Download
a.	formulación de la Política de Gestión Integral del Sector Hábitat a 2030. Principios conceptuales y metodológicos para Bogotá D.C.
Share
Number of pages
107
Publication date
2019
Publisher
UN-Habitat

formulación de la Política de Gestión Integral del Sector Hábitat a 2030. Principios conceptuales y metodológicos para Bogotá D.C.

Currently, in Latin America, 78.0% of the population lives in cities, mainly in the capitals. This trend is also experienced by Colombia, with the great advantage that said population concentration is distributed in a system of 64 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, being Bogotá, in addition to the country's capital, the most important agglomeration. The effects of rapid urbanization in the country and the continent have made it possible to improve the coverage and access of large majorities to the goods and services of economic and social development, but it has also created new challenges, particularly for large metropolises. That is why the right to the city today acquires great relevance to guide public policies and the different forms of citizen participation.

The consideration that adequate housing as a basic unit for habitat construction represents an essential element of the right to the city and invites emphasis on its transformative attributes of quality of life and sustainable and inclusive urban development. The concept of habitat becomes more important because it addresses housing not only as an individual or family right but as a collective right of those who inhabit and enjoy cities.

The common challenge today is how to produce a habitat that helps "build a city." For this, it is necessary to move from housing policies to habitat policies, which consider the environments, plan the territory and the equipment and break the barriers of socio-spatial segregation.

For this reason, UN-Habitat proposes to return the “Housing at the centre” which should be understood not only as the centre of public policies, but also as the physical centre of cities, since construction in the peripheries not only does not responds adequately to the needs of the most disadvantaged groups, but the dispersion decreases, among others, the same productivity of the cities and their cohesion. Linked to this, the quality of housing and cities also depends on the ability to massively introduce alternatives to ways of building and the use of new materials. Eco-efficiency and eco-sustainability in the production of housing and habitat infrastructure not only improves the quality of life of urban dwellers and the resilience of cities but also generates new economic, work and innovation opportunities.

In all these areas, Bogotá represents a reference for the rest of Colombia. Not surprisingly, in the capital, about 2.7 million homes demand services with coverage and quality, being a huge challenge primarily for rulers and decision-makers. Therefore, the importance of a robust habitat policy by 2030, which undoubtedly contributes to providing conditions that boost housing supply and other habitat attributes, as well as access and opportunity in a context of equity, inclusion and prosperity.

This publication is a contribution to the formulation of this policy, under the leadership of the Habitat District Secretariat - SDHT. The results of the interdisciplinary work between UN-Habitat and the SDHT reveal disparities in the coverage and quality of housing, equipment and general habitat conditions between different areas of the city, so the achievements to come must translate into conditions of equity, cohesion, and prosperity for all citizens, taking into account the context of Bogotá and its metropolitan environment.

Housing, Land and Property Issues of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon from Homs City – November 2018

The “Housing, Land and Property Issues of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon from Homs City” project was launched in 2017 in partnership with UNHCR and with the support of the Ford Foundation. The aim of the study is to analyze the housing arrangements that refugees coming from Homs city have secured, seven years into the crisis, in addition to their living conditions, the implications of their legal status on their presence in Lebanon, and the role/influence of social networks - characteristic of this community coming from the city of Homs - on their access to shelter and trajectories. The project contributes to the knowledge about refugee trajectories in the context of a protracted refugee crisis particularly in relation to shelter acquisition. The results reported in this study can promote public awareness about the implications of the absence of affordable housing programs and the current restrictions that refugees in Lebanon face to access adequate shelter. They can further inform policymakers and other actors in the shelter sector about the current operations of the housing market.

Partners: UN-Habitat and UNHCR

Locations: Lebanon, Syrian Arab Republic, Homs

Donors: Ford Foundation

Download
Harmonization Of The Legal Sys
Share
Number of pages
68
Publication date
2015
Publisher
UN-Habitat

Harmonization of the Legal Systems Resolving Land Disputes in Somaliland and Puntland

The last several decades have seen a change in the legal landscape relating to land in Puntland and Somaliland. Traditionally, both regions have consisted primarily of large swaths of rural and agricultural land, owned in common by clans and subclans in accordance with customary law. While the customary system is also capable of recognizing individual rights and grievances of members of the community in question, it remains primarily accessible to male members of the majority clan.

Though women from both minority and majority clans report that the customary system is often inaccessible to or biased against them, the community at large perceives it as more trustworthy and less prone to undue influence than the courts.

Decisions made through the customary system also tend to be fast and efficient. This report discusses the Land Dispute Tribunals in Somaliland and the Land Dispute Resolution Committees in Puntland. The LDTs are intended to be hybrid institutions capable of harnessing benefits from both the formal and the customary system.

 

Mass housing requires mass housing finance - Marja Hoek Smit, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

In this lecture Marja Hoek Smit argues that housing finance is critical to solve the housing problem, increasing, as it does, the number of households that can afford to acquire a house in the formal market, which in turn will make large scale development of middle and lower middle income housing possible.

Share
Download
Improving-womens-access-DRC
Share
Number of pages
90
Publication date
2015
Publisher
UN-Habitat

Improving Women’s Access to Land in Eastern DRC: Challenges and Emerging Opportunities

UN Habitat has been working in the eastern DRC since 2009, and the purpose of this study is to help better understand and integrate gender issues into existing programming, and to guide future activities to improve and support women’s access to land in the region.

The study seeks to develop a baseline understanding of women’s access to land, with particular focus on the barriers under customary and statutory regimes faced by women as daughters, wives, widows, displaced, and how they are coping with these conditions.

Bamboo – a versatile building material for Kenya?

Nairobi, 6 May 2015 - The International Network for Bamboo and Rattan (INBAR), a founding member of the UN-Habitat-coordinated Global Network for Sustainable Housing, together with the Ministry of the Environment, the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) and the Kenya Forestry Service (KFS), recently convened a coordination workshop to discuss the development of an integrated national bamboo sector policy for Kenya.

Share
Download
Habitat Global Activties 2015
Share
Number of pages
105
Publication date
2015
Publisher
UN-Habitat

UN-Habitat Global Country Activities Report: 2015 - Increasing Synergy for Greater National Ownership

The Global Activities Report 2015, takes into account the progress made in addressing UN-Habitat’s projects portfolio with a view to increasing its impact and facilitating national ownership. An encouraging trend during the current reporting period is that the earmarked portfolio has continued to grow, confirming rising demand for the Agency’s technical expertise.

This upward trend, consistent with UN-Habitat’s strategy to expand its earmarked projects portfolio, has been sustained, from a level of USD 136 million in 2012, to USD 171 million in 2013 – representing a 25 per cent increase, and to USD 172 million by November 2014.

These contributions have enabled UN-Habitat to provide strong support of more than USD 162 million in 2014 alone to 16 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 18 countries in Asia and the Pacific, 9 countries in the Arab States region, and 19 countries in Lati America and the Caribbean, in addition to regional programmes and normative global initiatives.

Namibian policy makers benefit from a workshop on housing the poor

Windhoek, 27th March 2015 – Over 30 Namibian government officials, policy makers, members of parliament and councilors last week attended a workshop where they were trained on housing the poor. The three day workshop was organised by UN-Habitat together with Namibian Association of Local Authority Officers (NALAO), the Polytechnic of Namibia, Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia (SDFN) and Namibia Housing Action Group (NHAG).

Share