Sustainable for whom? The urban millennium and challenges for redefining the global development planning agenda-super-1

One of the aims of City is to combine an analysis of trends, policy and action. In this issue, we introduce a new feature in City , a column titled 'Forum’, which aims to present commentary on current global urban policies and, in the process, engages with practitioners and policymakers who are responsible for setting much of the global urban development agenda. We would like this section to focus on major global policy developments, milestones and recent thinking relating to urbanisation and the challenges faced by cities. In 1996, at the time of the second UN Conference on Human Settlements in Istanbul, City carried a thought‐provoking interview with Nicholas You of UN‐HABITAT (then known as UNCHS), on the Habitat Agenda and the future of the urban world (Habitat II in focus. 'Towards a habitable future: an interview with Nicholas You’, City, 1996, 1(3--4), pp. 83--110). Ten years down the road, we requested him to make the first contribution to 'Forum’ and share his reflections on the relevance of the Habitat Agenda goals in today’s rapidly urbanising, culturally and socially complex, conflict‐ridden world. He provides us with a practitioner’s perspective on the challenges faced by cities today, and points out the achievements as well as the failures of the international community, national and local governments, in living up to the promises they made to cities and city‐dwellers. Shipra Narang Forum Editor