Nairobi, 10 August 2015– UN-Habitat has released guidelines to provide national governments, local authorities, civil society organizations and planning professionals with a global reference framework that promotes more compact, socially inclusive, better integrated and connected cities and territories that foster sustainable urban development and are resilient to climate change.

The International Guidelines on Urban and Territorial Planning serve both as a source of inspiration and a compass when reviewing, developing and implementing urban and territorial planning frameworks. The Guidelines will be soon available in 7 other languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, Persian, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese.

The drafting of the Guidelines was supported by a Group of 35 Experts over two years through a broad-based consultative and participatory process and based on evidence, good practices and lessons learnt from different contexts and at different planning scale. A Compendium of inspiring practices has been developed by the Expert Group to illustrate the principles and recommendations included in the Guidelines.

UN agencies and members of the Committee of Permanent Representatives at UN-Habitat were also consulted and briefed throughout the process of developing the Guidelines.

The process was supported by financial and technical contributions from the government of France through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the government of Japan through the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism the Prefectural Government of Fukuoka, the Municipal Government of Fukuoka and Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka.

View the Guidelines publication here.