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Although poverty remains a primarily rural phenomenon, urban poverty is becoming a severe, pervasive – and largely unacknowledged feature of urban life. The findings in this report show how...

The 21st century is the Century of the City. Cities contain both order and chaos. How can city planners and policymakers harmonize the various interests, diversity and inherent contradictions within...

The world's urban population now exceeds the world's rural population. What does this mean for the state of our cities, given the strain this global demographic shift is placing upon current urban...

What this new edition of State of the World’s Cities shows is that prosperity for all has been compromised by a narrow focus on economic growth. UN-Habitat suggests a fresh approach to prosperity...

Africa is in the midst of simultaneously unfolding and highly significant demographic, economic, technological, environmental, urban and socio-political transitions. Its economic performance is...

This Report goes above and beyond the first Report, which provided a general overview of housing and urban management issues in Africa. While examining poverty, slum incidence and governance, this...

The analysis of urban development of the past twenty years presented in this maiden edition of the World Cities Report shows, with compelling evidence, that there are new forms of collaboration and...

This report examines both the developed and the developing world, and how the formal sector is unable to provide adequate employment opportunities for young people seeking gainful work. The inability...

This study reviews the informal transport sector throughout the world, and identifies promising enabling and remedial strategies. The publication is a valuable tool for local, regional and national...

Half of the world’s people live in urban areas, and roughly a third of these live in desperate poverty without access to basic amenities. This volume focuses on the deficiencies in the provision of...

Strategic planning for local economic development is a cornerstone of sustainable development. It involves wise resource use, integrating values and thinking ahead. The LED Training Series uses case...

Now more than ever, local governments are at the forefront of responding to growing social, economic and environmental challenges. Local elected officials need to develop competencies to effectively...

This publication offers a preliminary effort to identify whether, and to what extent, indigenous peoples enjoy the right to adequate housing in different regions of the world. The publication includes...

This Report examines the challenges of financing urban shelter development, focusing on the shelter needs of the poor and within the overall context of the United Nations Millennium Development target...

2005 marks the fifth anniversary of the UN Millennium Declaration, adopted in 2000 and the tenth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995. In the decade since Beijing, the number of...

The Challenge of Slums presents the first global assessment of slums, highlighting their main problems and prospects. Using a newly formulated operational definition of slums, it presents estimates of...