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.

“UN Habitat has been a strong partner through the 3 years of the Ocupa Tu Calle project by supporting the implementation of 21 urban interventions, giving more than 380,000 people access to quality public spaces.”
Mariana Alegre, 38, Coordinator, Ocupa Tu Calle
Related Sustainable Development Goals
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