New York, 29 May 2014: United Nations Under-Secretary-General and UN-Habitat Executive Director, Dr Joan Clos, has said that “Cities and towns have been, and continue to be, crucibles of innovation and advancement”.

Nairobi, 27 May 2014: The first integration segment for 2014, which opens today at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, will focus on sustainable development; recognition of the importance of urban development in the overall push towards sustainable development.

Barcelona, 21 May 2014: The High Level Committee of Programming’s Senior Management Group meeting on the UN Plan of Action for Disaster Risk Reduction closed its 6th Meeting yesterday at the UN-Habitat City Resilience Profiling Office in Barcelona.

Barcelona, 21 May 2014: Fifty-five international experts on urban development and security gathered in Barcelona for a two-day meeting on the Urban Safety Monitor; a new initiative that promotes the use of indicators for evidence-based policy and practice. The Expert Meeting was organized by UN-Habitat with the support of the City of Barcelona.

Abuja, 19 May 2014: Attendees at a regional conference on disaster risk reduction in Nigeria have made recommendations for input to the upcoming World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in March 2015.

Emerging from the Special Session on 'Building Urban Resilience' organised by UN-Habitat, at the 5th Africa Regional Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Abuja, Nigeria, city governments and stakeholders have recommended several critical inputs in order to reduce the risk to the continent of the impact of disasters, both natural and man-made.

Hanoi, 19 May 2014—UN-Habitat and its partners last week held a policy dialogue on housing rights in Vietnam.

The Policy Dialogue "Right to Adequate Housing: Roles of Communities in Housing Process" was organised by UN-Habitat, Associations of Cities of Vietnam (ACVN), Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) in cooperation with committees of the National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as well as Cities Alliance (CA).

UN-Habitat and the Dubai Municipality offer you an opportunity for global recognition of your Best Practice through the Dubai International Award for Best Practices to Improve the Living Environment. Best Practices are outstanding contributions to improve the living environment and defined as successful initiatives which:

The transport sector is a vital enabler of economic activity and social connectivity, but is also the second largest and one of the fastest growing energy end-use sectors, representing 23% of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. The bulk of energy used by the transport sector (about two-thirds) is accounted for by passenger transport while the rest is consumed by freight transport. According to the International Energy Agency, greater uptake of electric vehicles will form an important part of a low-carbon technology pathway for transport (IEA 2012).

Nairobi, 12 May 2014: Cities interested in hosting the Ninth session of the World Urban Forum (WUF) in 2018 have been invited to register their official expression of interest to the convening body, UN-Habitat.

In the first stage of the transparent bidding process that will be finalised by January 2015, cities interested in hosting the international conference are urged to send in an initial expression of interest before the end of May 2014.

Madrid, 12 May 2014: In collaboration with Barcelona City Council, UN-Habitat recently organized two Experts Group Meetings in Madrid and Barcelona on National Urban Policies and on Sustainable Urban Mobility, respectively.

The meetings were held under the framework of the Project “Towards a New urban Agenda” which is building debate and consensus in the run up to the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, Habitat III, which will be held in 2016.