How the role of small Cities, as envisaged by the New Urban Agenda, can be realised?

Nagrika was founded to help narrow the gap between the perceived understanding about small cities development and the actual development paradigm that is taking place in the small cities. At a macro level, it aims to bring small cities to the mainstream of urban development discourse, contextualize the problems that small cities face and develop context specific solutions for them. At the micro-level, it is developing knowledge as well as project based solutions on specific issues facing small cities such as governance, housing, economic development and others. Though NUA doesn't significantly distinguish between big cities and small cities, it talks of 'cooperation and mutual support among different scales of cities and human settlements' including small cities. NUA also envisages an important role for these cities as a vital link between urban and rural areas. In context of this small yet extremely significant articulation about small cities in the NUA, our event will share insights from our work on knowledge, decision-making and capacity 'from' and 'for' small cities. Nagrika had made a commitment at the Habitat III summit in Ecuador last year. As per this commitment, we are creating knowledge 'from' and 'for' the small cities and making it accessible to variety of stakeholders for decision-making and capacity building. At the event, we will share how this work on 'knowledge, decision-making and capacity building' is useful for better coordination and planning between various cities and various actors and institutions