UN-Habitat Arena - World Cities Report 2026 (WUF13)

Honorable guests, distinguished delegates, colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen.
Today's global housing crisis is a result of decades of inaction, limited investment, rapid urbanization, macroeconomic pressures, and crisis driven loss of homes have combined to produce severe and persistent housing shortages worldwide.
The latest global estimates are unequivocal.
Up to 3.4 billion people are living without secure, safe, and adequate housing.
More than 1 billion of them reside in informal settlements and slums, where daily life is marked by insecure tenure, overcrowding, exposure to natural hazards, and the absence of essential services such as safely managed sanitation.
Given its scale and impact, the global housing crisis demands urgent action.
Yet, despite the universally recognized right to adequate housing, the world remains far from resolving this crisis.
Housing shortages are worsening rather than easing.
While millions of people continue to be forcibly displaced each year by conflict, persecution, violence, human rights violations, and natural disasters.
For affected households, the consequences are profound, destroying livelihoods and pushing already vulnerable populations deeper into poverty.
As this edition of the Ward Cities report demonstrates, adequate housing is not merely about shelter.
It shapes access to employment, public services, legal recognition, and social networks, playing a central role to well being and quality of life.
Well located, safe, and affordable housing enhances productivity, improves health outcomes, and supports poverty reduction and shared prosperity.
Housing is also fundamental to urban resilience.
As climate related risks intensify, disaster resistant housing will be essential for adaptation and risk reduction.
Adequate housing, therefore, represents one of the most powerful entry points for accelerating sustainable and inclusive development at all levels.
This report offers a roadmap towards greener, more equitable, and more livable housing, combining global evidence with locally tailored solutions.
It is not only a warning but a call to action to recommit to housing as a human right and to ensure adequate housing for all.
Thank you.
Okay.
Good afternoon.
Can you hear me? Wonderful.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this Roundtable, which is focused on the World Cities Report of UN Habitat, 2026 that focuses on the global housing crisis pathways to action.
We have together with us today a distinguished set of panelists that I would now like to invite to join us here at the um a higher level.
I invite David Dotman.
You're welcome.
Round of applause, please.
David Dotman, General Director of the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies of Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
You're welcome.
Also inviting to join us here, Hector, Miranda, research fellow at the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico.
You're welcome.
We're also very pleased to have Imran Ali Sultan, program Director of Punjab Affordable Housing Program, Pakistan.
You're welcome.
We are honored to also invite Tabat Lonson Professor of Planning and Heritage, University of Liverpool, UK, Also, my pleasure to invite Yun Xing Xu, Director of University Research Center for Urban and Environmental Studies at Xian Xia Tong Liverpool University, China.
Thank you so much to our distinguished panelists and, of course, to the audience that have joined us here today.
The World Cities Report of UN Habitat is our flagship report that we publish every two years, and we do so with a purpose.
The purpose of this report is to provide a global overview of key trends and conditions on priority housing and urban development agendas, which is what brings all of us here at the World Urban Forum.
This year, the 2026 report of Human habitat is particularly significant for the global community and also for this World Urban Forum.
The topic focuses on the global housing crisis.
Now, I'm sure many of you have been hearing about the global housing crisis or using the concept, and many of you might have questions and perhaps some answers.
What this report does is to unpack the global housing crisis.
What does it look like? What are the characteristics? What are the drivers? What are the solutions? It provides a comprehensive perspective across global regions, across countries, across dimensions of the global housing crisis.
We're very excited to be launching this report.
The preparatory process for this report was highly collaborative across the world, across the globe.
We were very, um, fortunate as UN Habitat, to be able to work with distinguished experts here with me today, but many, many others, over 80 contributions from around the world.
We also had stakeholders contributing to the global report, to its review, and eventually to its finalization.
We're very grateful as UN Habitat.
It's been a collective global journey.
Today is an even more exciting moment.
This is when we reveal the report.
This is when we hear your feedback and your perspectives, and today we want to focus this conversation on one particular question.
We have a report How do we use the report for action in the context of the World Urban Forum? It is my honor to moderate today.
My name is Edlamabera Yamaru.
I'm the Director for Knowledge and Innovation at UN Habitat, also heavily involved in the preparation of this report with my colleagues that are also present here with us today.
So with that, I would like us to perhaps honor the program I know you've seen the video, but perhaps we can take a moment to look at the video again and reflect on the messages of the UN Habitat Executive Director, Anna Claudia Rossbach, on the World Cities Report 2026 before we proceed with the rest of our program.
I would like to please ask my colleagues to run the video again so we hear the words of the Executive Director of UN Habitat.
Honorable guests, distinguished delegates, colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen.
Today's global housing crisis is a result of decades of inaction, limited investment, rapid urbanization, macroeconomic pressures, and crisis driven loss of homes have combined to produce severe and persistent housing shortages worldwide.
The latest global estimates are unequivocal.
Up to 3.4 billion people are living without secure, safe, and adequate housing.
More than 1 billion of them reside in informal settlements in slums, where daily life is marked by insecure tenure, overcrowding, exposure to natural hazards, and the absence of essential services such as safely managed sanitation.
Given its scale and impact, the global housing crisis demands urgent action.
Yet, despite the universally recognized right to adequate housing, the world remains far from resolving this crisis.
Housing shortages are worsening rather than easing.
While millions of people continue to be forcibly displaced each year by conflict, persecution, violence, human rights violations, and natural disasters.
For affected households, the consequences are profound, destroying livelihoods and pushing already vulnerable populations deeper into poverty.
As this edition of the Ward Cities report demonstrates, adequate housing is not merely about shelter.
It shapes access to employment, public services, legal recognition, and social networks, playing a central role to well being and quality of life.
Well located, safe, and affordable housing enhances productivity, improves health outcomes, and supports poverty reduction and shared prosperity.
Housing is also fundamental to urban resilience.
As climate related risks intensify, disaster resistant housing will be essential for adaptation and risk reduction.
Adequate housing therefore represents one of the most powerful entry points for accelerating sustainable and inclusive development at all levels.
This report offers a roadmap towards greener, more equitable, and more livable housing, combining global evidence with locally tailored solutions.
It is not only a warning but a call to action to recommit to housing as a human right and to ensure adequate housing for all.
Thank you.
Okay.
By now, we must all be wondering what's in this report, what does it say? What's really at the heart of its offering.
With this, I'd like to invite Benedict Arima, who is the Chief for Global Research and Analytics at UN Habitat, and he has been leading the preparation of this report.
Let's warmly welcome Benedict to present some highlights of the report and give us a sense.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much for attending.
This session, my name is Benarima and I'm the chief of the Global report section.
This report focuses on the global housing crisis, and it's titled the Global Housing Crisis Pathways to Action.
What I'm going to do is just quickly give you a rundown of the report.
We have the report before you, I think, we'll share as many copies as possible and the website for the report is going to go live after this presentation.
Then again, you can also want us to talk more and we interact more on this report.
What this report does is to examines the scale and complexity of the global housing crisis and sets out practical evidence based pathways to address the interconnected challenges, and we draw this using regional data to inform action by governments at all levels, partners and relevant stakeholders.
There are five interconnected challenges.
What we have done, and I think this is not normally done in a single report is to look at five interrelated dimensions of the housing crisis.
Many other reports tend to focus on one or two of these, but we have looked at five of them.
The first of these is rising housing on affordability.
The displacement and loss of housing, informality, which has become a defining feature of urbanization in both developing countries and many developed countries, climate risks and resilience in terms of how climate risks affects housing and vice versa, and then creating livable and inclusive cities and equitable cities.
So all these collectively relates to the we relate all these to the seven dimensions of housing.
So these are not looked at in isolation.
This report is prepared there are three parts to this report.
The first two chapters set the tone and the context for reports, and the first chapter defines or articulates what we look at the housing crisis.
Chapter two looks at 50 years of housing policy.
In other words, what has brought us to where we are today? What kind of policies underpin where we are today.
Chapters three to seven look at the various dimensions of the global housing crisis and each of these is addressed in greater level and context.
Then we also look at what governments at various levels can do to address the various aspects or the various components or dimensions of the housing crisis.
That is done in Chapters one to seven.
Chapter eight looks at the issue of housing finance, which is overarching in all aspects of housing crisis.
Then Chapter nine collectively addresses the transformative pathways for action.
As my colleague had indicated in the collaborative approach, we had over 80 participants or 80 people, researchers, multidimensional researchers working on this reports, both from habitat and outside habitat.
We had sessions, we had expert group meetings to validate the various aspects of the reports.
Okay, let me just look at some of these findings very clearly.
I think those of you who had launched today, the AD articulated some of these.
Up to 3.4 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate housing, variously deformed.
So defined, I mean, and we have about 1.16 billion, which is the greatest number ever living in informal settlements.
In other words, informal settlements is a big feature or major feature of the housing crisis.
Globally, 44% of households spend over 30% of their income as rent.
In other words, 30% is always the threshold.
What we have 44% spending more than that.
In Africa, we find out that over 55% of renters are overboarden.
In other words, they spend more than 30% of their income on rent.
House prices have fallen faster than incomes and on the average, we require 11 multiples or 11 multiples of annual income to buy the average house in a particular region or globally when we look at data globally, and this is much larger in certain places in central and Southeastern Asia.
This exceeds about 16 multiples of income.
The shortage of housing has increased from 251 million in 2010 to 268 million in 2023.
In terms of displacement, we have more than one, two, 3.2 million people who are forcifully displaced, and this is double the number that happened a decade ago.
And we have about 64 million people that were displaced from informal settlements over the past two years.
These numbers are quite staggering.
A key issue relates to climate related hazards.
167 million houses are projected to be affected by climate related risks in 2040, and in 2023, natural disasters caused a loss of $280 billion in terms of losses, and most of these were insured uninsured adder, which means that those affected were never compensated.
Informal settlements, informal housing adder, accounts for 80% of residential construction in developing countries.
In other words, informal construction and informality is a key feature of housing in developing countries, and we need to address these as we move forward in the area of adequate housing.
And then as it rates to by 2050, it is expected that 2 billion people will be added to the urban population, and these need to be housed.
When we look at the current situation, the issues of land, affordability, et cetera, this poses enormous challenge.
And then in 2023, we found out data for you and Habitat found that only 25% or one in four households or those that applied for mortgage were approved.
In other words, 75% had to look for source of housing finance outside.
I'll quickly go through some of these key messages just to put them in context.
What are some of the key messages emerging from this report? We talked about strengthening the social function of housing while harnessing its economic value.
In other words, We have to look at the social value of function of housing.
We also have to look at the economic value of housing.
Again, we need to look at both of them simultaneously, but it's important.
Affordability is key or crucial to addressing the global housing crisis.
Everywhere we go, both in developed and developing countries, housing affordability has become a major issue.
Again, we need to adopt integrated housing policies and align these with urban and national development strategies.
In other words, we can't look at housing in isolation.
We have to have strategies that are integrated.
So one strategy in one aspect of housing should be mutually reinforcing with others.
And then we need to empower local and regional governments.
Again, to take the lead in citywide responses to displacement, not only displacement, but other aspects of housing as well.
One of the issues that came up today was the role or the policy coherence.
So we have to have a role for local governments, regional governments, and also federal government or national governments well defined in each context.
Then we talk about the issue of integrated housing into climate action.
Housing should be at the center of climate action.
Housing in terms of the contribution of housing to emissions and also how housing tends to be affected.
Again, particularly informal settlements by extreme weather events.
And the issue of leveraging informality came up very, very strongly.
The ED made special reference to that.
Then again, another issue is that in terms of financial investments, we need to leverage the risking instruments to unlock long term investments in affordable housing.
And to this, I add we need to unlock the latent resources of housing finance that are often used by low income households who are often excluded from conventional housing finance.
And the last aspect relates to enhance housing data systems to expand access and improve regulation.
Thank you very much again.
I'd like to stop here, and then we can talk more about this, and my contemporaries here will discuss this from various perspectives, and we shall be able to take your questions at the end.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Benedict Arima, for giving us a sense of what's in the report.
For anyone who was asking because we've had this question in the past, is there a global housing crisis? Have a look at the report.
I think the numbers speak to the magnitude of the crisis we're facing.
And one key message from this report, despite the magnitude of the challenge, the report makes clear that we do have solutions and we do have responses.
So we're going to transition to talk about solutions and responses, and we have our panelists here with us.
And I'll start with you, Hector.
The key question is, how do we leverage this report and translate it into action? Action across different disciplines, action across different actors, action across different levels of governance and decision making.
However you may want to unpack it.
How do we move towards action? Thank you for the question, Ed Lam.
I think that I want to focus on the informality question because as mentioned by Ben is one of the key elements of this report.
And the city the report is quite clear in very crucial findings.
Informal settlement continue to expand in absolute terms.
And also the forced eviction remain the dominant policy response in many cities.
And this approach is deeply tied to the ongoing astigmatization that that we have against urban informality.
And in this context, if we want to translate, we want to do something different, I think we need to focus on how we can change this way of thinking about informality.
An informal settlement.
And to that end, I think that I consider it essential to think about three changes that are concrete that can be implemented.
The first one is about reviewing our legal and normative frameworks.
And what we see in many of our cities and our countries is that planning laws and regulation need to explicitly recognize the urban not as an anomaly, but as a legitimate mode of production urban production.
And this report remind us that often we discuss about informal settlement as about all the deprivation dimension that they have.
But the report also reminds us that informal settlement are providing vital access to affordable housing, are foster local economic activities and possess a unique flexibility that is very interesting in the context of climate change.
And to unlock this potential, we need to guarantee the right to the city that entails that cities are seen as a common good, and inhabitants needs to collectively have access to this right and enjoy an inclusive environment.
And I think the second element is to think about a collective action.
We usually come from planning tradition that are really top down, that are rigid, and we need to look at collaboration that are multisexual and multi scalar.
And the third and final point and it is in the report, I think we need to move to a hybrid and context based approach.
And what we see with informality and in the report mentioned, we see a highly dynamic, context specific process about informality, which produce widely different outcome across different cities.
And in front of that we have very rigid planning regulations.
So we need to change that and instead, I really like this idea and this metaphor about how we can move towards a chaalonic urbanism, which in this context means to be flexible and highly adaptable to specific dynamics and needs of the different communities that we are engaging with.
So to conclude, I would like to highlight that informal settlement holds a significant of tat potential to contribute to more inclusive and sustainable urban development, and the task is to build legal, collaborative, and flexible frameworks necessary to leveraging the potential.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you so much, Hector.
Hector was a collaborator in the preparation of this report.
You've been thinking a lot about this certainly together with us.
I have a follow up question for you.
You speak about flexibility in policy and legal frameworks.
Do you see challenges in aligning flexibility with the urgency of decision making that local and national governments face on a day to day basis? Is there a contradiction there? Flexibility and the urgency of action? I think that yeah, it's fine.
Yeah.
I think actually there is kind of an understanding that formal planning and formal regulation that exists.
But actually, when you look at the city making on the ground at municipal level, many of the decision are based very on every day.
So actually, when you look at cities, they are made and actually they are made through this ongoing process that are very quite flexible.
So I think that the gap that we need to bridge is to recognize that this is the way we are planning.
And we need to from that from this recognition, try to consolidate that processes and try to articulate with national policies.
Because I think sometimes national policies tend to see something like ten years ahead.
And we need to bridge this divide.
But I think flexibility is already there, and cities are built through flexibility.
Okay, we'll come back to that concept of flexibility amidst fast changing context and urgency and how that actually comes to reality.
Let's now turn to Professor David Dotman longtime partner of H and habitat as well, heavily involved in the preparation of this report.
You've been also thinking about many of these questions for a while, David.
So if you could reflect on the value of this report and informing policy, practice, and I would say even research and thinking globally on the question of adequate housing.
Yeah.
Thank you, Ed Lam, and I would like to just preface comments by recognizing the huge amount of work from the UN Habitat team in producing this report and indeed all the World Cities report.
Also, I'd like to highlight that as the author team and the editorial team work together, it's not an uncontested process.
This is a product of a lot of really quite lively contested debate to try and deal with the different angles and complexities around the housing crisis and responses to it.
So it's been a rewarding process to be involved in, and I think that the outcome is also will be rewarding to be engaged with.
I think I'd like to highlight a couple of thoughts that came from the report and then go into one or two things in a little more detail.
And the first is it does really stand out that there is no single solution to the housing crisis.
And that it requires engagement and bringing messages to a wide range of sectors and trying to bring sectors together, to address this that we need to go across from the planning sector, the infrastructure sector, and thinking about social sectors like education and health, thinking about the prosperity and urban economies, and thinking about how housing brings all of these things together and how housing shapes the broader urban response to them.
So I'd like to pick particularly on the climate response, which was one of the things that the executive director mentioned as well.
And that if we are able to bring adequate housing agenda into discussions on climate responses, both for resilience and for reducing emissions, then we have a different take on housing which can also contribute to addressing the housing crisis whilst also addressing this as one of the other great challenges of our time.
We need to think about not just the design of houses, but we need to think about where houses are located.
We need to think about their location in relation to hazards.
We also think and I've been looking at the most recent draft of the IPCC Special Report on cities, the, the planning of urban areas, including the location of housing is possibly the most dominant feature in terms of being able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Just about the design and construction, but also the positioning of housing within the broader urban planning infrastructure.
To try and be a little more specific, I think some of the how responses might be.
How we need different legal frameworks that can support the incremental design and construction of houses in ways that is not just affordable to residents, but also facilitates resilience and stronger structures.
Another how we need financial instruments that incentivize people to build, to retrofit, and to live in low carbon houses, in low carbon locations where the emissions from transport are reduced.
Related to all of this, I would add in because I think it's worthy of emphasis, we need to think about how we think about the design and location of housing from a perspective that supports the care economy, that supports livelihoods for different members of the community.
There's a very strong focus on gender and on disability in this report.
We need to think about how these concerns care, these concerns of livelihoods, including low carbon and resilient livelihoods fitted into the kinds of buildings that we designed for housing and the locations and the ways that we plan this.
Thank you so much, David, for those reflections.
I think particularly bringing in the perspective around the convergence between the global housing crisis and the climate crisis that we're living through.
I have a follow up question for you, David, and I'm sure the audience would like to hear your reflections on this as well.
How do you align low carbon housing and affordability? Yeah.
Do you see convergence divergence there? I mean, you asked a not dissimilar question, and I think that the answer is not so much a fundamental tension, more as agendas, which are both absolutely essential.
I think the opportunity needs to come through new financial instruments that recognize that the people who live in low cost housing or the people who currently live in inadequate housing have made very little impact on global emissions to date.
But the actions and behaviors and their consumption in the coming decades is going to be central to addressing greenhouse gas emissions and addressing the global climate crisis.
We need financial mechanisms that bring to the housing sector in the way that they've brought to the broader energy sector, affordable ways for people to live in ways with passive heating, passive cooling, the appropriate use of renewable energies in ways that work for low income groups.
But I would stress again, location is so important for future greenhouse gas emissions and for locking from transport emissions.
Location is so important for low income groups in accessing safe, resilient, decent work as well.
This is one of the concerns which I think really does cut very strongly across all of the different dimensions that we're looking to meet with adequate low cost housing, adequate affordable housing.
No, thank you, David.
I think very often when we talk about climate and housing, our focus and tendency is to consider the construction materials and how that is an entry point for mitigation.
But I think your point is very clear and very profound at this point to think about location as well, which is also, of course, one of the seven dimensions of adequate housing anyway, originally, but perhaps we don't focus on it enough.
Let's now move to Professor Tabat Lawnson.
Very happy to have you here with us.
Of course, you have also been a part of this journey and a part of this process and share with us your reflections on what happens after this report.
Now we have a report.
Where do we take it from here? From your perspective? How does it help us to advance action across our areas of discipline or mandate or work and speak to us about the impact that the report could possibly have across different fronts of work.
Thanks very much.
I'll start by congratulating the UN Habitat team because now we have another knowledge resource that we can run with across sectors and across disciplines.
I think one of the fundamental thing that the report does is highlights the fact that housing is not merely a product.
Housing is a process.
I think it's important that we prioritize that, thinking about the whole value chain, starting from conceptualization, thinking about land rights to construction, sale, and the after effects.
Right? And that brings me to issues around the thinking behind the kinds of housing that is being produced and how sometimes things like smart urbanism is producing housing while displacing many more.
And when we think about the context of displacement, apart from those who have been displaced by climate induced disaster or conflict.
We have many people, particularly in urban areas that had been displaced due to development.
And that's why it's important that we start to rethink the kinds of urban development parameters that we're adopting and utilizing, and it's a question of governance.
And that's where the local and municipal governments come into play, thinking about this idea of prioritizing the need That's the first one.
The second one is understanding that adequate housing goes beyond producing new build, and that's why regeneration is part of the housing solution.
How do we carry out in situ upgrading? How do we leverage the knowledgegies that are embedded in local communities? How do we ensure that data and technology do not become a threat? I speak particularly of something like the platform economy.
That is producing housing as an experience while short changing many who are embedded in the city.
Issues around affordability sometimes are simply because a lot of the one bed two bed are taken out of the market to service those who are visiting the cities for a short time.
And so it's important for us to kind of unlock this idea that housing is both a social and an economic asset.
Understand that we have to respond at scale because that's another thing.
We the governments and the private developers simply don't have enough funding to enough investment to respond to the gravity of the crisis, and we can't just fold our hands and allow the markets to grab it all.
Because if we do that, then the vulnerable are going to increase.
And that's why the idea of understanding the variety of solutions and the variety of skills for which housing solutions must be provided, leveraging our knowledge that is already embedded in the cities while adopting innovative practices to go further.
Thank you so much, Taibat.
Let me pick up on I think a key point that you raised, which is data.
We, of course, know that the gaps in terms of data on housing data are substantial and this report makes that clear, even though as it presents some very new interesting insights.
What are your thoughts on how we can transform housing and urban data or think about data differently perhaps in terms of closing the gaps that we know exist.
If you could just reflect on that.
A simple one will be when we think about slums and informal settlements, in many of our cities and countries, housing in slums and informal settlements do not add up into the housing stock, and there is an opportunity there because some of these homes are well constructed, but because they lack tenure, they lack registration recognition by the land administrations, they are not considered when thinking about the housing stock.
So simple land reforms could bring more housing could unlock the value of housing.
Another one is thinking about regeneration.
If you provide basic services.
If you improve community services, people are more likely to improve the quality of their individual buildings, and that automatically results in a in a better quality of life and better housing.
And so it's important for us to recognize what we have on ground and the potential to transit at least for existing housing to transit them from informal into the stock, while also thinking about how do we then provide what is left and who are we providing that for? That's when we have to start thinking about producing houses that are commensurate with the stage of life in the city.
There's no point producing five bed houses when we have an urban youth bulge.
So that's where the correlation between the data that we have and what needs to be produced to address the housing situation.
I think that's a very key point around, does the data tell us the story on the ground? Is it a complete picture or not? Perhaps not in many instances.
How do we use the data to respond to the realities in an appropriate way? I take those points away from your intervention.
Let me now come to you, Imran, and you're joining us from the Punjab Affordable Housing Program.
So this is your day job.
You are trying to address the issue of housing.
So share with us your reflections on the report, its findings.
How does this help you in your day job, and what are your thoughts on action on the ground? So think Thank you very much.
I think I'll be taking the perspective of a practitioner because I work for the government of Pakistan, is a fairly big country, the fifth largest in the world around 250 million, and then we are having a housing shortage of around 10 million.
Handling the crisis, the first thing any practitioners want that we should be acknowledging that we are in a crisis.
I think this report has done a wonderful job of making sure that the evidence that we are in a crisis.
Now, because we are running up and job affordable housing program for past three years, some of the reflections from pathways to action that I'll be trying to come from, I'll be putting in a simple word two important lessons that we learned in handling our crisis.
One aspect was that institutional, political inertia So you talk about our parliamentary systems, a court, a banking system.
So being part of the professions, we would like to push the thing because we're in a crisis in a fast pace.
But then these institutions have their own pace.
So again, matching that pace and bringing the legal reform.
So that was a big challenge.
So it took us almost three years of passing the Real Estate Regulatory Act housing policy, changing the planning standards, and an important thing that coming up with a location criteria.
But too much paperwork, too much lobbying, it took a lot of time in handling the crisis.
Other thing because R is a big country.
The second aspect that challenge that any other country can face is that as you rightly mentioned and you pop the question of the flexibility because, again, that it looks that problem is housing, then the diversity of solutions, because climate change when we talk about then heat island effect or that flood recovery because our geography will be requiring a different kind of, a proof of concept for housing to typologies, that kind of challenge also, and again, that we are looking for displacements to informal to low income and middle income, different kind of housing financial products.
So again, then in summarizing, when we talk about the pathways to action, so handling the institutional inertia, and then a challenge, the second challenge is handling diversity and flexibility.
So I think these are the two takeaways that I learned working in our program past year.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
I think perspective from practice is always very enriching in these conversations.
I have a follow up for you on flexibility.
I think flexibility is the word of focus here.
How does flexibility work in reality? In your context.
Yeah.
So, again, that whenever we try to craft or design a solution, we become quite fixated in a reality that the solution that as a designers and architect, we are bringing, so this is the best solution to the reality.
But again, the flexibility is that keeping the flexibility in your mind that because there are 1,000 different kind of challenges, so we need to atre according to the situation, So, our solution should be coming from the bottom up that what kind of the problems that public and local citizens are facing so that we can design.
It's not that we are working on something in the lab and university or in our government department, and we are bringing those products to the people.
So flexibility is, again, the openness of the mind that this is how we see, right.
Okay.
It starts with mindsets and narratives and approaches, and I think that's where this report comes in in terms of shifting the thinking and the approach to how we think about solutions for adequate housing.
So thank you for that.
We now move to Yun King Xu, who's also been involved heavily in the preparation of this report.
Tell us your thoughts around moving to pathways for action from your perspective, from where you are right now in addressing the issue of housing.
Share with us your thoughts.
Thank you.
Thank you, Aden.
It is a great honor actually for myself to be involved in this great task and being working with so many talents together that actually in that process, we bring into the global vision about the whole crisis, but also trying to link that to the local context so that we can link to more solution.
In that process, I think what I actually learn and also hear a lot and I would like to re emphasize is, I think, as you said, the mindset changes.
I think housing is the issue actually concerning every one of us.
So it is a very easy link to engage people whatever position they are.
However, we are also aware that the challenge and crisis is sort of enhancing rather than diminished.
So in that sense, I think housing is as a fundamental sort of mindset change that we should be realize that it is sort of like a double sword, if you like, that it is crucial, and also that crucial is linked to the complexity of city itself.
So there is a very close connection between that.
But having said that, if the housing issue is left unaddressed, then it is sort of like a very, um, called a very big wider issue and crisis will become.
I think this is a fundamental mindset change that we can bring people into this dialogue and also link to the wider actions which fundamentally motivate people to engage.
And secondly, is the keyword would be integration.
I think we repeatedly mentioned that housing is so much widely connected into, I think, many faults like as mentioned that housing is linked not only with the service, the infrastructure, but also the opportunities and also the important decisions in people's life.
But it is also integration with that it needs like a collective coordination between government sectors and also over link with, like, generations.
So it's not only our generation, but actually housing is the issue that link to many generations of the family and the family plan.
So I think it's a very integrated issue.
So we need an integrated approach to address that.
Having said that it's also both challenging and sort of like I would say efficient in a way because we can kill kill the bird with 1 stone.
So somehow, as you mentioned that we can address, for example, the affordability while also addressing the climate issue at the same time.
We can address like family, I mean, people having difficulty approach housing and jobs and having difficulty to plan like having kids.
So many of these issues can be addressed together.
So we need to find this kind of starting point that we come in this kind of integrated mindset.
And somehow people build up this mechanism behind that the government at different levels, at different sectors, they start to talk to each other and they start to think the things that can link into as housing as a kind of a central linkage.
So I think here is also the flexibility issue come into the context that we may find different ways.
So like housing is not only about building, but it could also be how you can think about the sort of like a shared space.
I mean, how you can bring people in harmony.
Together.
That is the mindset behind that we use the flexibility idea in all the dimensions in terms of planning, in terms of policy, in terms of finance that actually fundamentally lead our way forward, I would.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for that.
And how does this report take you forward in what you do or the action that you are trying to advance for adequate housing? How will this report help you in that journey? As a starting point, of course, because I'm an academic, the first thing I will do is bring this report to my students.
And also make sure it's on the list.
But again, I think I think as a UN report that I think this report has been sort of a collective wisdom from all the talent here, and it is the kind of dialogue that we can build up with a with the language with different stakeholders.
So we need that use the report as a bridge, but we need many further way to actually build up the dialogue in the communication that people will be comfortable and accept and easy to be in the kind of effective communication.
But also the other way in my role because I'm also involved in a research platform that we work with local government and industries.
So that is something I will start as well.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That's particularly interesting that you would find this report useful in the work that you do as an academic with local governments and decision makers.
Okay.
Now we turn to you, the audience.
Thank you for your patience in listening to the panel and to the conversations on this side.
We want to open up for questions that you may have.
So yeah, we're open for anyone that would like to ask a question, please introduce yourself.
Let's try to be as brief as possible to perhaps one question on one comment, and we will take as many as we can.
Please introduce yourself.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
This is Mr.
Absch from Pakistan.
I'm creator and founder of Global Road Solutions and Urban Core.
It's a platform that designed as a solution, not like as an idea.
I did not came here with a project or an idea.
I came here with a solution that the problems we are facing right now and the people that had faced in the past.
So my platform is designed as like a bridge between the verified technicians, plumbers, and with the residents.
Our platform will work as a bridge.
Can I ask you to get to the question? I'm sorry.
We're running out of time.
So what is the question? The question right now we are facing the problems, that is global crisis.
The problems are like delayed maintenance that caused the air pollution, like the air cleanings, and the other things that cause water pollution, like drainage issues.
So I designed the platform in which the platform will be work as a bridge between the workers and the residents.
The residents will report the problem on my project, and my platform will I'm sorry.
I'm going to have ask the question.
If you don't mind.
What's the question? My question.
My question is that, what's the problem we are facing right now? What's the solution should be.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Question.
All the panelists could answer that question.
I'll give you a round.
What's the problem? What's the solution? Yeah, exactly.
Other questions? Thank you.
Yes, please introduce yourself and if you could limit it to one question.
If it's for a specific panelist, let us know.
Hi, my name is Sophie Strup.
I'm also from Shang iatong Liverpool University.
My question is about this business of rethinking urban informality and as an opportunity rather than a problem.
My thought is that there is a certain danger in doing that with regard to creating a space for governments or the private sector or other players to abdicate responsibility for improving the livelihoods of those people.
While I appreciate the idea, I'm just wondering how you've thought about that and what are the solutions to that tension? Great question.
Yes, we'll take a question.
Please introduce yourself.
Thank you.
Thank you for the good report.
My name is George Nege.
I'm from Kenya.
Quick question on the issues that have been raised that the majority of urbanites are renters, which means they don't, they're not involved directly involved in developing the houses they live in and also restricted in what they can do to their houses.
So how do we empower the local the urban majority to be able to live in better spaces, one, and then secondly, because there's already existing, big number of existing what are called brown buildings, and the focus is always on new buildings coming up.
So how do we focus on the fact that we need to retrofit the existing ones, and then who pays for these costs? Because majority are renters and they're not able to do that.
And I think as part of improving the housing, we need to also fix the existing problem.
How do we tackle that? Thank you.
Fantastic.
We're running out of time, so we can't take any more questions.
I'm sure many of you do have questions, but we're just starting the conversation.
So let me take the question on informality to you, Hector.
You heard it.
I think it's a relevant question.
If you could quickly reflect on that.
Yeah, thank you.
It's working.
Yes.
Yeah, I think it's a very good question and it was part of the discussion in writing and also discussing this question of informality.
I think the change of the conceptual change is about thinking about potential.
It's not about informal settlements are good or bad.
It's about the potential that is embedded and how you can support that potential.
So I think that is a conceptual change that is really important, and I think the chapter and the resory has that shift.
Thank you.
Thank you, David, do you want to reflect on this question on the danger of I suppose but yes.
Yes.
Yeah, it's certainly whenever you are changing the discourse and the language, the potential for unintended consequences is great.
I think that the thoughtful work around informality is firstly to build the recognition that in many cities as in the second question, the urban majority and just even voicing the existence of informality is a necessary starting point.
Then the second element and recognizing the need to be brief, I think is not about abdicating responsibility, but is about finding new models for joint work around visioning for the future of informal settlements, planning them, and implementing the infrastructure and implementing the building that goes on.
In a new form of partnership, it's not handing over responsibility, it's actually a responsibility to join up and work actively with the residents of informal settlements.
Thank you so much.
Imran, can I come to you? There was a question around, we have a reality, but we talk a lot about new houses and new buildings.
This question of what do we do with what we have and retrofitting and addressing what already exists versus thinking about new housing stock and anything else you'd like to reflect on? Yeah.
So So again, that very pertinent question in which what our government is already doing is that giving that low income people interest free loans or supporting them in a way that can be also brought into the system.
But I was more interested in that when you put the problem or the solution.
I think one of the bottom line, the key takeaway from this report is that our problem is housing, but the solution is also housing.
This is the biggest takeaway that we have got from this report.
Thank you.
Wow.
I think that's the closing line, I will give every panelist an opportunity for a closing line if you would like to.
But I think that really was a powerful one.
Housing is the problem, but it's also the solution.
I think that says it all.
P we invite you to have a look at the report.
More importantly, use the report.
I think you said something very interesting that it will help you build bridges, which is a really nice way of looking at this report and what it can help each of us do.
Build bridges with others in other sectors, others in different levels of decision making.
Please use the report and let the conversations continue.
Thank you so much for your time today.
Thank you.