The U.N.‘s New Urban Agen­da is posi­tioned as a play­book for imple­men­ta­tion of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goal 11: Sus­tain­able Cities and Com­mu­ni­ties. It has the poten­tial to ele­vate the pro­file of urban plan­ning in many coun­tries and to spread the so-called rein­ven­tion of urban plan­ning as inclu­sive, bot­tom-up, and inte­gra­tive. Yet the New Urban Agen­da has clear roots in a gov­ern­ment-cen­tered, mod­ernist prac­tice of plan­ning that has been dis­cred­it­ed by plan­ning the­o­rists in recent decades, and any glob­al tem­plate for plan­ning runs the risk of tone-deaf­ness to the unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of indi­vid­ual coun­tries.

“Plan­ners and the New Urban Agen­da: Will we lead the agen­da, or will the agen­da lead us?” an arti­cle just pub­lished (open access for a short time) in Town Plan­ning Review, exam­ines the ori­gins and devel­op­ment of the New Urban Agen­da, exam­ines its plan­ning com­po­nents, assess­es its chal­lenges, and rec­om­mends strate­gies for max­i­miz­ing out­comes that empha­size broad stake­hold­er engage­ment, cross-sec­toral plan­ning inte­gra­tion, and nation­al and sub-nation­al choice in the design of plan­ning process­es and solu­tions. Crit­i­cal­ly, the arti­cle con­sid­ers the demands of cor­po­rate pow­er, the new region­al­ism, and grow­ing the­o­riz­ing in the Glob­al South, as con­tests to dom­i­nant plan­ning par­a­digms of the 20th cen­tu­ry that demand respons­es if plan­ning is to ful­fill the needs of today’s cities and regions.

I urge plan­ning agen­cies, firms, asso­ci­a­tions, and indi­vid­ual plan­ners to seize the momen­tum cre­at­ed by the New Urban Agen­da to take bold steps to pro­mote new plan­ning pro­grams and to rein­vig­o­rate and redi­rect exist­ing pro­grams. We need a sub­stan­tial increase in glob­al plan­ning capac­i­ty, broad­en­ing of the engage­ment of the full range of stake­hold­ers in plan­ning process­es, recog­ni­tion that planned action involves far more than plan mak­ing, and most impor­tant­ly, com­mit­ment that plan­ning must be local­ly or nation­al­ly deter­mined while informed by inter­na­tion­al expe­ri­ence.

This is a piv­otal moment in glob­al urban devel­op­ment. Rapid urban­iza­tion, cli­mate change, and eco­nom­ic restruc­tur­ing are pres­sur­ing envi­ron­men­tal, social, and fis­cal resources near break­ing points. Inter­na­tion­al shar­ing of plan­ning ideas, tools and meth­ods is crit­i­cal to suc­cess, but to work well must be done with respect for polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al con­texts. The New Urban Agen­da, endorsed with­out dis­sent by the Unit­ed Nations mem­ber states, pro­vides a pow­er­ful frame­work for the need­ed con­text-sen­si­tive, pro­fes­sion­al­ly-informed pol­i­cy mak­ing and design.

“Plan­ners and the New Urban Agen­da: will we lead the agen­da, or will the agen­da lead us?” Town Plan­ning Review 92 (4): 421–441, is avail­able in open access for a short pro­mo­tion­al peri­od from Liv­er­pool Uni­ver­si­ty Press.