The greater part of UN-HABITAT-managed resources is spent in developing countries to support operational activities in urban areas. These resources are mobilised from a variety of funding agencies, both multilateral and bilateral, and from the countries themselves. A majority of UN-HABITAT projects address the needs of local authorities, in terms of capacity-building, urban policy reform, environmental planning and monitoring, as well as concrete housing and slum upgrading programmes.

Since its creation in 1978, UN-HABITAT has supported hundreds of cities in improving their living environment. These range from the poorest towns in Least Developed Countries to the wealthy cities of the Middle East. UN-HABITAT has, for instance, cooperated for many years with the small towns in Burkina Faso and with Dubai Municipality, bringing about crucial changes in municipal management and planning. This work has contributed to a complete renewal of urban planning approaches, with a move from top-down spatial planning to multi-stakeholders action planning based on city consultations and debates.

UN-HABITAT has also played a major role in post-conflict urban rehabilitation, including through the re-establishment and training of local authorities in countries such as Somalia, Kosovo or Afghanistan.

This intimate knowledge of the capacities and needs of local authorities around the world constitutes a solid reference basis and also a testing ground for UN-HABITAT’s normative work and policy guidelines.

Indeed, this cooperation with local authorities works both ways as many cities support UN-HABITAT activities, either through city-to-city cooperation or through direct contributions. In this latter category, mention should be made of Fukuoka and Rio de Janeiro which host and support financially the regional offices of UN-HABITAT for Asia and Latin America respectively, and of Dubai which co-finances the Best Practice Programme through a biennial competition. Several Chinese cities have also hosted and financed international UN-HABITAT conferences in recent years. The operational cooperation between local authorities and UN-HABITAT benefits from the political (and often financial) support from many national governments which are increasingly aware that democratic local authorities are essential for the improvement of housing conditions and the sustainable development of cities and other human settlements.