While the global urban population is expected to grow by 3 billion in the next 50 years, cities continue to face a myriad of challenges including insufcient housing, poor infrastructure, inadequate basic services, hunger, corruption, insecurity and depletion of natural resources.

At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015, world leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030.

The SDGs build on the Rio+20 outcomes and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight anti-poverty targets that the world committed to achieving by 2015.

Rapid urbanization increases the pressure on governments, especially in developing regions.