National urban policies and integrated urban and territorial planning as key facilitators supporting the achievement of agenda 2030 and sustainable development goals

Objective of the paper is a critical assessment of the implementation of the Agenda 2030 including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in the light of COVID-19 pandemic and related economic crises. More specifically, the paper discusses the relation between local goal achievement between e.g. national urban policies and the application of the International Guidelines on Urban and Territorial Planning (IG-UTP) on the one side and the UN system which adopted SDG and monitors their implementation at the international level. The current crisis has revealed the fragility of ’globalisation‘. At the same time the pandemic and economic crises call cities to proof their competence for problem solving and implement a number of challenging regulations coming from higher levels of government. The successful contribution of citizen and urban and rural governments is essential for the overall success of the response to the pandemic and economic crisis. At the same time citizen and local governments look to their national governments and to international organizations for support. Overall, it deems to be appropriate to review the role of cities, of NUP and IG-UTP in the system of multilevel governance. The UN is facing multiple crises and is off-track in achieving policy goals including the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. A major UN reform is unlikely to happen anytime soon. In front of this backdrop the paper discusses proposals to recover the UN system and significantly improve the performance of the international system through a strengthening of the role of local and regional governments. It discusses recent proposals for visions and strategies that bring the UN system closer to the people in favour of integrated and sustainable planning. Authors of proposals discussed include the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Governments, UCLG, ICLEI and the United Nations.