In partnership with The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)
In collaboration with The Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Initiative (CSCI)
Introduction and background
This dialogue, organised by Wilton Park and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in collaboration with the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Initiative (CSCI)1, was held in April 2025. It brought together a diverse group of stakeholders from across the Commonwealth – including representatives from national and municipal governments, urban planners, academics, NGOs, and a range of subject matter experts – to discuss shared challenges and solutions around sustainable urbanisation.
This followed the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda in 2022, during which Heads of Government adopted the Declaration on Sustainable Urbanisation.
The Declaration recognised that rapid urbanisation will have important consequences for national economies, and that cities are where many of the solutions to climate change will be realised; but that rapid urbanisation poses significant challenges to the continued provision of municipal services, access to land, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. It called for sharing of knowledge and experience, including through Commonwealth dialogue.
The Declaration highlighted shared aspirations for all Commonwealth urban areas, including the need for integrated planning; the adoption of low- or zero-carbon development; sustainable land management; provision of basic services to all, including transport and clean water; and availability of municipal finance.
This dialogue’s key objective was to test the appetite for a multi-level, multi-disciplinary, and multi-sector coalition across Commonwealth countries that would be willing to engage around these shared aspirations. The dialogue also focused on how such a coalition might be designed, the principles that would underpin it, and how it might be operationalised.
The event began by setting the context – rapid, unplanned urbanisation in Commonwealth countries – before discussing key sectoral challenges and concluding by exploring the proposal for a coalition as a mechanism to address these challenges.
Footnotes
- The CSCI is a collaboration between the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA), the Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP), the Commonwealth Engineers Council (CEC) and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF), working in collaboration with the Government of Rwanda and The King’s Foundation. ↩︎