Press - Launch of the World Cities Report 2026 (WUF13)

Good afternoon, everyone.
First of all, we regret the late start for this session.
We also want to thank you for your patience.
In remaining in the room, we know that everybody has a very busy schedule here at the World Urban Forum.
Welcome to the launch of the 2026 World Cities Report on the theme, the Global housing crisis, Pathways to Action.
My name is Ed Lamamu and I'm the Director for Knowledge and Innovation at UN Habitat, and it's my distinct honor to moderate this session.
The global report that we're launching here today is a significant milestone for you and habitat, but for all of us as a community.
It provides critical insights on the nature and future of the global housing crisis while outlining critical solutions.
In this sense, the World Cities Report represents an important foundation for the entire World Urban Forum and all the conversations and engagements that we will have here.
As we wait for the arrival of the Executive Director of UN Habitat, who unfortunately is slightly delayed but is on her way, I would like to invite Benedict Aria, who is the chief of the global research and Analytics team at UN Habitat, who led and coordinated the World Cities report to give us an overview and highlights of the content of the World Cities report.
Benedict, over to you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ed.
Good afternoon, colleagues.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
What I will quickly do is to provide an overview of the report in about 6 minutes.
After this meeting here, we shall have a round table where I will have a deep dive into the reports.
And we have the booklet here, and then I think my colleague will be able to distribute some copies.
We have limited copies because they were published here.
But my colleague will be able to Mary will be able to distribute a copy.
So those of you who are interested can collect it from Mary.
And this report focuses on the global housing crisis.
It titled with the global housing crisis, pathways to action.
And I will try to explain briefly what this report does.
Examines the scale and complexity of the global housing crisis and sets out practical evidence based pathways to address interconnected challenges, and we draw on diverse regional data to inform action by governments, partners, and policymakers.
In terms of the housing crisis, we identify or we examine five interrelated challenges that define the global housing crisis.
We look at rising housing affordability, displacement, and loss of housing, informality, which has become a defining feature of urban, climate related risks and resilience, and also we look at creating livable, inclusive and equitable cities.
And all these challenges, they relate to the seven dimensions of adequate housing.
Collectively, these challenges creates a multidimensional problem with persistent gaps in policy and implementation.
The report is divided into three parts.
Chapters one and two form the introduction and they set the context for the global housing crisis.
We have Chapter one which articulates the global housing crisis.
Chapter two looks at what we have learned from housing policy in the past 50 years.
In other words, how have we arrived at where we are today? And Chapters three to seven look at the various dimensions of the global housing crisis and how these crises not only do we articulate nature of the crisis, but we try to proffer solutions and each of these chapters within the thematic focus tries to look at the solutions that can be addressed by governments at all levels and relevant stakeholders and partners.
Chapter eight addresses the issue of housing finance, housing has to be paid for irrespective.
Then Chapter nine collectively addresses the transformative pathways for action.
In preparing this report, we had over 80 multidisciplinary experts drawn from various institutions around the world.
Some of them are here today, and we appreciate them.
We had several expert group meetings, consultative meetings, which we looked at the theme which we looked at the theme of the report, we reviewed the chapters, the, and we provided greater context.
So what I will do right now is to quickly go through some of the findings, and I'm doing this very, very quickly.
Our aide is here, so I will give you the opportunity once I've finished.
One of the key things we found out is that at least 3.4 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate housing, variously defined, including 1.16 billion people that live in informal settlements, and this is the highest level on record.
So that has to do with inadequate housing.
And then globally, 44% of households spend over 30% of their income on housing.
In other words, in terms of rental, and then rental affordability is more severe in S Saran Africa, where 55% of households or rental households are overburdened.
Housing prices generally have risen faster than incomes globally.
It's all over the world.
Data that we have shows that, and we find out that households now spend more than 11 times of their annual income to purchase a typical house, and this exceeds 16 times in regions like central and southeast Asia.
One of the key issues that we identified in the report is the shortage of adequate housing, which has intensified globally.
And this has increased from 251 million units in 2010 to 268 million in 2023.
Of course, the solution is to build will be automatically, can we increase the supply of housing? Let's build more houses.
But the issue is that we have to build the right kind of houses because there are places that we built houses and they are referred to as ghost cities.
Those houses became unaffordable.
Those houses were never occupied.
Another key issue is the displacement because we look at housing crisis from a very multidimensional perspective.
We talk about displacement.
By 2024, 203.5 203.2 million people were forcefully displaced and this had doubled over the last ten years.
In addition, 64 million people were displaced from informal settlements over the past two decades.
So not only are we displacing people or people are being displaced again, a lot of destruction to the houses are occurring.
We also found out that climate related risks are projected to destroy 167 million homes by 2024, and by 2023, natural catastrophes resulted in a 280 billion loss, mainly in homes and most of these were uninsured and as such, occupants were never compensated.
Informal housing accounts for 80% of residential construction in developing countries.
In other words, if informal sector accounts for 81%, informal settlements or informality has to be part of the solution in providing adequate housing.
And by 2050, it is estimated that 2 billion people will be added to urban areas added to cities, and this will intensify the pressure on housing systems.
So we need to provide housing.
Again, in providing housing, we have to address issues of urbanization, issues of rising land values, issues of widening inequality, and again, to get the private sector to play a key role that is not really driven by profit but also needs to balance the social aspects of housing.
And then one of the things that we found out with respect to finance, only about 25%, about one quarter of eligible applicants were successful in applying for loans globally.
In other words, 75% had to seek for sources of housing funding elsewhere.
These are some of the major findings.
What are some of these key messages that emanate from the report? One of the key messages we found from this report is that we need to strengthen the social function of housing while harnessing its economic value.
We talk a lot about economic value.
Again, we look at the economic value of housing and the social value of housing.
We need to balance both.
The social value of housing is very important.
It houses us who does where we foster families, that's where we raise our families.
That's where we reside at the end of the day.
Also, the economic value of housing is also important.
So we need to be sure that whatever policies we take, we need to balance both.
Affordability, the issue of affordability is real and again, it's central to addressing the global housing crisis.
How can we make housing more affordable? These are unpacked variously in the report, and we'll be talking about that much later.
Again, we need to adopt integrated housing policies.
Again, when we talk about integrated housing policies, it looks at housing from a wider perspective, not just only affordability of building houses.
And then how do we align these with national urban and urban development policies and national development policies? There is no shortage of housing policies in many countries, but again, most of these housing policies are not adequately integrated, as we found out in our report.
Local governments and regional governments need to be empowered to lead citywide responses to displacement, and more often than not The local governments, they feel the brunt of displacement, but they don't have the resources to be able to respond to this, and we need to look at displacement beyond beyond the humanitarian aspect.
We need to look at it from a development perspective and also an urban development perspective because most of those that are displaced move to the urban areas.
The issue of housing integrating housing into climate action is very much important.
Housing has to be central to climate action.
We've talked about this in previousious reports, both in terms of mitigation and in terms of adaptation, housing has to be central.
The issue of informality is very much important.
Not only formality, we talk about community led housing as well.
Informality is not only feature in developing countries, it's also happening in developed countries as well.
Again, we can't turn a blind eye to the issue of informality.
We need to be able to address this.
Then the issue of housing finance is very much important.
Chapter nine tells us that most people, especially in developing countries and also in developed countries do not have access to conventional sources of housing finance.
We saw it was just only 25%.
In other words, the bulk are left out.
We need to leverage the risk instruments, again, and also unlock long term investment in affordable housing.
We also need to unlock latent sources of housing finance that are often used by low income households.
How can we leverage this for adequate housing? Then, of course, finally, the issue of housing data systems.
We need to expand housing data systems, both in terms of affordability data, all kinds of data because all of these are very much important in decisions to provide adequate housing.
So I think this is where I want to rest my case again.
We have much more to unpack in this report, and again, this launch will not be the adequate place where this can be done.
What we've tried to do here is to try to give some snippets and then to encourage you to participate and we'll be willing to take questions at the end of this session.
Thank you very much, Ed, and I'll hand it back to you.
Thank you very much, Benedict Arima, for those insights.
It is clear that the report will be a critical resource for housing policy and practice globally.
The magnitude of the crisis is alarming.
The urgency is clear, and the call to action is also clear, and that is why we are here at the World Urban Forum.
With that, it is my honor to recognize that our Executive Director of Human habitat is here with us now, and I would like to invite miss Anna Claudia Rosbach to deliver her opening remarks.
Thank you, Alan.
Thank you, Ben, for the presentation.
I would also like to recognize that many of the researchers, experts that contributed to this report are here with us today.
The report is also a result of intense dialogue, conversations, and um, and co creation, I would say, at least it was the spirit that we actually aimed to bend and your leadership has been very, very important, very strategic.
I think it's critical that we have an alignment between the outline of the report, the structure of this forum, right, and our strategic plan.
For 26, 29.
So everything is connected.
We tried to connect the means the focus of our strategic plan, access to housing, land, basic services, transformation of informal settlements and the areas of impact and the means of implementation.
So housing, as has been said, not only as a result of market forces, not only as a result of producing or generating buildings, but housing within larger systems, and the focus that we gave on climate and environment, I think it's of extreme relevance considering the climate challenges that we face right now.
Also, the specific focus on finance.
Finance has been one of the most, um, demanded areas for you and habitat to work on.
Recently, we just had a large African urban forum in Nairobi.
There's a declaration resulting from this urban forum, and then access to finance was one of the critical issue there.
And this is addressed, and we look at the models that are being now implemented.
Understanding that innovation means also accepting the different realities, the different contexts, and the need to think differently than the rigid financial housing finance systems that have been historically established because housing is very expensive and people don't have the money to pay and countries have very diverse fiscal capacity to close this gap.
Um, so this is why markets don't get to the bottom and the public offer doesn't have the comprehensive outreach that we would expect.
So the focus on climate, the focus on finance, the reflections around the housing crisis and the trajectory, what led us here, right? What has worked, what has not worked, and why we are here, and bringing really up front some features of this housing crisis.
There are 21 feature that is the common denominator, which is affordability has always been an issue for the Global South specifically, but now becoming an issue in the global north.
Now everywhere, people don't have money to buy or to rent a house and affordability became an issue for young people for the aging population of our many cities.
But informality has gained a dimension that no longer can be tolerated.
And 1 billion people living informal settlements.
We are assessing SDG 11 this year in New York, and we are really, really behind our targets.
So and while we speak, people are lacking water, people are lacking sanitation.
Uh, people are living in very much precarious conditions on the rain literally being flooded, affected by landslides, you name it.
If there's an earthquake, the first affected are those living in informal settlements and losing their houses.
So the urgency of informality is clear on this report and the urgency for us also to act upon it as a critical central component of the housing crisis that we are living in.
This means building new houses, yes, because we do have to replace the structures, but this means mainly recognizing the informal settlements, mapping the informal settlements, embedding, integrating into urban plans, into the city structure, and into the investment policies of the country.
So these are some of the reflections, messages, ideas that we bring here, and I'm proud that we have been able to really embed housing, towards the systems where it is, right? Because For me, the solution of the housing crisis is not only having a dedicated policy or program, but really systems that work at several levels from the financial systems, international financial systems, the national financial systems, the urban plans that happens on the ground, and of course, the communities.
I think this is an asset for a strong asset for the global urban community here.
Present here in Baku and the ones who haven't been able to travel here.
Also because beyond the reflections beyond highlighting critical aspects of the housing crisis, it brings pathways, and this is on the title, and we discussed that a lot.
Yes, let's bring the crisis because it's relevant to bring the crisis.
But let's show the pathways.
I have been seeing that here at the forum.
The Foreign Heads of Practices Hub, some of them are reflected here.
You all bring practices from your different corners of the world and their policies we heard clearly at the ministerial roundtable yesterday at the opening at the heads of government, they all spoke about housing and urban planning was quite impressive, but bringing what they are showcasing what they are bringing to the table in terms of direction and pathways in the different places.
And there's a lot of progress, I would say, so I'm really hopeful and actually, I'm certain that this report will be widely used by the researchers and by the practitioners and the policymakers.
Also, the way It's presented and written.
I think it talks to different audiences.
Thank you.
Thank you, Executive Director of UN Habitat, for elaborating the relevance of this report in the global context and why we must address the global housing crisis to address other global challenges.
Of course, your hope and your vision that this report will be an asset for the global urban and housing community.
With that, we are also honored to have with us today three distinguished global experts who have been instrumental in shaping the global housing and urban discourse, but have also engaged closely with this report and they will provide us their perspectives.
First, I am pleased to invite Professor Carol Archer, Faculty of the Built Environment, University of Technology, Jamaica to share her perspective.
Professor Archer, you're welcome.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I must congratulate the team for putting forward yet another insightful and thought provoking report, giving the status of our cities.
As a practitioner, as an academic, I welcome this report and for all the academics among us, I want to recognize you and encourage you, please ensure that you download the report and use it.
I teach a course on housing policy and practice, and certainly it will be on my reading list come September.
And here is why.
This book provides the opportunity for students to be exposed to practices from across the globe that we normally would not be privy to.
We have the opportunity to interrogate to see what is likely to work.
How do we need to scale for our reality? Certainly, coming from the small island developing states, you realize that this is very relevant for us.
This is very, very pertinent.
So for that, I want to commend the text to you.
I also want to commend the text because of two very critical points that we have highlighted in this report.
One to do with well, actually three.
One, we have examined the state of housing policy over the past 50 years, what has worked and what has not worked.
This is critical because coming from 1976 to now, we have to take stock, re examine, and move forward.
Are, some of the policies that have worked, for example, establishing housing trust throughout developing countries that has worked, what has had some limitations, the role of local government, and what has potential bringing private sector to the table to help to address the issue of housing finance.
In addition to looking at housing policies over the past 50 years, this text also looked at some of the critical issues that we are now faced with.
One, having to do with how do we address housing among particular groups? One area which is of importance to me is, how do we address housing among our aging population? And we drew on examples from across the globe to highlight ways in which this can be addressed.
Finally, The access to adequate and affordable housing for this generation, Gen Z, and I think there's another generation here.
X, the one to call.
It is critical because that's the group that I interact with in the classroom.
How do you get that group to understand the severity of the housing crisis.
This has been laid out clearly and comprehensively in the text, and one of the things that I certainly will be doing come September using this text is to ask that same generation to help to solve that problem that they are faced with.
Yes, using examples that have been outlined here.
Because when you look at the fact that this generation Gen Z, would not be able to afford, even though they are going to be more educated and earned much more than their parents would have earned at that stage, they are not able to afford housing.
So when you are with that group educating and exposing and providing them with some concrete examples, then I think this text will be contributing to looking at some actionable steps to take as we talk about the global crisis pathways to action.
Again, I congratulate the team.
They certainly the work that they have done, the researchers and being guided by Ben and his team and by the advisory board certainly makes my work in the classroom a little bit easier because I have a text that I will guide the students with.
Thank you again and congratulations.
Thank you so much, Professor Carol Archer, for reflecting on how to use the report to advance awareness, action, and actors at all, of course, levels and across generations.
And your point around the need to scale in context was also very important.
We'll now hear also from Professor Sahar Aa, who is an Emeritus Professor of Urban Design at the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, a long standing partner of human habitat as well to share her perspectives on the report.
Thank you, Elam very much and thanks to my colleague, Ben and my dear friend for their inputs.
I think I will not have much to add.
But let me tell you my overall insight about how this report is important and how it relates to Wolf 13.
I think I'm very happy because whenever I go anywhere in any dialogue room or in any roundtable or whatever, we always hear the same terminologies that are existing in this document, which is very good because it links at the EGS with the strategy of habitat.
It links also with what we are saying here about the concept of the Wolf 13 and about this document, which I believe As Carol said, it's a very good piece of literature review.
It can be used by researchers, it can be used by officials, it can be used by governments if they look at it by parliamentarians as well.
I think it's going to be useful for really the next few coming years.
What I want to point out in this report, we've talked a lot about affordability, but what it reflects, it reflects more two important things.
One, the human rights.
Now we understand that the housing is a human right, we always said that, but here in this report, it is translated and how we see it.
I think this is a very good point.
The other point also is dignity.
We have never thought about housing as an essential point to keep the dignity of the citizen.
I think here we discover new wordings related to housing.
Of course, that is a very important point.
I believe the fundamental strength of this report is the transformative approaches that it presents.
You have heard Ben about the nine chapters and how they go smoothly from crisis diagnosis until delivering the pathways.
Of course, this is important, but more important thing is how it position housing.
In our urban development and in our cities.
Because we have seen always housing as a sector, we have the environmental sector, the economic sector, and we related them together at the end of any report or any study or any master plan.
But now, we have the central part is housing.
Then we link it to the challenges because if we look about quality of life or if we talk about cities or if we talk about successful urban development, the central core is housing.
That's why I think this is a very important point.
I have a special remark also related to the diversity of the case studies and the diverse geographic regions, which is also a successful point and a strong point that you need to look at them.
You see the unconventional financing approaches.
You can see innovative ideas.
It is really full of, let's say, new interpretation of the housing crisis, not the common ones.
My last comment would be related to Chapter two.
I like Chapter two because Chapter two, is analyzing the past 50 years of housing policy and it explains how through all these past 50 years, we have been trying and policies have been made and governments have been working and so it explains why this did not work.
And I think today we need to understand why things did not work to be able to work for a new approach.
I think the central pillar of that was the concept of how to frame social justice, how to frame economic stability, how to frame policies, and how to frame legalization, rules and so on.
So I think all this is very important from this invaluable chapter because it underscores also today's affordability, what it means, the supply deficienc, what they require, and the developers what they should do.
We have some points and of course, it addresses many things, all the local grassroots communities, private developers, municipalities, national governments.
I think examining these historical policy shifts, stakeholders can move beyond siloid interventions and adopt integrated systemic solutions that view housing not as a shelter only, but really as a catalyst for equitable urban transformation.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Professor Sahar Atia, for sharing your reflections around how this report is relevant to all actors across the board and that it provides new interpretations of the housing crisis.
I'm now very pleased to invite Professor Marie Hoster Mayer from the School of Architecture and Planning at Witz University in Johannesburg, South Africa, to also share with us her perspectives on the World Cities Report.
Thanks so much.
I also won't repeat what's been said by my fellow professors in housing here and wonderful to be on this panel, and again, congratulations to the team that did the hard work of putting this together.
To me, this report really goes beyond just, um, um, the surface of the things we're talking about here.
I think a central theme is how the economy is an entry point into housing, but housing is also an entry point into the economy.
From that perspective, the report really explains why financialization of housing is such an important theme at the moment and one that we need to be so worried about.
With that, Also the connection between housing and the increasing inequality globally.
I think those are some of the most important messages that this report starts to give us a way to understand in more depth, but also to deal with.
It then lifts out this term social function, which we're using a lot in this forum.
If anybody grappling with what it really means.
This is the report.
This is where you go to find it out.
We used to talk about use value and exchange value of housing.
We now talk about social function as opposed to speculative function.
I think understanding the two is really important.
What can policy do to improve the social function? It's not just policy, it's law, it's planning, um and from that perspective, the report gives us leverage that the state actually has over these things that is really important, and stewardship, regulations, financing, um, and ensuring rights, and how to do that in a way that actually helps us reduce inequality, um, And I think also the overall message is we have to move away from this wish to eradicate informal settlements to leveraging informality, as the ED was saying, but how does one do that? I think a lot of governments are grappling with that.
The academics might be saying do it and the grassroots might be saying do it, but the report really gives concrete advice on that and part of it is To start plurralizing, we have to understand this as a diverse condition, but also think of plural ways of addressing it.
Different tenure forms is a very strong part of this report, and then also embracing the collective communal and collaborative in the ways we address things.
I'm going to keep it very short.
Um, just to really say that this is something that everyone takes away from this world of forum and can really digest, study deeply and use in so many ways, yes, in our classrooms, but hopefully by grassroots movements as well.
They are our intellectuals on the ground and our intellectuals in the corridors of power also need to read this.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Professor Hotter Mayer, for those reflections, emphasizing the intersections between the housing crisis and other global challenges such as inequality, but also the shifts in narrative and solutions that this report offers to the global community.
With that, we'll now transition to open up very briefly because we have consumed the time allocated for this session for a About two questions.
If there are any questions from the audience, from the press, we'll be happy to take those.
Please introduce yourself and your organization if you'd like to ask a question, the floor is open.
Please go ahead.
Would you introduce yourself? A microphone should be given to you.
Thank you.
Thank you for a great presentation.
My name is My name is Marie Christine.
I'm the chair of the International Network on Government Science advice for North America and we thrive on city science advice.
I was wondering if the report deals with the questions of policy coherence.
Because the coherence of the policies from a federal, you know, local, regional, to a municipal level can be quite difficult in order for the actual municipalities to put into implementation those different policies.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
We'll take one more question.
I think that was a great question and I'd like to invite the panelists to reflect very briefly on policy coherence with respect to housing policy and really being able to bring in the alignment across different levels of government and across different actors.
Let me start with Professor Htermyer who would like to Thanks so much.
Yes.
I think the keyword in the report is multi level governance, which speaks to that, the need to align not only policies but institutions as well, forms of communication between tiers of government and entities and government.
Yes, I would say it is a central cross cutting theme as well in the report.
Thank you.
Professor Atta, how do you see this report responding to that question? Well, let's agree that the report is about how stakeholders work together and how the let's say the the different policies within a government also because if you check, for example, in any country and you have ministries and you have the Ministry of housing and sometimes even among themselves, they are not coherent and they need to work together.
What this report is calling for is actually is calling for the multi action and multi stakeholder and working together.
The whole this year is talking about that.
I think maybe it is not addressed straightforward with a title of policy coherence, but in simple terms, you know, It means that policies in different areas will support each other because if we say that they should support housing is the central, is the main, let's say I call it the central pillar and all the other policies have to work to make it work and to make it run.
I think it is there, not explicitly, but it is present in the document.
Thank you.
Finally, Professor Archer, if you'd like to reflect on that as well.
Yes, thank you.
So I think the Chapter two will give you the historical context to help to frame the response to your question.
What has happened over the past 50 years and you get the disconnect as one of those factors that contributed to a housing crisis.
I would recommend to you Chapter seven.
Um, housing and the city delivering equitable, livable and inclusive housing.
And there, there's a focus on governance and housing, the social function of housing.
So you'll see that, you know, to respond to your question.
Chapter seven will help to show that in terms of responding on how policy ought to respond.
Here is some, you know, I wouldn't want to say prescription per se, but Chapter seven will help to begin now to frame, how do we address that? Um, you know, connectivity.
Thank you so much to our distinguished panel of experts for those insights and reflections.
We have come to the end of our session.
We do invite you to use the report as a tool for action, and we thank you very much for your time today.