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.

This manual is part of a UN-Habitat strategy for building up capacity of local and state government in Somalia and laying the foundation for the establishment of functional urban development departments able to cope with the tremendous urban development challenges of the country. Mapping is only one of the technical skills at the base of urban planning.

The National Guidelines on Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning (SUMP) takes a fresh, forward-looking approach for a relatively new field of action by municipalities and their partners in Kosovo. Considering existing guidance from the European Union and our real experiences from implementing SUMPs in the Municipality of Mitrovica South and the Municipality of Mitrovica North, the aim of this publication is to provide guidance on developing sustainable urban transportation systems.

The Handbook for “Building Participatory Accountability Systems for City Policies” offers guidance on how to develop urban projects and interventions through a participatory and consultative approach with city stakeholders, while allowing for flexibility to tailor interventions to the specific needs of individual cities and regions.

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.