cinema, Urban Journalism Academy events, etc.

The next 2023 UTC Series will be on the theme ‘The City We Need Now!’, building on the success of the 2022 Series.