World Cities Day

The 2026 HLPF side event will highlight the value of place-based solutions that integrate social policies and interventions with the built environment – including housing, infrastructure and community design. Recognizing the intersection of these social and physical dimensions of community is at the heart of achieving SDG 11. The session will feature a discussion on how community resilience depends on social and structural features of communities, with remarks from panelists delving into the ways in which global issues are also reflected at the local level. It is intended to explore strategies and solutions for confronting various challenges related to mounting pressures and risks facing communities globally, with a focus on ensuring that physical infrastructure investments and social outcomes like inclusion, accessibility, equity and housing stability are considered together. Building resilient communities requires infrastructure planning that takes account of community needs ...

This session is conceived as an initial space for exchange to consider the questions that should guide collective reflection in the lead-up to the 2027 SDG Summit. It is pertinent to examine the extent to which the current framework has supported territorial realities and to identify areas that may require adjustment for the next global cycle. By raising these questions at an early moment, the intention is to contribute to the broader process through which the international community may assess the potential need for a renewed common framework for sustainable development, ensuring that such an assessment incorporates territorial perspectives from the outset. The review of global frameworks involves institutional and political considerations that influence coherence, coordination, and public trust. This preliminary discussion therefore seeks to outline the issues that the international system may need to address as deliberations advance toward 2027. Side Event at the ECOSOC Partnerships...

The New Urban Agenda, adopted at Habitat III in Quito, Ecuador, on 20 October 2016, presents a paradigm shift based on the science of cities and lays out standards and principles for the planning, construction, development, management and improvement of urban areas. The New Urban Agenda is intended as a resource for different actors in multiple levels of government and for civil society organizations, the private sector and all who reside in urban spaces of the world. The New Urban Agenda highlights linkages between sustainable urbanization and job creation, livelihood opportunities and improved quality of life, and it insists on incorporation of all these sectors in every urban development or renewal policy and strategy. The New Urban Agenda Illustrated handbook serves as the base for the New Urban Agenda online crash course. The self-paced course in two parts is available for free and accessible at any time. Access the course here (part 1) and here (part 2). The course further brea...

Urbanization provides the potential for new forms of social inclusion, including greater equality, access to services and new opportunities, and engagement and mobilization that reflects the diversity of cities, countries and the globe. Yet too often this is not the shape of urban development . Inequality and exclusion abound, often at rates greater than the national average, at the expense of sustainable development that delivers for all.  Urban October was launched by UN-Habitat in 2014 to emphasize the world’s urban challenges and engage the international community towards the New Urban Agenda.

The  Sustainable Development Goal 11 , which formulates the ambition to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable - underlying the relevance of UN-Habitat’s mission. Inequalities in cities have grown since 1980 . The world largest cities are also often the most unequal, and this year’s theme is embraced by the action and implementation of the New Urban Agenda , which is putting the topic of inclusive cities as one of the main pillars for the urban shift.

  World Cities Day  aims to  raise international awareness of urbanization trends, challenges, and visions for sustainable urban development ,  promote international cooperation , and  contribute to global efforts to build equitable, prosperous, sustainable, and inclusive cities  that provide their communities with better living environments and quality of life.

World Cities Day brings Urban October to an end on October 31st each year and was first celebrated in 2014. As with World Habitat Day, a global observance is held in a different city each year and the day focuses on a specific theme.