Harnessing Public-Private Cooperation to Deliver the New Urban Agenda

The document outlines a strategic framework for harnessing public-private cooperation to deliver the New Urban Agenda, emphasizing that the private sector's involvement is critical across the entire urban value chain to overcome municipal budget deficits and drive innovation. It provides specific recommendations for public-sector actions, such as adopting life-cycle approaches and empowering city leadership, and private-sector actions, including proactive engagement and community collaboration. The text stresses that success depends on mutual trust, the inclusion of civil society, and the leveraging of disruptive technologies to create resilient, inclusive, and sustainable cities.

• The New Urban Agenda is a global strategy for the next two decades focused on three guiding principles: eradicating poverty and ensuring urban equity, achieving inclusive urban prosperity, and fostering ecological and resilient cities.
• Private-sector participation is necessary across all stages of the urban value chain—including policy-making, planning, design, implementation, operation, maintenance, monitoring, and financing—because the public sector can no longer deliver urban infrastructure and services in isolation.
• Public-private cooperation helps the public sector address municipal budget deficits, maintain project pipelines, secure private capital, and introduce innovative, human-centred urban design and efficiency.
• To attract private investment, the public sector must provide political stability, transparent legal and regulatory frameworks, and a reliable dispute-resolution mechanism, as infrastructure projects often span multiple political administrations.
• The document recommends decentralizing urban development by devolving resources and revenue-raising powers to city leadership, applying the Subsidiarity Principle to enhance contributions to the national economy.
• Addressing the global housing crisis requires public-private cooperation to accommodate an estimated 1.5 billion additional people in affordable housing by 2025 by leveraging new business models and technologies.
• Sustainable urban transformation requires an integrated approach that includes the active involvement of civil society as facilitators and innovators, and the use of disruptive technologies to create actionable intelligence from city data.

APA

World Economic Forum (2016). Harnessing Public-Private Cooperation to Deliver the New Urban Agenda. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Harnessing_Public_Private_Cooperation_to_Deliver_New_Urban_Agenda.pdf?ET_CID=1131797&ET_RID=001b0000002mW7rAAE

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Harnessing Public-Private Cooperation to Deliver the New Urban Agenda. 2016. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Harnessing_Public_Private_Cooperation_to_Deliver_New_Urban_Agenda.pdf?ET_CID=1131797&ET_RID=001b0000002mW7rAAE.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Harnessing Public-Private Cooperation to Deliver the New Urban Agenda |date=October 2016 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Harnessing_Public_Private_Cooperation_to_Deliver_New_Urban_Agenda.pdf?ET_CID=1131797&ET_RID=001b0000002mW7rAAE |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2016harnessing, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Harnessing Public-Private Cooperation to Deliver the New Urban Agenda}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2016}, month = oct, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Harnessing_Public_Private_Cooperation_to_Deliver_New_Urban_Agenda.pdf?ET_CID=1131797&ET_RID=001b0000002mW7rAAE}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }