The Port of Beirut explosions (4 August 2020) resulted in extensive damage on multiple levels – the loss of life, injury and the destruction of vast tracts of urban fabric within the municipal boundaries of Beirut and Bourj Hammoud. Led by the Municipality and Governor of Beirut, UN-Habitat supported a rapid damage assessment at the building level (exterior visual survey).

The assessment covered all building types within an immediate 2km radius of the last, dividing them into four categories (total collapse, unsafe / evacuate, restricted use, safe/minor damage, unclassified) in order to understand the extent of damage, particularly structural impacts, as well as immediately identifying buildings at risk of collapse and in need of evacuation. The assessment provides a basis on which to formulate recovery and reconstruction measures, with regards to building damage rehabilitation.

Beledweyne, the largest city of Hishabelle Sate of Somalia, has constantly suffered from devastating floods. Over the past decade, floods have increased in magnitude and recurrence, reaching alarming levels by 2019, where 68% of the city was flooded.

Students from the Institute for Cooperation in Basic Habitability (ICHaB-ETSAM) and colleagues from UN-Habitat Somalia Programme have jointly developed this working paper. It aims to establish the spatial basis for flood risk analysis and urban resilience of Beledweyne.

ICHaB-ETSAM is an academic institution that belongs to the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Since its foundation in 1995, ICHAB has continuously carried out teaching, research and awareness-raising activities in the field of basic habitability with a special focus upon informal settlements.

This working paper has been developed under Midnimo II (Unity) project - Support for the Attainment of Durable Solutions in Areas Impacted by Displacement and Returns in Galmudug and Hirshabelle States, funded by United Nations Peacebuilding Fund. This study has been conceived as a first step to explore long-term solutions to make the city of Beledweyne, including its most vulnerable communities, more resilient to floods and other natural hazards.

The Future Saudi Cities Programme is a joint programme developed by the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs in Saudi Arabia and UN-Habitat, implemented in close cooperation with the municipalities of 17 major Saudi cities, the cities have been selected based on their different population sizes, geographic distribution, and a range of criteria based on capacities and economic potential to create a more balanced regional development among the cities of Saudi Arabia. The chosen cities include Riyadh, Makkah, Jeddah, Taif, Madinah, Tabuk, Dammam, Qatif, Al-Ahsa, Abha, Najran, Jazan, Hael, Arar, AlBaha, Buraidah, and Skaka. one of FSCP outcomes is the city profiles.

The city-profile performs as a thinking tool that constitutes together an assessment tool and guidance for the current and future planning of the city, whilst defining a clear strategy for sustainable development. This tool is based on the UN-Habitat’s three-pronged approach considers spatial planning in relation to legal and institutional frameworks, in addition to financial mechanisms. In this way, success criteria for the sustainable implementation of a spatial plan should include flexible but enforceable rules and regulations, in addition to a financing strategy and projections.

The City Profile Methodology, that is applied to Tabuk, is contenting the following steps:
1- Evidence based input approach.
2- The City reviews.
3- The City Prosperity Index assessment report.
4- The GIS spatial analysis.

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.

This publication focuses on how cycles of risk accumulation in African cities can be broken in ways that also enhance local and city-wide development.

A range of case studies about disaster risk management (DRM) themes, from community participation in DRM data collection to risk mapping, and from urban waste management to hazard accumulation in urban risk traps, are offered from Anglophone and Francophone Africa. Each study aims to stimulate discussion and support best practices amongst city planners and risk managers.

The book is written in an accessible style. Each short chapter focusses on a specific challenge or opportunity offering key lessons and background reading. Insights from climate scientists, risk modellers, and citizen science teams are presented showing how vulnerability and health-assessment methods are used to reveal and act to reduce risk.

The book is a joint initiative of the Urban ARK programme and UN-Habitat and was launched on 12 February 2020 at the UN-Habitat World Urban Forum. Around 50 colleagues joined at the launch with viewpoints and commentaries from Mark Pelling (Urban ARK lead and King’s College London), Mathias Spaliviero (UN-Habitat), Ibidun Adelekan (University of Ibaban) and Joe Mulligan (Kounkuey Design Initiative), chaired by Sarah Blackburn (Global Challenges Research Fund, UKRI).

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.

What is the Gender Equality Action Plan (GEAP)? The Gender Equality Action Plan (GEAP) is the means to realize the The UN-Habitat Policy and Plan for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in Urban and Human Settlements (2014-19). The GEAP has been developed through a consultative process inclusive of UN-Habitat Gender Equality Unit (GEU), UN-Habitat Gender Focal Points (GFPs), and the Advisory Group on Gender Issues (AGGI). It was finally presented at the annual AGGI meeting held during the World Urban Forum (WUF-7) for review and feedback.

The GEAP is guided by the findings and recommendations of the Evaluation of Gender mainstreaming at UN-Habitat (2011) and Gender Mainstreaming Audit and GEAP 2008-2013 review (2012).

The LENSS Tool Kit is designed to alleviate the difficulties of shelter and settlement needs assessment in the immediate aftermath of a disaster and before the recovery phase.