From the Road to Quito to the Implementation of the New Urban Agenda: Ambitions, Realities and Deadlocks

Christine Auclair, President, AdP Villes en Développement

Ten years after its adoption in Quito, the New Urban Agenda remains a major reference for thinking about sustainable cities. It articulates an integrated vision of urbanization, closely linked to the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet the gap between the ambition expressed in 2016 and the actual transformation of cities remains considerable. Quito+10 calls not so much for questioning the principles of the New Urban Agenda as for examining the political, institutional and financial conditions required for their implementation.

From Vancouver to Quito: The Gradual Emergence of the Urban Question

The Habitat III Conference in Quito was part of a long history that had begun forty years earlier in Vancouver. Habitat I, in 1976, took place in a world that was still predominantly rural, but where the rapid growth of cities in the Global South was beginning to concern the international community. Twenty years later, Habitat II, held in Istanbul in 1996, marked a new stage with the adoption of the Habitat Agenda and the recognition of the right to adequate housing as an essential component of human development.

By the time preparations for Habitat III began, the context had changed profoundly. The world had become predominantly urban. Metropolitan areas were both engines of economic growth and innovation, and places where poverty, segregation, climate vulnerability and inadequate access to housing and services were concentrated.

Against this backdrop, the leadership of UN-Habitat, then headed by Joan Clos, former Mayor of Barcelona, helped place the urban question at the heart of the development agenda. His “three-legged approach” rested on three complementary dimensions: planning, legislation and finance. Planning should anticipate urban growth and limit sprawl; legislation should provide the institutional and regulatory framework needed for coherent development and the protection of the public interest; and finance should enable the provision of infrastructure, services and facilities.

This approach was part of a broader vision of the city as a driver of prosperity, inclusion and transformation. Density, proximity and agglomeration economies can foster employment, innovation and productivity, provided urban growth is properly managed. Containing urban sprawl therefore became central: by consuming land, increasing travel distances and making infrastructure more costly, dispersed urban development undermines both economic efficiency and the capacity to respond to climate change.

The preparation of Habitat III reflected this vision. States, local authorities, civil society organizations, grassroots communities and actors, professionals, researchers and international networks participated in an extensive process of consultation and knowledge production. Grassroots communities were no longer regarded merely as beneficiaries, but as actors in the production of the city and in shaping the policies that affect them.

This process drew in particular on the Policy Units, the General Assembly of Partners, which emerged from the World Urban Campaign, and the Urban Thinkers Campuses. These campuses brought together different stakeholders to compare experiences, share good practices and develop advocacy positions around “The City We Need”.

This participatory architecture was one of the distinctive features of Habitat III. It sought to build a shared vision of urbanization and involve different stakeholder groups in shaping the international agenda. Quito thus marked the definitive entry of urbanization into the global development debate.

2015–2016: An Exceptional Moment of Alignment Among Global Agendas

One of the distinctive features of Habitat III was its timing. The New Urban Agenda was adopted only one year after the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, and only a few months after the Paris Agreement.

For the first time, cities also had a specific international goal: SDG 11, which aims to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Its targets address, among other issues, housing, informal settlements, transport, participatory planning, disaster risk and public spaces.

Yet Quito’s contribution was precisely to move beyond a sectoral reading of SDG 11. The New Urban Agenda recognizes urbanization as a cross-cutting process: housing cannot be separated from land; land from infrastructure; infrastructure from mobility; mobility from employment; or the spatial organization of cities from their environmental footprint.

The New Urban Agenda can therefore be understood as a territorial translation of the 2030 Agenda. It does not create new targets comparable to the SDGs, but proposes principles and modalities for action through which they can be localized by means of planning, governance and financing. This is one of Quito’s major legacies: demonstrating that global development goals cannot be achieved without transforming the territories where the majority of humanity now lives.

Quito’s Ambition: Changing the Way We Think About Urbanization

Adopted on 20 October 2016 in Quito and subsequently endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly on 23 December, the New Urban Agenda sets out an ambitious vision of inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities.

It is structured around three major commitments: social inclusion and the eradication of poverty; sustainable and inclusive urban prosperity; and environmentally sustainable and resilient urban development.

Behind these pillars, however, lies above all a paradigm shift. Quito recognizes the importance of urban form, density, mixed land use, public space and planning. The text emphasizes the role of local and regional governments, multilevel governance and citizen participation. It reaffirms housing as a central component of integrated urban policies and pays particular attention to informal settlements, vulnerable populations and security of tenure. It also enshrines the principle that no one — and no territory — should be left behind.

This vision remains remarkably relevant today. The main problem over the past ten years has therefore not been the relevance of Quito’s principles, but their translation into transformations that are sufficiently rapid and far-reaching.

Moreover, some of the richness of the preparatory debates was lost in a very extensive final text whose priorities and operational directions were not always sufficiently focused. An international process can generate a wealth of ideas and experiences without these necessarily being translated into an agreement negotiated among States and subsequently into public policy.

Ten Years On: Real but Fragmented Progress

The record of the past decade cannot simply be described as a failure. Since 2016, many countries have strengthened their national urban policies and planning systems. Local and regional governments have assumed a growing role in climate policies and the implementation of the SDGs. Voluntary Local Reviews have helped localize the 2030 Agenda, while urban data have continued to develop.

Concrete experiences illustrate this evolution: Medellín’s transformation through inclusive mobility connecting low-income neighbourhoods with centres of employment and education; the incremental upgrading of informal settlements in Bangkok, based on security of tenure and resident involvement; and integrated mobility policies in Bogotá and Curitiba. These experiences remain localized, but they demonstrate that coordinated action on housing, transport, public spaces and services can produce tangible transformations.

The idea of “localizing” the SDGs has thus gained ground: a large share of the global goals cannot be achieved without the action of cities, local authorities and communities. The midterm review of the New Urban Agenda, considered by the General Assembly on 16 and 17 July 2026, acknowledged this progress. But it also led to a worrying conclusion: urban transformation is progressing more slowly than urbanization itself.

In 2022, approximately 1.1 billion people were living in slums or informal settlements, and this number could reach 1.4 billion by 2030 if current trends continue. More than 2.8 billion people face difficulties in accessing adequate, affordable and well-located housing. The growth of informal settlements therefore reflects not merely a housing supply deficit, but the inability of markets and public policies to provide housing that matches people’s incomes and needs.

These pressures are compounded by forced displacement and climate change. By the end of 2024, more than 120 million people had been forcibly displaced. At the same time, urban populations are increasingly exposed to floods, heatwaves and droughts.

Urban investment also remains highly unevenly distributed. Major metropolitan areas can mobilize substantial capital, while secondary cities and local authorities in low-income countries often depend on government transfers or intermittent international financing. As a result, it is frequently in places where urban growth is fastest and needs are greatest that investment capacity is weakest.

The figures vary according to definitions and sources, but they converge on one point: the urban population is growing faster than the capacity of institutions to provide accessible, resilient and sustainable housing, services and infrastructure.

Housing as a Measure of the Gap Between Ambition and Reality

Nowhere is this gap more visible than in housing. In 2015, SDG Target 11.1 set the objective of ensuring, by 2030, access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and of upgrading slums.

Ten years later, the global trajectory remains far from this objective. The 2026 global report on SDG 11 estimates that more than three billion people do not have access to adequate housing and that more than 1.1 billion live in slums or informal settlements. Their number is estimated to have increased by more than 120 million since 2016.

Housing has therefore become one of the clearest indicators of the contradictions of contemporary urban development. In many cities, land and property values are rising faster than incomes, driven in particular by financialization. Housing and land are increasingly treated as investment assets and sources of financial return, sometimes at the expense of their social function.

This trend is transforming the relationship between land and urban development: investment is concentrated in areas offering the highest returns, while increases in land value generated by public infrastructure can be captured by private interests without sufficient redistribution to the community.

The New Urban Agenda calls for access to adequate and affordable housing, stronger security of tenure and inclusive policies. It does not, however, explicitly critique financialization or set out specific regulations for real estate and capital markets.

A fundamental question therefore arises: should housing be treated primarily as a market commodity, or as social infrastructure essential to the functioning of cities?

When the City Becomes a Battlefield: Destruction and Reconstruction

Alongside this structural housing crisis, another reality has grown considerably in scale since Quito: the massive destruction of housing, infrastructure and, in some cases, entire neighbourhoods in armed conflicts.

Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, as well as Syria, Yemen and Myanmar, show how the city has become not only a place where the consequences of conflict are concentrated, but also one of its principal arenas. Wars destroy housing, but also water networks, energy systems, hospitals, schools, transport systems, heritage and institutions. They cause mass displacement and can erase land rights, cadastral records and property structures that are essential to enabling residents to return.

This reality has given rise to the concept of “domicide”, referring to the widespread or systematic destruction of housing and civilian infrastructure essential to a population. It invites us to view the destruction of housing not simply as a consequence of war, but as an assault on the right to housing, collective identity and the very existence of urban communities.

Gaza represents an extreme case today. The assessment carried out with the United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank estimates recovery and reconstruction needs at more than USD 71 billion over ten years. More than 371,000 housing units have been damaged or destroyed, and approximately 1.9 million people have been displaced.

But the scale of the destruction raises a question that goes far beyond financing: who decides the future of the city after war?

The creation in 2026 of the Board of Peace, chaired by Donald Trump and entrusted with responsibilities relating to transitional governance, resource mobilization and the reconstruction of Gaza, illustrates this question. Its stated ambition is to rebuild infrastructure, attract investment and launch a new phase of economic development.

Yet rebuilding a city is not simply a matter of mobilizing capital and constructing new buildings. It also means restoring rights, enabling residents to return, preserving memory and heritage, rebuilding local institutions and involving communities in shaping their own future.

Reconstruction thus becomes a space of confrontation between two conceptions: the city as an inhabited territory embodying rights, or the city as a space to be redeveloped and an asset capable of attracting investment.

This question directly echoes the principles that shaped the road to Quito: community participation, the social function of land, the right to housing and multilevel governance. The global urban agenda can no longer regard post-conflict reconstruction as a peripheral or purely humanitarian issue.

Quito’s Major Weakness: An Agenda Without Effective Means of Implementation

This is probably where one of the main limitations of the New Urban Agenda lies. Unlike the SDGs, it is not based on a focused set of universally monitored targets and indicators, nor does it have a binding implementation mechanism.

The text is rich in commitments but weaker when it comes to the means of turning them into reality. Transforming cities requires considerable investment in housing, transport, water, sanitation, infrastructure and climate adaptation. Yet local and regional governments often have insufficient fiscal resources, limited access to credit and restricted financial autonomy.

The issue also concerns their capacity to mobilize their own resources, capture part of the land value generated by public investment and gain access to long-term finance.

This contradiction was already apparent in Quito: cities were recognized as major actors in sustainable development without their financial and institutional capacity being strengthened in proportion to the responsibilities entrusted to them.

International Governance That Remains Too Top-Down

A second limitation lies in the architecture of global governance. Since Quito, local and regional governments have gained considerable international visibility. They participate in climate COPs, High-level Political Forums on the SDGs and World Urban Forums.

Yet multilateral governance remains fundamentally organized around States. Cities have become indispensable actors in implementation without becoming full actors in decision-making.

The same applies to grassroots communities and civil society. Their participation has increased considerably, but their ability to influence final decisions remains limited. Participation should therefore not be confused with the effective sharing of decision-making power.

Multilevel governance must become an operational principle: responsibilities need to be clarified; transfers of competencies must be accompanied by resources; cities need stronger access to finance; and local governments need structured participation in international mechanisms.

Another Deadlock: The Fragmentation of Agendas

The years 2015–2016 produced an exceptional alignment between the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement, the Sendai Framework and the New Urban Agenda. Yet in implementation, these agendas have often returned to their institutional silos.

Climate, housing, mobility, infrastructure and poverty reduction policies continue to be designed separately in many cases. Yet cities are precisely the places where these issues intersect.

A housing policy that ignores mobility can increase urban sprawl; a climate strategy that ignores informal settlements can exacerbate inequality; and a transport policy without a land policy can increase property values and displace lower-income populations.

One of Quito’s major lessons therefore remains the need for an integrated territorial approach. Yet this integration remains far more advanced in international discourse than in institutions and financial mechanisms.

Quito+10: Preserving the Ambition, Changing the Conditions for Implementation

The 2026 review presents a paradox. The New Urban Agenda has probably never been more relevant: rapid urbanization, the housing crisis, climate change, migration, territorial inequalities and the digital revolution make an integrated approach to cities more necessary than ever. Yet the gap between this relevance and its actual transformative capacity has widened.

The United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on the Midterm Review of the New Urban Agenda, held in New York on 16 and 17 July 2026, acknowledged this situation and, through the adoption of a Political Declaration, reaffirmed States’ commitment to accelerating its implementation over the coming decade, through 2036.

The assessment expressed on this occasion by the Secretary-General was unequivocal: the Sustainable Development Goals will be delivered at the local level, or they will not be delivered at all, while urban growth is moving faster than urban transformation.

The challenge, therefore, is less to define a new vision than to give cities, local authorities and communities the institutional and financial means to implement the vision adopted in Quito. This means placing housing back at the centre, better integrating land, planning, mobility and infrastructure, strengthening local government resources and establishing genuine multilevel governance.

From Quito to Post-2030: What Architecture for the Global Urban Agenda?

Quito+10 comes only four years before the 2030 Agenda reaches its target date, in a context marked by a weakening of multilateralism. Since 2016, the pandemic, armed conflicts, geopolitical tensions, rising nationalism and worsening inequalities have weakened international cooperation.

The United Nations retains an essential capacity to set norms and mobilize stakeholders, but its political authority and capacity for action appear limited. This weakening directly affects urban agendas. When the multilateral system has limited means to influence policies, coordinate actors and provide financial support to local authorities, a global agenda risks remaining largely declaratory.

The proliferation of urban conflicts adds a new dimension. The international agenda must now establish the principles that should guide reconstruction: who decides the future of the city after war? How can the right of return, land rights and the right to housing of displaced populations be guaranteed? What role should local authorities and residents play? How can memory, heritage and social structures be preserved?

Reconstruction involves considerable investment and can generate major economic and land interests. It should therefore be based on international principles affirming residents’ rights and participation, the protection of land and heritage, transparency in financing, the restoration of local institutions and priority for the public interest.

The situation of UN-Habitat reveals another contradiction. The agency is mandated to promote sustainable, inclusive and resilient urban development, but it has neither a binding mandate over States nor resources commensurate with the scale of the challenges. Its funding remains largely dependent on voluntary contributions, limiting its capacity to sustain action over the long term.

The issue is not one of expertise. UN-Habitat has played a decisive role in securing recognition of the importance of housing, planning and urban governance. Yet its normative and operational influence remains weaker than that of other international institutions working on climate, development finance or infrastructure. This weakness is paradoxical given that achieving a large share of the SDGs depends on urban territories.

The post-2030 debate therefore cannot focus solely on the formulation of new goals. It must also examine the institutional architecture required to implement them. Having an urban goal and a global urban agenda is not enough if the financial, institutional and political means required to translate them into territorial action do not follow.

The post-2030 framework should probably better connect global objectives with territorial transformation, give greater recognition to the role of local authorities and avoid multiplying goals and targets to the point where priorities become diluted. Focusing on a more limited number of key goals could strengthen their political visibility and their capacity to direct financing.

Within this renewed architecture, housing deserves a particular place.

Housing is currently included within SDG 11, but it is directly connected to poverty, health, inequality, energy, water, employment and climate. Paradoxically, this cross-cutting nature contributes to dispersing responsibility for its implementation. A standalone SDG specifically dedicated to housing would make that responsibility more visible, organize indicators and financing around clearly identified objectives, and place housing back at the heart of development policy. It should simultaneously address affordability, security of tenure, location, basic services, housing quality and climate resilience. In a world marked by forced displacement and the destruction of cities, it should also incorporate the right to housing in crisis situations and the principles governing post-conflict reconstruction. Making housing a priority does not mean returning to a sectoral approach. On the contrary, housing can only be considered adequate if it is connected to jobs, transport, schools, services, public spaces and infrastructure, and if it forms part of a resilient territory.

Quito’s true legacy may therefore lie less in the letter of the text adopted in 2016 than in the idea running through it: urbanization is not simply a consequence of development. It is one of its main drivers, at the intersection of its economic, social and environmental dimensions.

Quito did not fail for lack of vision. But the means of implementation have never matched that vision: insufficient financing, uneven institutional capacities, weak coordination across levels of governance and insufficiently robust monitoring mechanisms have limited its transformative impact.

Ten years after Quito, the question is therefore no longer whether we have a vision of the sustainable city. That vision exists. The question is now political: are we capable of creating the institutions and financing needed to place housing and urban transformation at the heart of responses to the major challenges of development, the climate crisis, unequal access to resources and rising inequality? Are we also capable of establishing the principles according to which cities destroyed by conflict should be rebuilt, so that their future is neither decided without their inhabitants nor dictated primarily by geopolitical, land and financial interests?

And, more fundamentally, will the United Nations and UN-Habitat have the authority, resources and legitimacy needed to support these transformations and uphold these principles?

It is undoubtedly on the answers to these questions that the future of the global urban agenda, well beyond 2030, will depend.

This article draws on the author’s direct experience of working at UN-Habitat for 31 years, including with the Habitat II Secretariat, and subsequently in advocacy and partner engagement, including during the preparations for Habitat III. She continued her work at UN-Habitat until February 2025 as Coordinator of the World Urban Campaign.

Original text written in French, translated by a.i.