The new urban agenda proposed during the UN Third Habitat Preparatory Meeting (PrepCom3) currently being held in Surabaya, East Java, requires cities to have better planning in order to view urbanization as a development tool instead of a problem.

The UN Habitat III’s secretary-general, Joan Clos, said during a press briefing on Monday that the new urban agenda proposed by UN member countries during the meeting, held from Monday to Wednesday, was to take action to improve urbanization.

Clos said the proposal was made in regard to the need to strengthen urban planning design, the quality of which had deteriorated over the past 20 years and needed to be fully reinstated to guarantee good and quality urbanization.

“Urbanization is a political and human community process that requires design. If it is not planned, it will generate lots of difficulties that inter...