World Urban Forum (WUF13)

In contemporary urban practice, housing has shifted from a discrete typology to an organising framework for resilience, inclusion and the everyday performance of cities. As rapid urban growth recalibrates social infrastructure and spatial equity, the discipline is compelled to read housing not only as built form but also as governance, land policy, service access, and the public realm. Against this backdrop, the World Urban Forum (WUF)—one of UN-Habitat’s most significant global platforms—asserts its architectural relevance by convening the actors who shape urban outcomes: urban planners, architects, policymakers and community leaders.

The forum’s agenda centres on sustainable urbanisation, housing challenges and inclusive city planning, with emphasis on how design intelligence intersects with institutional delivery. Its program—exhibitions, panel discussions and networking sessions—signals an intent to move beyond representation toward transferable methods: how to translate lessons between contexts and build partnerships capable of addressing housing precarity and uneven urban services. For architects, the value lies in linking spatial propositions with the regulatory and financial environments that determine whether “liveable” becomes measurable or remains aspirational.

This framing was sharpened in a recent media briefing on preparations for the thirteenth session (WUF13), led by UN-Habitat Executive Director Anacláudia Rossbach and State Committee on Urban Planning and Architecture of Azerbaijan (SCUPA) Chairman, Anar Guliyev, and moderated by Sultan Hajiyev. The briefing cast WUF13 as a mid-term checkpoint for the New Urban Agenda—an invitation to assess how urban commitments have translated into built outcomes, and where implementation has stalled.

Under the theme “Housing the world: Safe and resilient cities and communities,” WUF13 positions housing as the cornerstone of inclusion and durability. With nearly 3 billion people in inadequate housing, including 1.1 billion in informal settlements and over 300 million experiencing homelessness, housing emerges as an architectural problem inseparable from public health, risk, tenure and belonging. In this context, WUF13 serves as an instrument of accountability, asking built-environment disciplines to define what “safe and resilient” means in practice.