Habitat III is the 3rd conference of the United Nations for housing and sustainable urban development. It happens every 20 years and the next one will be in Quito, Ecuador, on the 17th to 20th of October, 2016. In this event, representatives of UN member states and stakeholders will come together to discuss and finish the final version of a document called the “New Urban Agenda” which will contain a series of principles and guidelines towards more sustainable cities.

The Habitat conferences take place every 20 years, which means that the last one was held in 1996, in Istanbul (Habitat II). At that time, the majority of the world’s population was not yet living in cities - unlike the reality that we face today - and the challenges were different. During the past 20 years, a few things have happened due to the Habitat process.

Just to get the big picture, Habitat II had as its main demand in its Declaration of Istanbul the “right to adequate housing for all”. Since then, more than 100 nations adopted this right in their constitutions. Moreover, the Habitat II declaration significantly influenced the agenda of the Millennium Goals and, more recently, the Sustainable Development Goal #11: “Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”.

Therefore, although the New Urban Agenda discussed for Habitat III has no direct commitment - unlike the Paris Climate Agreement from COP21 - it is possible to observe the influence that this process can have in the way cities will be shaped and planned from now on. Furthermore, the New Urban Agenda will be fundamental to give us arguments to take to our municipal, state and federal governments about the course that our cities should take.

To get an idea of what we are working with, transport was not mentioned in the Declaration of Vancouver in Habitat I and was mentioned only once in the Declaration of Istanbul at Habitat II, and “cycling” and “walking” were mentioned in passing in the Action Plans of both events.

Today we have a very different reality, with different and bigger obstacles to overcome, which require more radical changes, especially when we see how much space was taken from people and given to motorised vehicles in the past decades. While the transportation sector has become a much stronger network now than it was 20 years ago, active mobility still has a lot to achieve on the global level.. Therefore, Habitat III can be the perfect moment to:

1. Build and strengthen a global movement in favor of active mobility, joining stakeholders at the local and regional level from all around the world to work together on global and regional policies;

2. Guarantee the adequate presence of cycling and active mobility in general in the New Urban Agenda towards accessible cities for all.