Habitat III will be one of the first UN global summits after the adoption of the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda. It offers a unique opportunity to discuss the important challenge of how cities, towns and villages are planned and managed, in order to ensure sustainable development, and hence shape the implementation of new global development and climate change goals.

Issue Papers

Issue Papers are summary documents that address one or more research areas, highlight general findings, and identify research needs on topics related to housing and sustainable urban development. United Nations Task Team on Habitat III prepares 22 issue papers in six areas; Social Cohesion and Equity – Livable Cities, Urban Frameworks, Spatial Development, Urban Economy, Urban Ecology and Development and Urban Housing and Basic Services. The Issue paper on Transport and Mobility is prepared by UN-Habitat, UN-DESA, World Bank and UNEP under the “Urban Housing and Basic Services” area.

The first drafts of the issues papers were submitted on March 30th. The second drafts will be revised by April 30th, and the final issue papers will be publicized in June 2015.

Some issues papers on urban and rural linkages are presented below:

SLoCaT feels that it is crucial to more closely link Habitat III and the issue papers to 2015 global processes on sustainable development, climate change, and financing for development, specifically as related to the sustainable transport sector. The Partnership has compiled comments from a number of SLoCaT members on how the current draft issue papers could be strengthened from a sustainable transport perspective. The comments have been submitted in a co-signed letter to the Executive Director of the UN-Habitat.

For the general comments on a select subset of issue papers and the specific comments from the SLoCaT members, please refer to the letter here.

Full-list of Issue Papers for the New Urban Agenda is available here

Policy Units

The Habitat III Policy Units bring together high-level expertise to explore state-of-the-art research and analysis; identify good practice and lessons learned; and develop independent policy recommendations on particular issues regarding sustainable urban development. Policy Units are composed by 20 experts, bringing together individual experts from a variety of fields, including academia, government, civil society and other regional and international bodies.

The policy units would:

The main tasks of the Policy Units are to: