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World Urban Forum
Bringing together policymakers and non-governmental actors in sustainable urbanization
The United Nations Millennium Declaration recognizes the world's urban poor. It articulates the commitment of member states to improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020. This is directly relevant to the UN-HABITAT mandate of uplifting the living conditions of the urban poor and ensuring sustainable urban development. Given the importance of interaction among policymakers and urban actors at every level who tackle urban challenges and ensure human and civil rights, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling on UN-HABITAT to hold a World Urban Forum every two years to bring all these actors together. The forum has become the world's premier platform for interaction between policymakers at all levels of government and nongovernment actors of diverse categories, all of whom are valuable interlocutors and implementers of the Habitat Agenda in a world that is increasingly urban, and one in which social inequity is deepening.
The relevance of the biennial forum may be seen on two levels: (i) encouraging participant engagement through dialogue, debate, and enhanced networking; and (ii) having an impact on participants by providing ideas that can be applied in their individual work. Participant surveys and interviews reaffirm that the approach of the forum is very relevant.
HIGHLIGHT: FRESH INTERACTION BETWEEN MAYORS AND GOVERNMENTS IN BRAZIL
In 2010, the World Urban Forum's informal nature once again created a platform for international conversations and cooperation on urban issues at every level and across social and economic divides. For example, in quiet meetings away from the fray and sometimes at networking events, government ministers from a variety of countries met to discuss the problems of a rapidly urbanizing world, thus forging new north-south and southsouth cooperation. The forum also provided a chance for fresh interactions between mayors and governments. Not least, it was also a vehicle through which grassroots women´s groups, youth, and slum dwellers were able to interact with government representatives, global parliamentarians, and municipal leaders. Quite a significant number of participants were attending the forum for the first time and almost all were inspired by initiatives and programmes for improving conditions, including in Brazil's favelas. The 2010 forum offered three key messages and opportunities for new partnerships: building communities more sustainably; restoring security to housing markets; and incorporating innovative and sustainable approaches into the way we plan for disaster and offset climate change. |
World Urban Campaign – Better City, Better Life
Fostering stronger partnerships for sustainable urbanization
The World Urban Campaign is a global coalition of public, private, and civil society partners with a common vision: to promote and reinforce sustainable urbanization policies, strategies, and practices. Launched in Rio de Janeiro at the fifth session of the World Urban Forum in March 2010, the campaign is coordinated by UN-HABITAT and governed by a steering committee that represents the range of Habitat Agenda constituencies.
The campaign aims to combine and foster the many exciting efforts being undertaken by the partners to contribute to the well-being of cities throughout the world. The campaign will help them advance strategically together to achieve policy change, investment, and changed mindsets, which are needed for a sustainable urban future. The campaign also intends partners to learn from each other, emphasizing and encouraging sustainable development in urban places.
The campaign is a key instrument in UN-HABITAT's quest for sustainable urban development and will enhance the organization's catalytic role, with a systematic approach towards partnership, advocacy, and networking. The campaign will drive substantive coherence, linking UN-HABITAT's Medium-term Strategic and Institutional Plan focus areas; amplify key messages of the plan through targeted advocacy and awareness tools, including global reports, the World Urban Forum, and World Habitat Day; mobilize partners, providing the glue that keeps everyone working together; increase the visibility of urban issues and keep them high on the global agenda; and guide and motivate all stakeholders, ensuring allocation of adequate resources to urban development, continuity, and growth.
The 100 Cities Initiative is one of the World Urban Campaign's first building blocks. It is a forum for the best stories of change in cities that all aim for a smarter urban future. The UN-HABITAT Business Award for Better Cities is another campaign initiative aimed at recognizing outstanding practices by the private sector that contribute to sustainable urbanization. The campaign is also creating a user-friendly Catalogue of Tools and Methods which focuses on those that have been developed, tested, and applied in support of sustainable urban development. A Global Observatory of Good Policies and Enabling Legislation will also be established to offer cities and countries a state-of-the-art tool to assess and review their laws and policies on the right to the city.
Resources
HIGHLIGHT: THE WORLD URBAN CAMPAIGN EXTENDS TO ALL CORNERS OF THE GLOBE
The World Urban Campaign has expanded its outreach by increasing the number of umbrella organizations that have committed to work on the agreed principles relating to sustainable urban development. A network of professional journalists (Citiscope and South-South News) has been brought on-board to promote the positive news about cities throughout the world and spread campaign messages. Collaboration with other UN agencies, particularly with related campaigns they are promoting, has been established. These include the campaigns on resilient cities (UNISDR) and fostering creative economies (UNDP). A partnership has been developed with an initiative of the Government of the United States of America on developing indicators that demonstrate the progress that American cities are making towards sustainable urban development and inform supportive policy, planning, and investment. |
Global Report on Human Settlements
Raising awareness on human settlement issues
The Global Report on Human Settlements, published every two years, is now recognized as the most authoritative and up-to-date global assessment of human settlement conditions and policy trends. For instance, Enhancing Urban Safety and Security: Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 was selected by Choice, a leading review journal in the USA, as an 'Outstanding Academic Title'. The report is also widely used by relevant university and research institutions in their training and research programmes.
So far, seven issues of the Global Report on Human Settlements have been published. The first issue, released in 1987, was comprehensive and analysed worldwide and regional developments, trends, and prospects in the field of human settlements. It reviewed the concept of human settlements as it had evolved from the first United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I), convened in 1976 in Vancouver. An Urbanizing World was the second issue, published in 1996. The third issue was published in 2001, titled Cities in a Globalizing World. The fourth issue covered The Challenge of Slums (2003) and is in high demand up to now, necessitating a reprint in 2009. The 2005 issue was titled Financing Urban Shelter and the 2007 issue focused on Urban Safety and Security. Planning Sustainable Cities was the seventh issue, published in October 2009. The eighth issue (to be published in 2011) will be on cities and climate change, while the ninth issue (to be published in 2013) will be on sustainable urban transport.
HIGHLIGHT: THE 2009 GLOBAL REPORT INVOLVED MORE THAN 100 INTERNATIONAL EXPERTS
The preparation of the 2009 Global Report on Human Settlements: Planning Sustainable Cities involved 56 top scholars from 48 institutions around the world and 49 expert advisers from 40 institutions. Partner universities and professional institutions in countries such as Canada, Chile, India, Lebanon, and South Africa were involved in launching the report on behalf of UN-HABITAT. The Royal Town Planning Institute (UK) and the American Planning Association (USA) made particularly important contributions during the launch. A recent achievement is the publication of the Policy Directions series, which consists of abridged editions of the Global Report on Human Settlements. These are published every two years alongside each issue of the report. Three Policy Directions issues have been published so far (2005, 2007, and 2009). The series targets policymakers and has been popular, especially with national governments. The 2009 report is currently being used as a reference text on urban land use planning by the World Bank Institute. |
State of the World's Cities Report
Calling attention to increasing urban challenges
The State of the World's Cities Report conveys substantive, evidence-based knowledge and data, but this information is made reader-friendly and accessible to the wider public – laypeople, mayors, decision makers, non-governmental organizations, and the media. As such, it includes visual media and is written and formatted in a journalistic style that avoids jargon. The cost of this biennial report is approximately USD 2 million, which is very low compared to similar authoritative global reports.
The 2004/2005 issue, Globalization and Urban Culture, was also selected by Choice journal as an 'Outstanding Academic Title'. The 2006/2007 report broke new ground by showing that slum dwellers in developing countries are as badly off as, if not worse off than, their rural compatriots. While the 2008/2009 report was titled Harmonious Cities, the 2010/2011 report analysed the urban divide through its different forms: e.g. inclusion and exclusion, wealth and poverty, and equality and inequality.
HIGHLIGHT: STATE OF THE WORLD'S CITIES REPORT GETS AUDIENCE IN PARLIAMENTS IN INDIA, BRAZIL, AND MEXICO
The State of the World's Cities Report 2010/2011 – Cities for All:
Bridging the Urban Divide was launched in Rio de Janeiro at World Urban Forum 5. The report was also launched in Paris, Geneva, Brussels (in the European Parliament, resulting in the request for a joint publication with DG Research), London, New York, Nairobi, and Honolulu. The report's topic and the initial publicity through various outlets generated much more media attention than previous reports, with 5,360 English-language media articles mentioning the report. Articles or advertisements on the report were printed in the Guardian Weekly, the Financial Times, the Economist, the International Herald Tribune, the New African, and Newsweek, among others. Major television stations, including BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera, also featured the report.
The report was officially discussed in the Indian parliament, in relation to slum-upgrading policy. In Brazil, the report was discussed in the local parliament of Guiana, the most economically unequal city in Brazil. The Mexican parliament translated the abridged version of the report into Spanish to facilitate its use in planning and is now translating the full report. The Government of Brazil plans to use the report's povertyanalysis guidelines for their own poverty research in ten Brazilian cities. As a research reference, the report has been quoted in 20 publications, and 5 requests were received for substantive use of the report in publications. |
Regional state of cities reports
Informing global and regional state reports
In 2007, UN-HABITAT's Governing Council mandated an expansion of the agency's existing flagship reports, the Global Report on Human Settlements and the State of the World's Cities Report, to include a new biennial report series that looks at urban and housing issues at the regional level. Whereas the successive State of the World's Cities Reports are considered highly worthwhile publications, the Governing Council stated that a report with a global outlook cannot always do full justice to very specific regional urban and housing conditions and trends.
UN-HABITAT thus prepared and launched in 2008 its first regional state of cities
report, The State of African Cities 2008: A Framework for Addressing Urban Challenges in Africa. The second report, The State of African Cities 2010: Governance, Inequality, and Urban Land Markets, was launched in 2010 at the African Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development. This series is the most authoritative and upto- date assessment of human settlement conditions and policy trends in African cities and towns, reviewing these issues at regional, national, and local levels. Depending on the region, the approach involves outlining subregional common current conditions and emerging trends in housing and urban development along six major themes: population and urbanization, urban economy, urban poverty and housing, urban environmental challenges, urban governance, and emerging issues. The series' main objective is to raise awareness about the most important human settlement-related challenges and to identify areas for policy intervention.
In line with the mandate from the Governing Council, additional biennial regional reports have been prepared:
- The State of Latin American and Caribbean Cities 2010, launched at World Urban Forum 5 in Brazil.
- The State of Asian and Pacific Cities 2010, launched at the 2010 World Habitat Day at the Shanghai Expo.
- The State of European Cities in Transition 2010–2011, to be launched in 2011.
The 2012 round of regional state of cities reports will include a first: The State of Arab Cities 2012.
Global Urban Observatory Programme
Monitoring and managing global information for the Habitat Agenda
In 1997, UN-HABITAT established the Global Urban Observatory to help find scientific solutions to the urban information crisis. Charged with generating 'better information for better cities', the observatory initiated its partnership with local and national authorities in selected countries. It was to develop systems for urban data collection that are locally relevant and globally linked in order to produce evidence-based knowledge and information, the fundamental elements of effective advocacy.
The Global Urban Observatory is currently assisting countries and cities to improve their capacity to design, access, manage, and analyse their information to enhance existing policy, planning, and decision-making mechanisms. It aims to do the following: enhance the use of knowledge and urban indicators for policy formulation, planning, and urban management through a participatory approach; support the national and local authorities to localize Millennium Development Goal and Habitat Agenda indicators to achieve sustainable urbanization; provide technical assistance to localize urban observatory, Geographic Information System, and UrbanInfo (software) tools to enhance monitoring and planning mechanisms; systemize the results of global, national, and city-level monitoring activities, as well as city-level best practices, in the use of worldwide urban information.
The main objective of the Global Urban Observatory is to regularly update the urban indicator database and provide urban statistical analysis for the flagship reports (the State of the World's Cities Report and the Global Report on Human Settlements), all the regional state of cities reports, reports on youth and gender, and the annual Millennium Development Goals Report.
HIGHLIGHT: UN-HABITAT SUPPORTS AND ESTABLISHES EFFECTIVE LOCAL URBAN OBSERVATORIES AROUND THE WORLD
One hundred cities in Vietnam have requested UN-HABITAT to provide technical assistance to establish a Local Urban Observatory in each city. Meanwhile, the Local Urban Observatory in Medina Munawara, Saudi Arabia, won the UN-HABITAT Scroll of Honour Award in 2009 for their contribution to the city's development strategy and the Urban Indicators Programme. Another Local Urban Observatory in Belo Horizonte in Brazil is continuously supporting the municipality with reliable data, indicators, and statistical analysis for municipal planning, especially through the Slum
Upgrading Programme. In Sudan, a Local Urban Observatory is supporting the spatial planning process through the Urban Indicators Programme. |
Best Practices and Local Leadership Programme
Showcasing examples of good policies and enabling legislation with 3,000-plus best practices
Best practices are actions that have made a lasting contribution to improving the quality of life and the sustainability of communities, cities, and regions. The Best Practices and Local Leadership Programme is a global network that includes local authorities, professional and academic institutions, and civil society organizations dedicated to the identification and exchange of successful solutions for sustainable human development. This programme's objectives are to raise the awareness of decision makers on critical social, economic, and environmental issues and to better inform decision makers of the practical means and policy options for improving the living environment. It does so by identifying, disseminating, and applying lessons learned from best practices in ongoing training, leadership, and policy development activities. Best practices are identified in the following thematic areas: housing and urban development, urban governance, environmental planning and management, urban design, economic development, social inclusion, crime prevention, poverty reduction, women, youth, cultural heritage, municipal finance and management, and infrastructure and social services. The policy implications and lessons learned from the best practices are incorporated into the State of the World's Cities Report and the Global Report on Human Settlements, among other publications.
The programme has resulted in the identification of more than 3,000 good and best practices. Many of them have been replicated, either in part or in whole. Information has also been used in case studies and training materials, as well as in direct city-to-city exchanges. Awards have been used as the incentive for submitting and documenting best practices. Since 1996, the number of main awards has grown to three: the Dubai International Award for Best Practices to Improve the Living Environment (1996), the Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa UN-HABITAT Award (2007), and the Rafik Hariri UN-HABITAT Memorial Award (2009).
HIGHLIGHT: LINKING PROBLEMS TO PROVEN SOLUTIONS IN MEDELLÍN, COLOMBIA
Fundación Hábitat Colombia is a Bogotá-based NGO that is engaged in large-scale networking and exchange of best practices. Since 2005, the NGO has been developing and implementing methodologies and formats for active learning exchanges based on best practices. In 2005, UN-HABITAT established a partnership with Medellín Municipality in Colombia, and this resulted in the Latin American and Caribbean Competition for Best Practice Transfer. Through the Medellín exercise, a best practice transfer methodology was designed and tested. The elements of the methodology and the tools for its application aimed at matching supply (best practices) and demand (problem). This included guidelines on the transfer process, as well as impact indicators.
These methodology components have been used continuously since then through similar exercises carried out by Fundación Hábitat Colombia. From 2005 to 2009, the organization has applied these methodological and technical resources in 19 pilot cases of transfers in Colombia. These 19 practices come from 11 countries: India, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Cuba, Costa Rica, Uruguay, El Salvador, and Colombia.
Various national, regional, and international agencies and networks have applied, promoted, or disseminated the methodologies and tools developed by Fundación Hábitat Colombia, including the Colombian Federation of Municipalities, the Ibero-American Forum of Best Practices, and UNDESA. Some of the transferred initiatives have become best practices and even award winners in the receiving localities. For example, the Youth Participatory Budgeting concept transferred to Medellín from Brazil won a UNESCO award. |
Youth Empowerment Programme
Putting young people at the centre of development
UN-HABITAT regards young people as key to a better world and as active partners in meeting the challenges posed by the global process of rapid and often unplanned urbanization. The agency's work with respect to youth is guided by the Habitat Agenda, which mandates that the needs of children and youth have to be considered specifically, enhancing their skills and training them for decisionmaking roles and sustainable livelihoods. UN-HABITAT's Strategy for Enhanced Engagement with Youth, adopted by the Governing Council in 2005, provided a framework for designing and implementing the Youth Empowerment Programme, which is supported by the Government of Norway and other member states. The strategy has seen considerable success, with four key initiatives implemented:
- The Urban Youth Fund provides financial support for youth-led development initiatives in developing countries. Initial donors include the Government of Norway, and the fund hopes to engage more partners. About 115 youth groups have benefited globally. Almost USD 1 million a year goes towards funding successful applicant organizations from around the world that are led by the youth and have innovative projects. More than 50 percent of the beneficiaries are from African and Arab states and most focus on vocational training and entrepreneurship.
- One Stop Youth Resource Centres provide space for youth to receive key services and training and to lead initiatives. The centres in East Africa have so far trained over 4,500 youth in entrepreneurship in Nairobi, Kampala, and Dar es Salaam.
- Moonbeam Centre provides construction training and support for young female and male entrepreneurs from slums in and around Nairobi, Kenya. Through the Youth Empowerment Programme, 385 youth from informal settlements have been registered at the Moonbeam Youth Training Centre for vocational skills training that focuses on production of building blocks, landscaping, and basic road construction. Three construction brigades have been established by the centre, and their formal registration is underway.
- The Urban Entrepreneurship Programme focuses on creating selfemployment or growth-oriented businesses.
Key publications include the State of the Urban Youth 2010/2011; 'Levelling the Playing Field: Inequality of Youth Opportunity', a supplement of the State of the World's Cities Report; Habitat Debate Vol. 9, No. 2: 'Young People in an Urbanizing World'; Youth Entrepreneurship and Employment; Mapping Urban Youth-Led Development; Ideas to Action: Best Practices in Youth-Led Development; and Urban Youth Centres Set-Up.
HIGHLIGHT: SUPPORTING PROFESSIONAL YOUTH DREAMING OF A GREEN AND GROWING NIGERIA
"Oil has disorganized the psyche of many young people, and they abandon agriculture," laments Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu of Nigeria. His moment of awakening to the importance of farming came in childhood, when his family survived a period of civil unrest and violence by growing their own food. He later established the Smallholders Foundation, teaching youth to run small-scale agriculture businesses. With help from the UN-HABITAT Opportunities Fund, Smallholders Foundation is expanding its School Gardens Programme. The programme inspires young people to take up careers in agriculture, offering them a hands-on learning process that includes establishing and maintaining school gardens and managing profitable, sustainable small-scale agriculture businesses. Nnaemeka's dream of a green and growing Nigeria is now being taken up by a new generation of youth. |
Private sector partnerships
Rallying the corporate world to the cause of sustainable urbanization
From global leaders to small and medium-sized enterprises, UN-HABITAT has engaged in a decisive effort to bring the business community on board in the drive towards sustainable urbanization. The private sector has the power to spearhead innovation and responsible business practices to deliver sustainable and liveable cities. UN-HABITAT's business partners have also understood the comparative advantages of UN-HABITAT, including the flexibility of its modest programme and its responsiveness, addressing concrete needs on the ground for tangible and visible results.
UN-HABITAT is fostering partnerships between the agency and the business community by promoting dialogue and cooperation:
- UN-HABITAT provides avenues for the private sector to participate as partners towards the implementation of the Habitat Agenda. UN-HABITAT regularly consults with the private sector to seek new ways of improving living conditions and achieving harmonious cities by collaborating with the urban poor, developing the market chain at the bottom of the pyramid, designing innovative business models, and creating affordable and flexible technologies that are adaptable to climate change.
- UN-HABITAT brokers solutions between partners in cities, promoting the role of the private sector in partnerships around specific global, regional, and local initiatives. A number of operational projects in the areas of water and sanitation, housing, and urban data management have been implemented with private sector firms.
- The Habitat Business Forum is a gathering of private sector companies in order to showcase and debate urban challenges and solutions. It is organized at each session of the World Urban Forum, which also offers opportunities for dialogue and exploring partnerships with governments, local authorities, and civil society partners.
- The UN-HABITAT Business Award for Better Cities promotes business practices, models, and technologies that provide smart and viable solutions for the challenges of urbanization. The award recognizes outstanding initiatives in the following areas: affordable and replicable housing; sustainable water, sanitation, and waste management; efficient and lasting urban energy and transport; innovative and transformative information and communication technologies; proactive development of entrepreneurship to boost urban economic activities; innovative and affordable financial services; and any other area contributing to better cities.
Some of the key private sector partners include Arcadis NV, BASF and BASF Social Foundation, CISCO Systems, Coca-Cola, Electrogaz, GDF-SUEZ, Google Inc., Oxiana Limited, Siemens and Siemens Foundation, Starbucks, Veolia Environnement, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and Zerofootprint.
HIGHLIGHT: UN-HABITAT AND ARCADIS THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX WITH 'SHELTER'
'Shelter' is an innovative partnership initiative with Arcadis, an international Dutch company dedicated to infrastructure, environment, and buildings that enhance mobility, sustainability, and quality of life. Shelter is the name Arcadis chose to bring their 15,000 employees together around the goal of providing shelter and creating a platform to make the partnership visible and tangible. Arcadis commits its employees, expertise, and skills to help bring the UN-HABITAT mission forward. Arcadis' talents span the fields of infrastructure, water, environment, buildings, and urban planning at the highest levels. The partnership coincides with Arcadis' aim of playing a meaningful role in communities and using their services and expertise in ways that positively impact the world.
The partnership between UN-HABITAT and Arcadis focuses on two activities. The first is the pro-bono participation of Arcadis professionals in UN-HABITAT projects such as the recovery programme for Haiti. The second is transferring urban planning and development knowledge by contributing to some of the normative activities of UN-HABITAT such as training, seminars, or inputs to publications. Arcadis is also a main sponsor of the World Urban Campaign; the company wants to contribute to raising public awareness on the positive role of cities and to address the social, economic, and environmental challenges of urbanization. |
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