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Photo source: Brown University

UN Habitat, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and LSE Cities at the London School of Economics invite you to contribute to a study on ‘Governing Urban Futures’ by taking part in a short [20 min] online survey that will cover the following thematic areas: Political power, budget & financing, multi-level governance, participation & accountability, continuity & strategic planning.

The survey and its underlying research have three main objectives and related findings will hopefully also be of value to cities governments:

1. Address the urban governance ‘data challenge’, i.e. deal with the problem that regardless of constantly increasing information on urban governance in individual cities, we continue to have very limited knowledge on the wide spectrum of different urban governance arrangements.

2. Establish a platform for individual cities to identify international urban governance cases that are of particular relevance to their own specific situations. This would potentially allow for a more fruitful exchange of good practice.

3. Explore new and innovative ways for communicating and mapping urban governance for public dissemination, comparative policy and research analysis.

The success of this study depends on the level of participation of local governments in different countries and global regions. Its impact will certainly profit from the current global momentum related to urban governance related questions. The United Nations are currently debating the future priorities for the post-2015 world development agenda, as the world becomes increasingly urbanised, the urban agenda and urban governance are central issues in these discussions.
Initial results of this survey will inform the 2014 Urban Age Conference in Delhi, following the METROPOLIS Congress in Hyderabad "Cities for All". The event will bring together a wide range of policy makers, academics and city experts to discuss the role of urban governance in shaping the future development of cities. In addition, the survey results will act as a backdrop for UCLG’s 4th Global Report on Decentralisation and Local Democracy (GOLD IV), a publication that examines the situation of local governments around the world.
Cities responses and the information on your city will be included in this analysis and, given the tight timeline to contribute to the debates and research efforts above, cities should respond to the survey by Friday, 29 August.
Please find a PDF version of the survey attached.

We encourage cities to use this to familiarise themselves with the questions, and then use the link below to respond to the survey (the online version cannot be saved, so it is advisable to prepare all the answers first and then enter them online).

Find here the Urban Governance Survey: http://surveymonkey.com/s/urbangovernance
For any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact : m.lee13@lse.ac.uk or phone +44 (0)20 71075521.