The handbook provides tested approaches and practical frameworks for improving access to affordable housing through the leverage of land and includes a range of tax-based, fee-based and development-based policy instruments. It also features regulatory framework to formulate planning standards that reduce land costs and planning and building regulations that permit incremental housing construction, as well as spatial planning that puts land to efficient use.

The Beirut City Profile offers an important multisectoral and spatial analysis of the City of Beirut, including a diagnosis of the wide spectrum of challenges that the city has encountered over the past decades, including the most recent and devastating shock, the Beirut Port explosion. The profile aims to help offer a common understanding of how multiple shocks and vulnerabilities manifest across the city.

From 1 to 5 September 2019, a Community-based Urban Vision Week was organized in Somaliland’s capital city of Hargeisa. Hargeisa is a fast-growing city with limited resources to plan and manage the urban development in a sustainable manner. The Urban Vision Week aimed at paving the pathway to a participatory strategic urban action plan for Hargeisa 2040, pivoting around a Shared Vision on the best possible urban scenario to strive for.

The manual is meant to fit into a training course for data gathering in Somalia. It serves as an introduction for local government and other interested stakeholders, guiding through the different scales and themes relevant to the context, the different methods of gathering data, and the types of data that can be gathered. 

According to most statistics, Somalia is one of the few countries whose population still resides predominately in rural area, although it is experiencing rapid urbanization, and projected to become predominately urban by 2050.

In 2020-2021, UN-Habitat was funded by Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) to develop the Qoloji Spatial Profile for the largest internally displaced people settlement in Ethiopia. This study focuses on establishing the existing conditions, identifying challenges and opportunities, developing the scenarios, and outlining recommendations for a durable settlement in Qoloji.

Since 2020, UN-Habitat has been funded by the EUTF Programme entitled ‘Enhancing self-reliance for refugees and host communities in Kenya’. The spatial profiles produced during the first phase of the project have focused on establishing the existing conditions of the refugee hosting areas, identifying challenges and opportunities for inclusive development, and outline recommendations for improvement of the settlements.

Since 2020, UN-Habitat has been funded by the EUTF Programme entitled ‘Enhancing self-reliance for refugees and host communities in Kenya’. The spatial profiles produced during the first phase of the project has focused on establishing the existing conditions of the refugee hosting areas, identifying challenges and opportunities for inclusive development, and outline recommendations for improvement of the settlements.

Final report of the Euskal Hiria Kongresua 2020 global Expert Group Meeting “Cities for All: Ageing and Inclusion” held 23 and 24 November 2020, organized by UN-Habitat with the support of the Regional Government of Basque Country (Spain).