WUF13: Baku opens its doors to world's urban planners with ambitious plans |
On May 17th, between 15,000 and 25,000 individuals will make their way to Baku for the 13th edition of the UN World Urban Forum. Urban planners, infrastructure investors, representatives from the World Bank, technology firms, and local government representatives from over 130 countries will gather to discuss housing, resilience, and sustainable cities, all centered on the theme of "Housing the world: Safe and resilient cities and communities." For Baku, however, this event holds a particularly significant level of importance.
The conference, first held in 2001 and repeated biannually since then, is the primary United Nations platform dealing with urbanisation, with the Cairo session scheduled for 2024 gathering 25,000 representatives from 182 nations. Being added to the already prestigious list of venues, which have included Barcelona, Vancouver, Rio de Janeiro, and Abu Dhabi, lends credibility to the conference. The World Bank Group will be responsible for a dedicated Urban Expo pavilion, and UN-Habitat, one of the partners in organising this global summit, will integrate its findings into the New Urban Agenda report for the UN Secretary General in 2026.
Looking at urbanization's context in a global aspect, we see that the share of the world's 8.2bn people now living in cities, which is more than double of 1950's share of the 1950s, which was estimated at around 45%. People in informal settlements worldwide are around 1 billion, and the projected share [68%] of the world population in cities by 2050, adding 2.5 billion urban dwellers. These are all the central themes for the upcoming WUF13.
Now, for Azerbaijan, WUF13 serves three overlapping purposes. First, there is conventional event diplomacy – staging a UN landmark conference creates an institutional profile which cannot be easily bought, an experience that also shed a light back in November 2024 during COP29. Second, the message of investments – the arrival in Baku of numerous foreign delegations, including those representing international........