In 2019, as part of Afghanistan Urban Safety and Security Programme (AUSSP) the first Public Space Safety Audit was undertaken in the country to enable better consideration of safety and security issues through more evidence-based policy planning and implementations. The Audit was done to understand gaps in distribution, quality, safety, accessibility, inclusivity of public spaces, to celebrate and support ongoing initiatives and programmes of the National Government and UN-Habitat.

Nairobi’s Public Open Space ecosystem is a complex tapestry of natural and environmental contrasts. It includes diverse typologies such as urban forests, cemeteries, parks and gardens, squares and courtyards among others. Overall, there are 826 public open spaces in the city county, covering a combined area of 3106.4Ha. This is equiva¬lent to 5.32 percent of the built-up area and translates to 6.56 square metres per capita public open space.

The UN Secretary-General has launched the UN Comprehensive Response to COVID-19 to save lives, protect societies, recover better. As part of the response, the UN Secretary-General is issuing policy briefs to provide ideas to governments on how to address the consequences of this crisis and COVID-19 in an urban world is part of this series .

This document is addressed primarily to policy makers and stakeholders involved in formulating, implementing, monitoring and evaluating National Urban Policy (NUP) and public and private actors undertaking public space activities. It offers guidance on how national policies for urbanization should address public space and strengthen involvement of different stakeholders in that effort

The purpose of this document is to guide cities when conducting a city-wide public space assessment. It illustrates the steps that should be followed within the process to ensure that the public space assessment meets the objectives of the city. By applying this tool, cities are able to understand the state of their public spaces, specifically the network, distribution, accessibility, quantity and quality of their public spaces.

The Site-specific Assessment consists of a series of activities and tools to understand the quality of public spaces and influence, through a participatory process, the design of the site. The assessment focuses on a selected open public space and its five minutes walking radius (equivalent to 400-meter distance) referred in the document as the ‘walkable radius’. The guideline supports the user on how to gather the right data and what information is needed within the selected area in order to…

Local authorities have played a major role to curtail COVID-19, particularly in vulnerable urban settings, while maintaining critical services.
To identify problems and suggest solutions, UN-Habitat assessed 34 Unions of Municipalities and 5 individual municipalities, covering 52 per cent of Lebanese municipalities. The report highlights key urban challenges and proposes several mitigating measures.

This Placemaking toolkit is based on the experience of UN-Habitat Palestine and its partners, mainly Ministry of Local Government in designing and implementing placemaking interventions in 11 Palestinian communities under the framework of the Spatial Planning Support Programme for Area C, West Bank.

A city-wide public space strategy can deliver a well-distributed, accessible and inclusive public space system. City-Wide Public Space Strategies: a Compendium of Inspiring Practices offers three guides in one: a process-based guide with 12 steps for developing a strategy; an output-based guide with 13 essential ingredients for a strategy; and an outcome-based guide with six important norms that every strategy should adopt.