Implementation of National Urban Policy(NUP) with smart city strategies: country experiences and innovative demonstration projects

The event aims to share knowledge and experience of the Korea National Urban Policy Programme(NUPP) through National Urban Policy(NUP) experiences with smart city strategies(SCS) and demonstration projects. It is also to support peer learning between the three project countries(I.R. Iran, Myanmar and Niger State - Nigeria), the Government of the Republic of Korea, and most importantly, government officials, international partners, policy makers, and practitioners who can benefit from the lessons and inform valuable experiences. The Republic of Korea has been a longstanding partner of the NUP process in various regional contexts of different thematic and stages of development. In 2017, Korea NUPP was launched and the development of NUPs and Smart City Strategies in three Selected Countries supported by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Republic of Korea(MoLIT), along with cross-learning and capacity development components, has been a successful venture. Building on previous experiences and responding to the growing demand from member states and partners, the event will present the lessons on the progress undertaken in each county and learn from inspiring practices. This programme seeks to contribute to a larger response to urbanization and its emerging challenges(demographic, environment, health, and sanitation systems, infrastructure systems, economic, spatial and social trends) while also consolidating and sharing knowledge on urban policy. These include enhancing capacity in the areas of smart and green urban development, providing targeted technical and advisory services to member states, and reinforcing and establish partnerships while improving advocacy for NUP. There has been significant progress both at the global level and at the country level. The three pilot countries are also implementing demonstration projects as entry points in the implementation of NUP and SCS and responding to the prioritised actions. The first 3 projects implemented in 2020 in each country was successful in addressing and supporting the member states in the much-needed COVID-19 response. In its second phase, there will be 5 demonstration projects aligned with each of the country's NUP and SCS. The knowledge and experience accumulated in this programme so far can be of sufficient support to stakeholders from around the world when formulating and implementing NUP towards sustainable urbanization. The smart city strategy enables the three countries to adopt smart city approaches that make use of opportunities from sustainable and inclusive urban planning, smart governance, digitalization, clean energy and technologies, and infrastructure for all. In particular, the unique strength of this programme is that a series of tangible demonstration projects are designed and being implemented to address the policy interventions identified during the policy formulation.