This White Paper is a collaboration of UN-Habitat’s Urban-Rural Linkages Program with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) as background for discussions at the upcoming UN Food System Summit Stocktaking (UNFSS+4). The paper draws upon recent working papers, expert group meetings including the GAIN-FAO-Rikolto Local and Traditional Food Markets Global Technical Meeting (June 2024), programmatic delivery, and reports from organizations referenced in this paper. Noting the…

Nestled along Kyrgyzstan’s Naryn River, the town of Naryn faces challenges such as environmental vulnerabilities, socio-economic disparities, and infrastructure gaps despite its cultural heritage and natural resources. The Naryn Urban Resilience Program, led by UN-Habitat Urban Lab with local and international partners, offers strategies for inclusive, sustainable urban development. Key outputs include a Town Profile, Strategic Spatial Plan, Design Guidelines, and a Capital Investment Plan.…

The paper ‘Urban Regeneration for Localizing the Sustainable Development Goals’ focuses on demonstrating how urban regeneration can drive progress across at least 15 SDGs and advance 45 targets. It includes four case studies from different regions to illustrate the impacts and lessons learnt.

UN-Habitat, partnered with the World Bank, Indonesian Government, and Semarang's City, to advise and support in implementing a joint urban vision. UN-Habitat's Urban Lab conducted a 12-week rapid planning studio and masterclass series to rapidly simulate an evidence-based spatial planning process linked to capital investment while enhancing local capacity for sustainable urban development.

The Dadaab Regeneration Strategy promotes economic growth, sustainability, self-reliance, and integration of hosts and refugees in Garissa County, Kenya’s new Dadaab and Bura Municipalities. It offers a path to overcoming economic, environmental, and socio-cultural challenges through physical revitalisation, improved governance, and a transition away from traditional models of hosting refugees in camps.

The Kakuma Regeneration Strategy promotes economic growth, sustainability, self-reliance, and integration of hosts and refugees in the new Kakuma Municipality in Kenya. It offers a path to overcoming economic, environmental, and socio-cultural challenges through physical revitalisation, improved governance, and a transition away from traditional models of hosting refugees in camps.

This report summarizes the Shuangjing Sub-district's best practices on how to implement SDG11 at the sub-district level. In 2019, the China Center for Urban Development and the UN-Habitat conducted the International Sustainable Development Pilot Community Assessment for Shuangjing Sub-District of Beijing, China. Shuangjing summarized relevant policies and practices to research the objectives of the UN SDGs, especially Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. Shuangjing proposed to…

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…

This second mission of UN-Habitat was deployed to Ukraine to prepare for the upcoming launch of UN-Habitat’s activities in the country, in line with the requests from its Executive Board (March 2022) and a request from the government of Ukraine (July 2022). It allowed the team to address a number of issues that required clarification before the establishment of UN-Habitat in Ukraine.