Public space is crucial for sustainable cities and communities: providing ecosystem services, improving health and wellbeing, ensuring social inclusion and economic exchange. It offers an opportunity to enrich the quality of life of all urban dwellers, leaving no one behind. In collaboration with partners, UN-Habitat demonstrates how to turn public spaces around, transform communities and change mind-sets through innovative community-led approaches and scalable catalytic pilots.
“The capacity building support from UN-Habitat has been incredibly useful and is really shaping the City’s processes of co-designing, building and implementing public open spaces across multiple departments. We are immensely grateful to UN-Habitat for these resources and support.”
Nicolette Pingo, 34, Development Manager, Johannesburg Development Agency
Using Minecraft for Community Participation
Minecraft is a ‘sandbox’ computer game originally launched in 2011. The game has sold nearly 100 million copies worldwide,
making it one of the world’s best-selling computer games.
The Global Public Space Programme Annual Report 2018
UN-Habitat’s Global Public Space Programme, launched in 2012, is now active in more than 30 cities across the world. The programme’s objective is to promote public spaces as a keystone for sustainable cities to ensure good quality of life for all. This is done through policy guides, capacity…
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Leaving no one and no place behind
Hover over or click the icons to learn about UN-Habitat's work on social inclusion here.
Human rights is the centre point of our work. All our processes and methodologies are guided by the universal human rights. Through co-creation of public spaces, we reinforce human rights including the right to civic participation and freedom of opinion and expression.
All our processes and projects have a special element of gender equality. In particular, use the lens of women and girls to interrogate the inclusivity of public spaces, create gender-sensitive places. In our co-creation processes, the program ensures that no gender is more than half the total number of participants.
The program embodies the principle of leaving no one behind. Our processes are especially designed to promote intergenerational dialogue among diverse age groups. Through Minecraft, placemaking and other methodologies, we endeavour to create spaces and places that promote intergenerational dialogue and exchange, and harmonious coexistence where everybody feels cared for and recognised.
The Global Public Space Program promotes safe, inclusive and accessible public spaces where people of all abilities are welcome. Universal accessibility is one of the principles that guide our idea of inclusive spaces. We not only design for inclusivity but we co-create spaces with everyone including the disabled.
Donors and partners
The success of UN-Habitat’s public space programme is anchored in our wide network of local government, civil society, academia and private sector partners – now numbering more than 100. Our public space regeneration projects are usually completed in collaboration with the local government and a civil society partners. Through placemaking networks, UN-Habitat engages with and supports communities to take action towards reclaiming and transforming their public spaces. Since 2016, we have organized regular meetings of the UN Public Space Network to encourage other UN agencies to take action on public space as a way of achieving sustainable development
