OECD Principles on Urban Policy

Shaping more resilient, sustainable and inclusive cities requires effective urban policy. The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly affected the health, lives and work of urban dwellers, magnifying many persistent urban challenges such as inequality and environmental issues in cities. Cities are entering another unprecedented global crisis whose magnitude remains largely unknown. Russia’s large-scale aggression against Ukraine has thrown global recovery into doubt. In these times of radical uncertainty, it is more important than ever to leverage the transformative power of cities to keep recovery on track and build longer-term resilience against a myriad of complex, interlinked shocks. 

Co-developed with a diverse range of stakeholders, the OECD Principles on Urban Policy guide policymakers through the application of more than 20 years of OECD work on urban policy. 

The Principles were welcomed by Mayors and Ministers during the 7th OECD Roundtable of Mayors and Ministers on 19 March 2019 in Athens, Greece. Mayors, Ministers and partner institutions committed to supporting the implementation of the Principles through the Athens Pledge.

The Implementation Toolkit of the OECD Principles of Urban Policy aims to support cities, regions and countries in their efforts to use the Principles as a driver of policy reform in diverse urban policy contexts, through the:

• Self-assessment framework: providing governments with a user-friendly four-step guide and a series of guiding questions and indicators to assess the state of play of their urban policy frameworks (“what”), operational mechanisms (“how”) as well as the results; and

• Policy database: offering a selection of 60+ leading examples around the globe on how national and subnational governments are using the OECD Principles on Urban Policy on the ground to reshape their urban policy.