South Africa is engaging fully with the New Urban Agenda, and posing some fundamental questions about what it means to be a planner in today's world.

The ninth World Urban Forum opens on 7 February 2018, and I am here in Kuala Lumpur and will be reporting on it on this website and on other social media.

Following the World Urban Forum in Barcelona in 2004, I was invited to write a short article for the UN-Habitat publication Habitat Debate. Many of the themes I introduced have now been taken forward in the International Guidelines for Urban and Territorial Planning (2015) and in the New Urban Agenda (2016).

A major project to compare urban practices in 14 cities will be led by a team based in Glasgow University in Scotland.

I gave the Cockburn Association annual lecture in Edinburgh on 27 October 2016. I have now written it up and you can read it.

The Habitat 3 conference in Quito this month is a critical opportunity to shape the practice of planning globally.

The zero draft of the New Urban Agenda, the declaration that the governments of the world will sign up to in October 2016, gives a prominent role to more proactive and inclusive urban and regional planning.