Policy and programme experiences from different countries have shown the correlation between government legitimacy, stability and peace. The Afghanistan Urban Peacebuilding Programme (AUPP) addresses this complex relationship between governance and peace. The "Safety in Afghan Cities" report, developed from the programme’s baseline survey, presents public perceptions on urban safety in eight of Afghanistan’s most strategic cities, including Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad, Herat,…

This report provides the reader with compelling evidences drawn from the UN-Habitat Sample of 200 cities showing that urban planning and design is declining globally. It demonstrates that cities are expanding endlessly to peripheries on a pattern of low residential densities and fragmented urbanization, with housing becoming unaffordable by either home ownership or rental. The report brings forward key propositions to establish the fundamentals of planned and sustainable urbanization. It is a…

Open-mindedly exploring and investigating opportunities to further improve the conditions for our cities and towns in order to offer an attractive and good living environment will often lead to visions and ideas and eventually to solutions, which might not otherwise have been considered. Continuously searching for new urban solutions is instrumental, as cities and towns are in constant transformation, morphologically, structurally, socially, culturally, and economically. Exploring new solutions…

This is the fourth in the series of reports titled UN-Habitat Support to Sustainable Urban Development in Kenya. The reports addresses the topic of urban informality and reports on a capacity building session conducted by UN-Habitat for informal settlement leaders, which was also attended by county technical officers, members of county assemblies, national government officers, development partners, and civil society organizations.

Since 2002, over 5.6 million Afghans have returned from neighbouring countries and as many as 40% of them have not been able to reintegrate in their original locations. The total number of recorded IDPs in Afghanistan is more than 1.2 million. These returnees together with IDPs, rural-urban migrants and high natural population growth have resulted in an unprecedented expansion of Afghan cities. During the past decade, returnees, IDPs and low-income migrants face major obstacles to accessing…

"The Cross-cutting Progress Report 2016 covers UN-Habitat’s activities and achievements, during the course of 2016, in the way of its four cross-cutting issues: climate change, gender, human rights, and youth. The Report presents an overview of the mandate and structure of each of the cross-cutting issues, as well as presenting case studies of the Agency’s work on the ground relating to these issues.
The four cross-cutting issues were formalised in 2013 and have since then…

This Final Evaluation of the Urban-LEDS Project was carried out during the period May – September 2016. The Objective of the Project is “to enhance the transition [of cities] to low emission urban development in emerging economy countries.” The Project began in March 2012 and ended in March 2016 (48 months). The total Project budget provided by the European Commission was €6.7 million Euros.

This paper intends to strengthen awareness and collaboration between UN-Habitat and its partners with the goal of promoting the relevance of issues pertaining to youth living in cities; present and future.