 We want to thank Irish Aid for their support for this speaker series and in that regard I'd like to introduce to make some opening remarks Ruth Parkins in the multilateral division of Irish Aid. Ruth will just give some opening remarks before I introduce Dr Klaus. Thank you Ruth. It's very lovely to be here today and to see so many people here for such an important discussion. Dr Klaus has led the UN Habitat Agency since October 2010 and engaged on issues critical sustainable development as more and more of the world's population moves into urban environments. His background is a medical doctor, former Spanish Minister for Industry, Tourism and Trade and twice Mayor of Barcelona. I think means that he's lived the challenge of ensuring that urban development is sustainable and delivers social improvement for residents of cities. In his distinguished career he's also served as the Spanish ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan and his work in Barcelona for the municipal government included a number of areas including as director of public health and municipal management for urban renewal projects and he was key in preparations in advance of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. I have to admit that my seven-year-old son is incredibly jealous today because I may be in the presence of someone who may have been in the presence of Messi. Just this morning I by chance picked up this month's Scientific American magazine and it has an article on how cities can save us in every respect and I thought how pertinent was for me to be here today to hear just how we can plan for the cities not only in the developed world to be made better living spaces reducing pressure pressures and resources but how city planning can actively support development. How we plan and develop our cities is critical to sustainability and I think all of us who've lived in Dublin over the past three years have experienced that in the Lewis works that have happened and the changes to life and what we've had to put up with but we know it's worth the wait. Our development focus from Ireland remains on Africa and particularly on the least developed lowest income and most fragile regions. In the coming decades which will be is the era of the SDGs these areas will see huge demographic change placing even more need on sustainable and inclusive economic growth which will in its as a part of its nature drive further urbanization. Harnessing the demographic dividend is a major challenge for the 2030 agenda and while we will continue to work on areas of strength including rural and agricultural development we recognize as this will only work in balance with sustainable urban development. SDG 11 on sustainable cities and communities is bringing a new spotlight to UN habitats work and so it's my very great pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Klaus to hear more about rethinking the way that we build manage and live in cities contributing to prosperity employment and development and how we can plan for cities to address many of our problems today. UN habitat is the program of the United Nations about urbanization and it has existed for 40 years and it has celebrated a conference a worldwide conference about urbanization every 20 years and now we are in the third we have finished just the third of such occasions the first conference was in 76 in Vancouver it came just three years after the 73 Stockholm meeting about environment and it was the creation of the program the first secretary general of the conference was person from India and the underlying message of the first of the outcome of the first conference was how good would be for the world to keep the people in the rural areas that was in parallel with the green revolution in India and the idea for the betterment of the population in the world would be to provide urban services to the rural population this was the aspiration in the 76 then the second conference was in 96 in Istanbul a different city as you can imagine from Vancouver it was in Istanbul and in this in those 20 years the total urban population of the world grew something like nearly two million two billion people then the aspiration of the first conference of keeping people in the rural areas was not fulfilled in fact in 76 it was a huge chalk to see that the process of urbanization in the world was speeding up in an unprecedented rates we need to remember that the end of the cold war was in 89 then the conference just took six or seven years after the very important political worldwide political effects of the fall of the Berlin wall and then of the cold of the cold war the growth of democracy in many different parts of the world and also the growth of globalization and the the the decision of China to move to to the current model of state capitalism or whatever you we like to to name it and at that moment the approach to urbanization in 96 was okay let's democratize urbanization let's manage urbanization in a participatory manner in order that we don't know why your organization in fact is happening but provisionally let's accept that the important thing is that we engage in a democratization process of local authorities urban management participatory engagement of the population etc it was also after porto alegre budgetary particip participatory budget you remember that and well what's the the the question of the time then the third conference habitatrix has been celebrated now this last year in keto and what has happened in the last 20 years is that urbanization has grown even faster then urbanization is not just growing it's accelerating which is a very interesting it's a very peculiar phenomenon at around the year 2000 the world population passed the tipping point of 50 percent of the total population of the planet now we are already officially at 56 57 and study satellite studies of different methodology say the reality of urban life in planet earth is not 55 is more near to 60 62 63 percent uh then for therefore urban life has became the new normal for for the urban for the world population and with globalization international of internationalization of trade uh you know the triumph of of the digital economy and all that uh i i i i i a bunch adventure to say that what has totally been a total success is the urban way of life the urban way of life is the new normal for the total urban population global population even if they live in rural areas then what has changed is that the concepts or the aspects of the urban life are now spread in society as as never before uh well this is on on the facts and figures of organization but when we analyze the quality of organization quite a number of problems emerge in many parts of the world the chinese case of organization is the numbers are impressive never in you now the total urban population of the world it's uh 3.5 billion 3.4 then china has contributed in the last china alone has contributed in the last 30 something years with more than 600 million and now we have india uh india who has president modig has presented a platform to build 200 cities of 2 million each in the next four years and then and china has promised to urbanize duly or properly urbanized 350 million more people and regularizing some of the people who lives in not very good conditions in the current cities plus an additional organization of the rural areas of china that means that if we add that only the chinese and indian experience the world urban population is going to grow more than 1 billion people uh in in the next 10 12 years that means that the process of urbanization at planetary level it's okay this is the first thing that the new urban agenda has established in kito the urbanization process is still accelerating second uh the urban process presents an uh climate change challenge because when a person moves from the rural area to the urban area the increase of energy consumption is a tenfold increase then the immediate urbanization of billions of people it's going to uh imply a risk of increase of energy consumption at a higher planetary uh the very high planetary level therefore in terms of climate change if we want to change the matrix of energy moving from uh fossil to renewable energy we need to speed up this transformation in the way that organization is happening okay and that's another big uh thing that was not even present in 96 although it was a awareness about the environmental issues what it was not clear in 96 in habitat too was this pressing need to do something uh on on on on specifically in relation to urbanization urbanization i officially now as i said is in 55 66 56 of the total population but it generates already today 70 of the greenhouse gas emissions in the planet uh then therefore there's a new question that should be put in the table as its climate change the third question that is new in the new urban agenda the role of the state in the outcomes of urbanization there's a political and let's say professional tradition of urbanization analysis which tends to not properly consider the role of the state as a determinant of the urban outcomes in fact and i've been a mayor in fact is that the narrative epical narrative of the mayors is that the mayors are the ones who rule the wall there's a book about that there's a mayor's who and the future is for the mayor's etc there's a lot of romantic uh approach to the to the but uh this very interesting statement which i can subscribe needs to be compensated by the fact that the central government or the state establish the rules of the game of urbanization urban legislation distribution of power between the different administrations fiscal policy all that is established at national level and therefore the outcomes of urbanization cannot be uh ignored or the responsibilities of the outcomes of uh organization can be placed also on the hands of the state huh i i you know in so many occasions i have the opportunity to talk with presidents in developing countries and different parts of the world and usually when you inquiry well what is the state how do you feel about the quality of your organization well usually they say oh it's a mess it's a problem we have a lot of difficulties and and why why why do you think that why that happens and usually the answer is oh we are we have our local politicians they are not very good they are not trained they don't have the skills uh uh but nearly never i have seen the central government saying no the problem is that our legislation about urban is about local authorities is it doesn't work there's a second way why the central government it's very relevant in terms of local outputs and this is that the central government in the modern state is a direct provider of services to the people and this is let's say recent in human history but the modern state especially in the last hundred and fifty years has changed its nature and the modern state has became a service provider education it depends on the country but education health security pensions uh public housing uh it depends on every the arrangements of every country then uh if the central government is a direct service provider to the people then it has a role in the quality of life of the people which cannot be ignored then more than ever the quality of the urban outcomes is the outcome of the interrelationship of the different levels of government in every place you cannot isolate you can have a magnificent urban plan but if the safety policy which is in the hands of the state or the security policy which is a it's a mess and you are robbed every moment in the street you don't have a good city just to put an example of this new very important relationship between the the national policy and the urban outcomes the urban outcomes they are an emerging condition of the interrelationship of the all public administrations that intervene in the life of the people there's a third paradigm that has been introduced by the new urban agenda and is the contribution of urbanization to development to wealth to value to money which was not present neither in the 96 agenda or in the 76 agenda this is a new concern urbanization it's a process to generate value and and this is also new in the conversation about urbanization although it's very clear that urbanization is related to prosperity because no country has become prosperous without being organized what is not clear is why or how or through which means urbanization contributes to development and another question of debate is what can i do something on my organization in order to optimize its capacity to generate value that's another very interesting question and this is the third frame of thinking that the new urban agenda is proposing of course the answer to the question is yes urbanization generates a lot of value a lot if you are not sure about that ask only your finance minister and and and ask him or her where he or she collects the taxes and and you know you will find that he or she knows very well the capacity of urbanization to generate value the question is that this capacity usually is not much talked about because that can complicate the redistribution policy of the of the government but this consideration of this relationship between urbanization and development it's crucial especially in development and in developing countries because developing developing countries they need development and therefore if they are having a spontaneous organization they have the opportunity to manage urbanization as a tool for development adding to the rest of the development policies and the lack of doing so is a waste of time waste of resources and is a lost opportunity that it's important also because this approach to urbanization helps to change the approach from politicians and decision makers that then to analyze urbanization from the needs of the population point of view and this new approach puts a new emphasis on the outcomes of urbanization not the needs of the population what are the outcomes of urbanization can how can we optimize in a needy country the outcomes of urbanization okay this is the third change of paradigm and the fourth change issue is local implementation we we have plenty of theories we talk about agendas and we talk about you know very nice declarations you know prosperity for all well-being for all happiness for all but then we need local implementation because if the things are not implemented then they they don't exist therefore the fourth question is that what are the strategies for achieving local implementation of all these preconditions or considerations and these four elements constitute the frame of the new urban agenda in order to advocate and to propose member states and decision makers both the national intermediary and local level strategies of action in order to improve the outcomes of their urbanization in that sense is a is an optimistic agenda although the realities of urbanization they are very complex and there's a huge immense job to be done if we want to tackle these questions of climate change prosperity etc but this optimistic approach to urbanization allows for to induce a conversation that pretends to be effective pretends to help to change the way that urbanization is considered in many countries and to just to finish a few words about the developed world cities because we are in Dublin and I think that if I don't talk a little bit about the specificities of the developed world cities we can be lost in the global analysis the developed world cities they have a different well a peculiar not a different it has it has some specialization some speciality first in the developed world city there's a difference from the developing world city and it's the demographic profile the demographic profile of the developed city it's totally new in terms of urbanization because we have an aging population the mean age of a city like Dublin I am sure that is on the vicinity of 43 years 45 43 42 Nairobi is 18 years old 18 years old the mean age of Nairobi population then age in population is an issue in the developed world that requires some attention and which is which is going to affect the urban form in the future well second climate change the emission of greenhouse gas emissions is much higher in the developed world that in the developing world then this is initially a developed world problem by now because our rate of consumption of energy is not stopping even during the financial crisis of 2008 I repeat even in the 2000 in the financial classes of 2008 we have not reduced the emission of greenhouse gases in a relevant manner that means that the dependency that of our urban model to fossil energy it's very high too high and we need to intervene with different and more robust means that the developing world cities of course they have problems that they have they if they don't take some measures they risk to behave like us but by the by now the problem is in our hands and it's very important that the the developed world understands that the current model of urbanization in the west is not sustainable in terms of the fossil fuel energy consumption the third question is the increase of inequalities on the developed world cities in the developed world cities through globalization I don't know we can there's a lot of explanations that justify this reality but in the west or in the developed world we what we are seeing is that the city is increasing in inequalities and that we see new forms of segregation we need to take stock and address some question new questions like immigration etc which adds to these challenges and related to these inequalities there's another question also which is very relevant now in the developed world city which is an affordability the middle class it's it has difficulties to access to the let's say quality part of the city at affordable prices and and those are challenges to the west way of urbanization that needs to be addressed