GEO for Cities First Order Draft
The authors started drafting the report after the first authors' meeting in Canada (October 2019). From October 2019 to February 2020, the secretariat helped organize weekly calls to follow up on the updates to the draft. The Co-chairs were fully involved in discussions to ensure the draft was moving in the right direction. By January 2020, all the chapters had delivered their draft document for discussion in the Abu Dhabi meeting of February 2020.
GEO for Cities First Round Peer Review Process
The first order draft of the GEO for Cities report was delivered to the secretariat following the agreed timeline from the Abu Dhabi authors meeting (February 2020). Although some chapters were not as developed as other chapters given the COVID-19 crisis, the whole group agreed to start the review process as planned and put a notification in the draft to explain the absence of some chapters to the reviewers. The official review period started from 17th March to 17th April.
The review process received a lot of positive responses from external experts. The secretariat received over 4000 comments from around 200 expert reviewers. All the comments were divided into different chapters and shared with co-chairs to have an advanced review. There were several comments related to COVID-19 and cities, which were quite reasonable and related to the current Covid situation.
GEO for Cities second order draft
After receiving comments from reviewers in April, authors in each chapter started reviewing the comments and making plans for addressing comments. Chapter calls were organized by the secretariat to catch up with each team. Since the chapters were developed in different stages in the first draft, each group had different proposals to move things forward. It was agreed that the second-order draft should include an introductory chapter and graphics to make the report more complete for the second review. The virtual authors' meeting was planned to be separate chapter calls during 1-5 June.
In September, the authors delivered an updated version with an introductory chapter to the secretariat. The Co-chairs read through the whole document and provided comments to ensure the chapters are coherent with each other. The updated information was presented to the Advisory Committee via teleconference. In the meantime, a GEO for Cities event was organized by Daring Cities 2020 via the virtual platform in October.
GEO for Cities Second review process
The second-order draft was delivered to the secretariat in November 2020. The Co-chairs worked on creating a clear and coherent narrative, adapting the text to a nontechnical city decision-maker audience and non-native English speakers. The second review period lasted one month from 12 November to 13 December.
GEO for Cities Final Stage
By March 2021, all the comments from the second review period had been addressed. Most reviewers agreed that the second-order draft made a big improvement from the previous draft. The Co-chairs worked on the co-chair's message and the secretariat prepared the essential information in readiness for publication. In June 2021, the Advisory Committee, UN-Habitat and the cities team within UNEP finished their final readthrough and provided high-level comments. The final draft was reviewed and approved by the authors at the end of July. The layout and production process started in August and the report was launched in November 2021.
