Quito, 23 May 2016 – Equador’s National Assembly of Ecuador has approved a bill on land use and land management. The bill is the result of a long process that started in 2011 under the leadership of the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing of Ecuador (MIDUVI) with support from UN-Habitat, the Municipality of Quito, GIZ, SIDA and the European Union amongst other partners.

Mexico, 18 March 2016 – The first results of the City Prosperity Index (CPI) carried out in 136 municipalities across Mexico were presented in Mexico City earlier this March. The CPI is UN-Habitat’s urban development indicator and is being implemented with the Mexican federal institute for housing Infonavit. Currently applied in over 500 cities around the world, the CPI is a tool that provides metrics and data to evaluate urban development.

Bogotá, 16 March 2016—Over 40 international experts on finance and urban development last week converged in Bogota, Columbia for the first regional meeting on financing urban sustainable development in Latin America.

Quito, 24 February 2016 -- Representatives of the government of Ecuador, members of diplomatic corps accredited in this country, academia and civil society organizations gathered in the Chapel of Man, Quito, for a meeting to update themselves on the preparation for Habitat III, which will be held there in October this year.

Rio de Janeiro, 11 February 2016 – The phrase belongs to Elkin Velasquez, UN-Habitat´s Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, during the signing of the agreement between the UN agency and the government of Risaralda (Colombia).

San Salvador, 1 October 2015—Representatives from San Salvador and Bucaramanga, the capital city of the department of Santander, Colombia, recently held a technical meeting where they exchanged knowledge with regard to the implementation of methodologies, indicators updating and installation of the technology platform for the Observatory of the Metropolitan Area of El Salvador’s capital. The meeting was as a result of the agreement signed in June this year, in Bucaramanga, during a technical meeting of the Network of Metropolitan Areas of the Americas (RAMA).

Bogota, 21 September 2015-- Environmentalists, government and NGO officials gathered in Bogota, Colombia between 20 and 23 September for the Latin American summit, as part of preparations for the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris in December this year. UN-Habitat took part in the summit.

Panamá City, 7 September 2015—UN-Habitat has signed an agreement with Panama City aimed at modernising public administration as well as institutional strengthening to achieve more effective, efficient and equitable governance in four districts of the city.

Rio de Janeiro 31 August 2015--Representatives of UN-Habitat and the State of Rio de Janeiro have signed an agreement on sustainable urban development.

During the ceremony, the governor of Rio de Janeiro, Luiz Fernando Pezão, and the Director of the regional office of UN-Habitat in Latin America and the Caribbean, Elkin Velasquez, made a commitment to promote actions and projects for the benefit of urban and metropolitan governance.

Havana, 11 August 2015 – Citizens of thirteen municipalities of Cuba will benefit from an agreement signed between representatives of the Swiss Development Cooperation and UN-Habitat to improve housing infrastructure and living conditions.

In addition, the cooperation aims at training local technicians and sensitizing the general public about good practices in building resilient housing.