In early February 2018, representatives of the world’s countries and cities will gather in Kuala Lumpur for the Ninth Session of the World Urban Forum (WUF9). Co-hosted by UN-Habitat and the government of Malaysia, this year’s session will focus on how to implement the New Urban Agenda.

As the world’s largest financier on urban development, the World Bank will focus on what it considers the three key issues for implementing the New Urban Agenda.

The first is financing. As World Bank Senior Director Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez explains, $4.5 to $5.4 trillion is needed to finance the global urban infrastructure gap, but only 3 per cent of this amount is available through official development assistance. This means that the global community will have to help cities find new ways to access financing for their urban infrastructure needs, such as enabling cities to enhance their creditworthiness and access capital markets.

The second priority is promoting territorial and spatial development, as this helps us understand cities “not only as individual entities, but also the connectivity between them that allows faster economic growth and links people to better jobs”. 

Third, the World Bank calls for enhancing urban resilience in the face of climate change to prevent vulnerable urban residents from being pushed into poverty, while at the same time allowing cities to exercise their full economic potential and growth in the fight against climate change.