Fragile states typically cannot serve their citizens adequately, and often have weak or authoritarian governments. But local governments and municipalities must still provide services to their residents, and they need revenue to do so. One way to raise revenue is by raising their own revenue through taxes on land and property. This book examines the experiences of UN-Habitat and its partners in setting up or strengthening land-taxation systems in four fragile states: Somalia, Afghanistan,…

In this report, the transformation of 100 cities across India as part of Smart Cities Mission (SCM) is examined through the lens of SDGs. The mission has reached the lives of more than 100 million urban dwellers in India. The 100 Smart Cities are representative of India’s urban geography. SCM offers a unique scale for SDG localization: the mission has undertaken over 7,800 projects across 100 cities since its inception in 2015 and directed an investment of over USD 22 billion. SDGs have…

The “Rural Revitalization Under the Net-Zero Carbon Goal, Dinghai, Zhoushan, China” is a practice report under the cooperation of UN-Habitat, Zhoushan Municipal Government and Tongji University. The Dinghai District has pioneered net-zero carbon rural revitalization efforts. This report thoroughly evaluates their planning and development initiatives through a comprehensive investigation and presents exemplary cases to provide a low-carbon solution for rural areas in island regions.

UN-Habitat supports cities and countries all over the world to strengthen governance by improving the coordination and transparency of institutional frameworks; empowering representatives of urban stakeholders and constituencies through inclusive sound institutions and mechanisms; and providing predictability and coherence in urban development plans to enable social inclusion, sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, and environmental protection. The rationale being that the…

The Digital Rights Governance Project in Europe aimed at supporting cities to develop capacity and engage people to mainstream this human rights-based approach, by providing both normative and practical guidance to ensure that the human rights mechanisms that are in place offline are also in place online. This report summarises learnings from the project and pilots in the City of Brussels, Dublin, Tirana and Sofia and tools to operationalise the guidance in cities.

This study identifies formal and nonformal land professionals’ categories, their current functions and the additional roles that they would need to take up to improve land governance and establish functioning and fit-for-purpose land administration systems in the Arab region. The study highlights the common challenges faced by land professionals and takes stock of their current capacities, the additional capacities they would need, and the interventions that would enable them to adequately play…

More than 1.8 billion people worldwide lack adequate housing and the number of people living in informal settlements has passed a billion. Housing is a fundamental human right and UN-Habitat recognizes its catalyst role in the sustainable development agenda. ‘Housing at the centre’, a global approach set out by UN-Habitat in 2015, puts people and human rights at the foreground of sustainable urban development policies to leave no one and no place behind. A more coherent and comprehensive…

UN-Habitat provides technical assistance and advisory services to member states in legal reform processes to bring about social and economic transformation and enhance effective service delivery for sustainable urban development. Benchmarking case studies and comparative analysis are key aspects of the UN-Habitat methodology for legal and governance reform.

This report showcases benchmarking case studies on public participation in four countries prepared for the project “…