Building resilience and promoting adequate, inclusive and sustainable housing

With cities housing around half of the world’s population and serving as hubs of economic, social and cultural activity, they have become critical policy targets for national governments (OECD, 2014). Cities drive global growth, contributing over 80 per cent of the world’s GDP (UN-Habitat, 2023). However, these benefits are often accompanied by challenges such as traffic congestion, air pollution and rising housing costs, particularly when urbanization is poorly managed. Additionally, cities often have significant inequalities in income, housing, jobs and access to public services, while being impacted by megatrends such as climate change and digital transformations. As is emphasized in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, addressing these complex challenges is vital for making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. Given their significant policy and investment responsibilities, city administrators must collaborate closely with national governments. This is where NUP becomes crucial, guiding and coordinating efforts across government levels to ensure quality urbanization and achieve sustainable urban development. Policymakers around the world have recognized such policy needs and have taken actions to support countries’ efforts to develop and implement NUPs. Recent global challenges such as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the green transition and digitalization have also reaffirmed the importance of urban policies for sustainable development and the crucial role that national governments can play in this process. In addition, the implementation of the 2030 Agenda adopted in 2015 and the New Urban Agenda (NUA) adopted in 2016 have provided a strong rationale for countries to develop or review their NUP frameworks (OECD/UN-Habitat/UNOPS, 2021). However, despite the critical importance of making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, as outlined in Sustainable Development Goal 11, progress is currently off-track. Of the four main Goal 11 targets, only two — access to public transport and disaster risk management – have sufficient data, with current progress assessed as having a “moderate distance to target”. The other targets, including improving slums and ensuring access to public and green spaces, are significantly far from the being achieved, underscoring the need for intensified efforts at both the national and local levels (United Nations, 2024). Since 2016, the OECD, UN-Habitat and Cities Alliance have been collaborating to develop a regular and systematic NUP monitoring framework at the global scale as part of the National Urban Policy Programme (NUPP).1 In February 2018, the first edition of the Global State of National Urban Policy report (GSNUP1) was jointly launched by the OECD and UN-Habitat at the 9th World Urban Forum. The report was the first ever attempt to chart the progress of the development and implementation of NUP in 150 countries (OECD/UN-Habitat, 2018). After three years, in June 2021, the second edition of the Global State of National Urban Policy (GSNUP2) was launched, with an improved methodology. It highlighted how governments across the world are leveraging NUP to address the challenges that COVID-19 has underlined and amplified (OECD/UN-Habitat/UNOPS, 2021) (see box 1.1). Both reports served as a critical source of information and analysis for policymakers and urban professionals on how NUPs have been developed and implemented in changing circumstances.

source :

https://unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/2024/10/global-state-of-national-urban-policy-2024.pdf