PrepCity II Report

This workshop was the second session of the Metropolis Taskforce PrepCity led by the city of Berlin. The goal of this taskforce was to support reflection on the implementation in metropolitan cities and regions of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and the process of developing the New Urban Agenda. The workshop was intended to give participants extended scope for exploring the practical experience of local governments. There were four key questions addressed at the Mexico City PrepCity Forum: 1. What expectations do cities have of the New Urban Agenda? 2. What are the most important challenges arising from the Sustainable Development Goals for your city? 3. Where do you stand today in relation to these challenges and what do you want to have achieved by 2030? 4. How are you proceeding in order to ensure that you can achieve your goals by 2030? These questions were set against the intention to develop a Metropolis position on Habitat III that would form the basis of the Berlin meetings. Intended outcomes included firstly a submission to the overall Habitat III process, and secondly a way of translating the goals and targets of both the SDS and Habitat III into a clear set of activities for cities. As part of this process a set of principles had been drafted for PrepCity I (in Buenos Aires in May 2015), called ‘Principles for Better Cities’ (see Appendix). These were circulated to participants in PrepCity II in Mexico City seeking feedback on both on the terms of the principles themselves and how we might proceed with operationalizing those principles beyond the Mexico City Forum.