With the global increase in urbanization rates and the consequent increase in demand for housing and basic urban services, and despite the development of urban policies in many countries, the population of informal and poor areas in the world has increased from 725 million in 2000 to an estimated 889 million in 2020. This increase widened the gap between social groups in urban communities and elevated the vulnerability and deprivation of the poor.

Hence, the issue of adequate housing topped international development agendas, in particular the New Urban Agenda and the Global Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 11: “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, and to upgrade slums by 2030”. In 2013, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme issued the Global Housing Strategy to assist member states in supporting the right to adequate housing. In light of the global strategy, the Council of Arab Ministers of Housing and Reconstruction - held in its thirtieth session in December 2013- decided to prepare the Arab Strategy for Housing and Sustainable Urban Development. The General Secretariat of the Arab League assigned great importance to the development of strategies and programs to achieve sustainable development in Arab countries, with the technical support of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme and endorsed the strategy in 2016.

Egypt was one of the leading countries that adopted the directions of the global and Arab housing strategies by drawing a road map towards achieving the goals of adequate housing for all. In 2014, Egypt started preparing the Egyptian Housing Profile as a first step to monitor and analyze the sector’s components and challenges in Egypt. This was conducted with the participation of all governmental agencies, academic entities and representatives of relevant local communities. The profile was issued in 2016 in cooperation with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme.

Based on the profile. Egypt now leads the Arab countries and many countries internationally by issuing the National Housing Strategy, based on international human rights agreements and treaties. This strategy came in light of the complex circumstances of the spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which once again stressed the importance of empowering the right to adequate housing ‒healthy and safe for all. Egypt has endeavored to ensure that the national housing vision is integrated with the sectoral national visions, Egypt’s 2030 vision and the urban and economic development plans, to enhance the interrelationships between the sector and all relevant development and service sectors, and confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of the strategy.

Through analyzing and studying the housing system, its challenges and the country’s attempts to address it, the strategy sets clear policies to deal with the housing challenges through four main topics: topic of existing urban development areas, topic of the existing housing stock and vacant units, topic of challenges and problems related to the low-income housing, and topic related to the dimensions of sustainable development. These policies are supported by a dimension of institutional and administrative sustainability, and the strengthening of the knowledge and information base. The strategy also clarifies the parties concerned with implementing the policies, responsibilities and roles, as well as the required types of interventions (legislative, financial, urban, etc.), and the spatial and sequential framework of each policy in order to achieve maximum return. The strategy developed a unified integrated vision that could effectively direct the sector over the next twenty years with clarity and flexibility.

Cambodia is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to natural disasters and has suffered repeatedly from floods, storms and strong winds which have caused the loss of lives and destruction of livelihoods.

In 2018, due to the heavy rainfall from Tropical Storm SON-TINH, the Sepa-Nam Noi dam in Lao PDR collapsed affecting 62,317 households residing near the Mekong river. The massive floods caused 16 deaths and forced 5,398 households to evacuate in the five downstream provinces in Cambodia. The rural poor communities near the river suffered the destruction of their houses. Many families were forced to evacuate their homes to the temporary shelters with no sufficient food and access to clean water and sanitation.

To support the recovery process and strengthen climate resilience of the population affected by the floods, UN-Habitat in collaboration with the Royal Government of Cambodia implemented the “Project for Improving Living Environment and Disaster Prevention Capacity in Cambodia” (April 2019 – March 2020) with grant aid from the Government of Japan.

The project was completed with the reconstruction and rehabilitation of 202 houses with 1,098 people in the target area of Cambodia. It also benefited nearly 10,000 people through a wide range of capacity building activities related to disaster risk reduction (DRR) and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH).

Responding the urgent need, UN-Habitat constructed/rehabilitated health and public facilities including hospitals, health units, schools, rural courts, education offices, police stations, prosecutor offices, community buildings, markets and so on. As of January 2020, 81 public facilities have been constructed in 59 villages in five Darfur States with the total contribution of 14,159,284 USD.

The 4-page brochure showcases the two projects in Blue Nile funded by the Government of Norway: “Promote Peace building and Stability in the Blue Nile” (2016-2019), and “Strategic Urban Development/Structure Plans for the Towns of Ad-Damazine and Al-Roseiris” (2015-2016) with the project outlines, achievements, and voices from the beneficiaries.

This is UN-Habitat’s sixth and final annual progress report on the implementation of the strategic plan 2014—2019. The report presents an analysis of progress on indicators against set targets for each expected accomplishment over the Strategic Plan period (2014—2019). Key achievements and detailed results across all scales are presented. Impact stories demonstrate the concrete and practical ways that UN-Habitat has transformed the lives of beneficiaries.

The 2019 report highlights achievements in one of UN-Habitat’s key areas of strength, transformative normative tools and knowledge products. These are providing important norms and standards that are strengthening member states’ capacity to deliver sustainable urbanization. The Secretary-General’s Guidance Note on Land and Conflict, the Safer Cities Guidelines and the Urban-Rural Linkages Guiding Principles and Framework, for example, are setting principles for the global community on sustainable urbanization planning, how to leverage the urban-rural divide for strengthened sustainable urbanization and guidelines for making cities safer. Harmonized methodologies to guide the Sustainable Development Goals global monitoring of sustainable urbanization were developed, such as the definition of cities and refining the slum area-based definition to improve its clarity and relevance.

Robust results and impacts were realized from programmatic work across some subprogrammes. The Planning Lab, for example, continues to provide technical support to member states on planning and design for inclusive, compact and integrated cities. Through the Public Space programme made cities more inclusive for some 445,000 people—many of whom are girls and women, in 2019 alone.

UN-Habitat is also making a unique contribution to humanitarian and post-conflict settlement planning through the integrated and inclusive urban tools that deliver sustainable change to beneficiaries.

UN-Habitat’s resilience profiling and planning tools successfully supported cities to become more climate-resilient in Africa, Asia and Pacific regions. The reconstruction and resilience work in Mozambique, undertaken through the school’s programme to strengthen their structures, for example, demonstrated the benefits of cyclone resilient designs. The Global Land Tool Network, which uses an inclusive approach to tenure security through the continuum of land rights, has expanded tenure security for over 300,000 households (approximately 1.2 million people) in 13 countries over the past six years.

Important institutional milestones were achieved in 2019. The first UN-Habitat Assembly was successfully held 27th - 31st May 2019. The Assembly approved the new Strategic Plan 2020—2023. In 2019, a new organization structure was developed and approved by the Executive Board and its implementation commenced in January 2020.

Annual Report: 2020 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015

Urban Chances, City Growth and The Sustainability Challenge: Chance2Sustain is a research programme that examined how governments and citizens in cities with differing patterns of urban economic growth make use of participatory (or integrated) spatial knowledge management to direct urban governance towards more sustainable development. Participatory spatial knowledge management is the main concept used to study this issue, as it reflects a strategic resource, which all stakeholders can contribute to urban governance processes towards sustainable development.

It includes both expert knowledge and several forms of non-expert knowledge, such as knowledge from (working) experience (tacit), embedded sectoral knowledge, and social (or community-based) knowledge at the  neighbourhood and city-wide level. Participatory processes of urban planning and management are strategic in eliciting these forms of spatially disaggregated (of specific) knowledge, which are usually not acknowledged in topdown, expert-driven models of urban governance and planning. Utilizing participatory spatial knowledge can make urban governance and planning more effective and gain wider acceptance, by incorporating both expert and local community knowledge. Although participatory spatial knowledge management is increasingly used in urban planning processes, its success depends on external political and economic conditions.

A legal framework providing for fiscal decentralisation and funding, for instance, is a strategic support. The influence of various external conditions has not yet been analysed much locally, and certainly not comparatively across different socio-political contexts, although it is a strategic question, given the inherent trade-offs and potential  political conflicts in combining environmental, social and economic goals (within sustainable development). Therefore, the programme focused on ten cities with contrasting economic and political conditions, with the main scientific objective of developing a model on participatory spatial knowledge management to direct urban governance to sustainable development.
The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) was a dissemination partner for the research programme. This report summarizes the findings of the research and contains two policy briefs targeted at policy makers and practitioners.

While we know that cities can be drivers for the achievement of Agenda 2030, lack of sufficient finance for investment in infrastructure and sustainable development prevents urban populations from reaching their full potential and increases the overall costs of municipalities. One obstacle for unleashing adequate finance is that there is a lack of understanding on the basic costs of a city. This necessitates a comprehensive costing estimation for SDG 11 on sustainable urbanization.

There is also a lack of capacity to cover such costs, partly stemming from inadequate awareness of the total financing capacity currently available and how to access it. This report presents an innovative pilot on how to count the costs for achieving SDG 11 developed by UN-Habitat and AidData. It furthermore presents UN-Habitat estimations on the total SDG and infrastructure investment gap as well as the total private and public financing capacity available. Finally, the report discusses possibilities for bridging the investment gap for SDG 11 and urban infrastructure, with a special emphasis on how local governments can access the currently underutilized institutional investor capacity.

This publication of Financing for Resilient and Green Urban Solutions in Tshwane, South Africa in examines the status of housing and urban infrastructure and how much investment is needed. The assessment particularly considered the status of housing finance instruments and costs, as well as the roles of local and national governments in facilitating investments. The report was also anchored on determining whether the identified investment needs address resilient housing and infrastructure and assessed challenges to financing such green urban solutions in Tshwane, South Africa.

It also examines the financial instruments, financing needs and financing opportunities and their impacts on the financial systems and identifies potential practical projects.

This publication of Financing for Resilient and Green Urban Solutions in Zhoushan, China in examines the status of housing and urban infrastructure and how much investment is needed. The assessment particularly considered the status of housing finance instruments and costs, as well as the roles of local and national governments in facilitating investments. The report was also anchored on determining whether the identified investment needs address resilient housing and infrastructure and assessed challenges to financing such green urban solutions in Zhoushan, China.

It also examines the financial instruments and their impacts on the financial systems and identifies potential practical projects.

This publication of Financing for Resilient and Green Urban Solutions in Beira, Mozambique in examines the status of housing and urban infrastructure and how much investment is needed. The assessment particularly considered the status of housing finance instruments and costs, as well as the roles of local and national governments in facilitating investments. The report was also anchored on determining whether the identified investment needs address resilient housing and infrastructure and assessed challenges to financing such green urban solutions in Beira, Mozambique.

It also examines the financial instruments and their impacts on the financial systems and identifies potential practical projects.