Grodno, 1 June 2018

From 31 May to 1 June 2018, in Grodno, republic of Belarus, over 75 people (including 30% women), participated in the workshop on “Sustainable urban planning and housing: national priorities of the Republic of Belarus and best international practices”. The two days workshop was jointly organised by three United Nations Agencies: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). Participants represented including international experts, national, regional and local authorities.

UN-Habitat Deputy Executive Director Dr. Aisa Kirabo Kacyira launched a new report that investigates the effect of foreign direct investment on the continent’s cities.

 The State of African Cities 2018 report says that foreign firms and investors in African cities can play a catalytic role in the development of the continent.

 Speaking during the event, Dr. Kacyira said the report was a ground breaking one because instead of focusing on urbanisation, it was looking at foreign direct investment.

The World Cities Day global observance will be held this year in Liverpool, United Kingdom, on 31 October. The announcement was made today by the Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson at the International Business Festival being hosted in the city.

UN-Habitat will provide support to the 1st ever global Sustainable Blue Economy Conference (SBEC) that will be held in Nairobi, Kenya from 26 – 28 November 2018 at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre (KICC).

Kabul, 06 June 2018. The Government of Afghanistan is using GIS, Remote Sensing and ICT technologies to collect and analyze property data for purposes of improving tenure security in urban areas. Through the City for All program, the government is digitizing and mapping all properties in Kabul and 11 other cities. The base maps are then verified by household level surveys before property records are finalized and registered. 270,000 properties have been surveyed in Kabul municipality at the end of May 2018.

Kabul, 06th June 2018. Massoda Mahmoodi and Lema Jaheed are two female engineering students from Kabul Polytechnic University (KPU) who participated in the first batch of the UN-Habitat’s Professional Practice Programme (PPP).

24 May 2018, Marawi City – On the morning of May 24, 2018 at Marawi City Hall, culminating the Week of Peace activities commemorating year one since the Marawi Siege broke out, UN-Habitat signed memoranda of understanding with the Islamic City of Marawi and with national government agency Social Housing Finance Corporation, respectively, formalizing the agency’s partnership with local and national government on the implementation of the Rebuilding Marawi Shelter and Livelihood project.

UN Under-Secretary-General (USG) Arcot Ramachandran, who died on 17 May 2018, at the age of 95, was the first Executive Director of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, UNCHS (Habitat), now the United Nations Programme for Human Settlements (UN-Habitat). A national of India, he was appointed Executive Director, at the level of Under-Secretary-General, when UNCHS (Habitat) was established in 1978 and served until 1992.

Urban Futures will illustrate ideas from around the world about the future of urban development and cities. Rather than focusing on technological innovation, infrastructure and mobility we understanding the city as a social space. A citizen science approach allows us to go beyond existing knowledge of urban specialists.

Within this project we invite photographers around the world to engage creatively with the topic “city as a social space” and to submit their photographs by 30 June 2018.

London, April 30, 2018: Today UN-Habitat signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Think City, a Malaysian non-profit organization to initiate a strategic partnership to advocate and promote the New Urban Agenda (NUA) and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), specifically SDG 11, which aims to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.