UN-Habitat Calls For Integrated Housing And Urban Planning Approaches At WUF13

(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 22. Housing policy should be part of a broader system of urban planning and sustainable development, Ishigaki Kazuko, Director of the UN-Habitat Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, said, Trend reports.

She made the remark during a panel discussion "The Rechargeable Landscape Powering Sustainable, Resilient Housing with Nature-Based Systems" held within the framework of the 13th session of the World Urban Forum (WUF13) in Baku.

According to her, the successful execution of any structural housing initiative remains completely unfeasible without systematically reinforcing institutional capacity at the grassroots level, specifically targeting local self-governance bodies and community networks.

"Even the most well-designed political and regulatory frameworks cannot transform into practical, field-level operations without direct support and deep capacity-building pipelines deployed at the local municipal layer," Ishigaki pointed out.

The UN-Habitat representative emphasized the critical need for an integrated, human-centric approach to metropolitan growth. She noted that long-term housing policies must maintain strict structural links with urban architectural design, landscape planning, and the universal delivery of baseline public utilities and services.

Ishigaki concurrently highlighted the surging demand among nations across the Asia-Pacific basin for structured, cross-border knowledge transfers regarding sustainable urbanization models. She reported that the Asia Townscape Award, founded in 2010, has evolved into a vital multilateral clearinghouse to showcase successful field practices and facilitate mutual data sharing among municipal governments and spatial experts.

According to the regional director, contemporary urban development projects rolling out across Asia-Pacific showcase highly innovative methodologies to tackle ecological sustainability, preserve tangible cultural heritage, and embed grassroots communities directly into the initial master-planning and execution workflows.

She stressed that these synchronized localized initiatives are central to accelerating progress toward United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG11), which dictates the construction of inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities.

Concluding her address, Ishigaki underlined that the World Urban Forum in Baku delivers an unparalleled platform to advance these integrated frameworks, effectively bridging the intersections between housing supply, urban topography, renewable energy grids, and active civic participation in metropolitan evolution, she concluded.

Meanwhile, today Baku is hosting the final day of WUF13.

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