Editorial

摘要

Today, Asia is under the magnified impacts of urbanization—the challenges are increasing at an unprecedented scale and are intensified by the ongoing convergence of urbanization with other high-impact processes including climate change. It is therefore crucial to identify key urban and environmental challenges to focus on, as well as define, the measures and approaches to be taken to tackle them. The New Urban Agenda shall put in place the economic, social, political, institutional and environmental mechanisms to be adopted by nations and stakeholders in order to address these issues. The ‘Habitat III' global summit, slated for October 2016，formally known as the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, the third in a series that began in 1976, will endeavour to 'rein-vigorate' the global political commitment to the sustainable development of towns, cities and other human settlements, both rural and urban. The product of that reinvigoration, along with pledges and new obligations, is being referred to as the New Urban Agenda, which is expected to set a new global strategy around urbanization for the next two decades.