UN HLPF 2026 Session on SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities & Communities

SDG 11 matters now because the future of the 2030 Agenda will be decided in the places where people actually live. Cities are where housing becomes either a human right or a daily crisis; where transport determines whether a job, school, clinic, or market is reachable; and where climate shocks, inequality, and exclusion are felt first and hardest.

That is why the UN High-Level Political Forum discussion on Sustainable Cities and Communities felt so urgent. We are not talking about an abstract vision of smarter skylines. We are talking about whether people can live safely, affordably, and with dignity as urban populations grow. For me, that is the real test of SDG 11: can our cities work for the people who keep them alive, including women, young people, older persons, persons with disabilities, migrants, displaced people, informal workers, and families living in informal settlements?

The session made clear that cities are not a separate development conversation. They are where SDGs 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, and 17 meet in real time. Water and sanitation, energy, infrastructure, inequality, climate action, and partnerships all show up in the same neighborhood, on the same street, and often in the same household.

Session context: progress, but nowhere near fast enough

The SDG 11 review took place during the 2026 HLPF under the theme of transformative, equitable, innovative, and coordinated action for the 2030 Agenda. It also comes ten years after the New Urban Agenda was adopted in Quito in 2016, making this an important moment to be honest about both progress and the gaps that remain.

The 2026 SDG progress picture is mixed. Public transport access rose from 53.2% in 2020 to 61.5% in 2025. Urban land-consumption growth and population growth were almost in step in 2020–2025, at 0.83% and 0.81%, respectively. Those are meaningful signs that better planning can work.

But the human reality is still far more serious than the progress indicators suggest. In 2024, 1.16 billion people—one in four urban residents—were living in slums. Without accelerated investment, that number could exceed 1.2 billion by 2030. Only 17% of urban land is allocated to streets and public open spaces, far below the 30% to 45% target. In other words, too many people are living without adequate housing, safe mobility, green space, and the public infrastructure that makes a city livable.

The message from the room was clear: SDG 11 is moving, but it is not moving at the speed the world needs.

Speaker summaries and key takeaways

Robert de Graaff, International Science Council

Robert de Graaff opened the discussion by framing cities as both the concentration point of today's sustainability challenges and the place where solutions can be tested, adapted, and scaled. He emphasized that SDG 11 cannot be separated from housing, transport, infrastructure, energy, water, public health, and the wider SDG agenda. His central point was that global commitments need local implementation, and cities are practical laboratories for that work.

Key takeaway: Cities are where the SDGs become real. The task is to connect knowledge, science, and policy to local implementation—not to discuss urban sustainability as if it exists apart from the rest of the 2030 Agenda.

Anna-Claudia Rosbach, Executive Director, UN-Habitat

Anna-Claudia Rosbach connected the session to the tenth anniversary and midterm review of the New Urban Agenda. She recognized gains in public transport, waste management, land consumption, and disaster mortality, but stressed that every gain has a corresponding gap: access is still incomplete, disasters are increasing, and national urban policies are not being matched by adequate financing.

She put housing and informal settlements at the center. Housing, she reminded the room, is linked to education, health, employment, and human dignity. Yet more than a billion people are living in informal settlements. Her argument was not that informal communities should be pushed aside, but that they must be embedded in planning, services, and policy. She also underlined that local action is essential to climate action and to the entire SDG agenda.

Key takeaway: Housing is not a stand-alone sector. It is a foundation for nearly every SDG, and informal settlements must be treated as part of the city—not as places to ignore, exclude, or erase.

Abimbola Akinajo, Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority

Abimbola Akinajo grounded the conversation in the lived reality of Lagos. With a population of about 22 million, projected to reach 50 million by 2050, and between 2,000 and 3,000 new migrants arriving each day, Lagos shows why national commitments must be localized and properly financed. The city already has more than 200 identified slum areas, and its scale makes clear that city systems cannot work in silos.

She called for collaboration across agencies responsible for planning, transport, social inclusion, and the environment. Lagos makes about 30 million trips each day, so sustainable transport is not a side issue; it is a daily question of access, opportunity, safety, and emissions. Her contribution also stressed that cities need the authority, investment, and coordination to deliver the commitments that governments adopt at national and global levels.

Key takeaway: Localize SDG 11, fund cities, and integrate the agencies that shape everyday urban life. A rapidly growing city cannot solve housing, transport, and inclusion one department at a time.

Katherine Klein, ECE Regional Civil Society Engagement Mechanism

Katherine Klein brought age, disability, gender, and participation into the heart of the discussion. She argued that age-friendly planning is no longer a niche issue as populations age, and that older persons—particularly older women, persons with disabilities, and people living in poverty—still face serious barriers to housing, transport, public spaces, and meaningful participation.

Her intervention called for people-centered planning that is age-, gender-, and disability-sensitive; for meaningful participation at every stage; and for local governments to have secure financing. She also highlighted Housing First as an important example of treating housing as a prerequisite for progress across the SDGs.

Key takeaway: A city is not inclusive because it has a policy document. It becomes inclusive when the people most often excluded can help design it, move through it, afford to live in it, and participate fully in its public life.

Country and organization summaries

Norway emphasized that the SDGs must change how cities and communities are planned, built, and managed. Its intervention placed adequate and affordable housing at the center of inclusion, equity, and resilience. Norway also stressed a whole-of-government and multilevel approach, with local authorities as integral partners in national strategy, voluntary national reviews, and voluntary local reviews.

Key takeaway: Localization is not an add-on. National SDG strategy works best when local authorities have a formal role in planning, implementation, review, and partnership.

Finland presented four priorities: access to housing, holistic urban planning, low-carbon construction, and greener, healthier cities. It highlighted its Housing First approach, built on the recognition of housing as a basic human right, and its government goal to eliminate long-term homelessness by 2027. Finland also described coordination across land use, housing, and transport in seven major city regions, together with whole-life carbon assessment requirements for buildings and efforts to expand urban green space and tree cover.

Key takeaway: Treat housing as a right, connect land use with transport, and account for carbon across a building's full life cycle. That is what integrated urban policy looks like in practice.

Speaking for the Group of Friends on Science for Action, India described SDG 11 as a lens for the entire 2030 Agenda. The intervention argued that the needed science already exists across hydrology, urban heat, resilient buildings, transport engineering, geospatial systems, and data science. The missing piece is institutional capacity to govern across interconnected urban systems and to embed science in planning, investment, implementation, and monitoring.

Key takeaway: The urban challenge is not simply a shortage of evidence. It is a shortage of systems that can turn evidence into decisions, investment, accountability, and local action.

Côte d'Ivoire emphasized territorial development, sanitation, and the need to reduce inequalities between communities. Its intervention referenced an allocation of approximately $3 billion for territorial development and sanitation, alongside investments intended to strengthen more balanced, resilient development. The message was that urban sustainability must be connected to services, local development, and the resources required to deliver them.

Key takeaway: Territorial development needs real financing behind it. Sanitation, balanced local development, and resilient communities cannot be delivered through policy language alone.

Cuba described the constitutional recognition of the right to a healthy and safe habitat, while also pointing to constraints on financing, technology, markets, construction materials, energy infrastructure, and the resources needed to improve urban conditions. Its intervention emphasized continued work on urban planning, community participation, climate resilience, and public policies designed to leave no one behind.

Key takeaway: A rights-based urban agenda still depends on the practical means to implement it: materials, energy, finance, technology, and the capacity to sustain community-led planning.

Indonesia presented its National Urban Policy 2045 as a long-term framework for a balanced urban system, inclusive and livable cities, competitive urban economies, green and resilient cities, and integrated governance. It highlighted three priorities: linking housing, transport, infrastructure, and public services; building sustainable mobility; and strengthening implementation through urban data, geospatial systems, integrated finance, local capacity, and coordination across levels of government.

Indonesia used the Jakarta metropolitan transport network as an example of an ecosystem that combines metro, commuter rail, bus rapid transit, and feeder services while seeking to keep public transport affordable.

Key takeaway: Long-term national urban policy can turn commitments into investment when it connects sectors, data, financing, local capacity, participation, and accountability.

Poland focused on data, technology, and innovation as enablers of sustainable cities. It described its SDG Experimental Statistics Platform, which uses geospatial information and Earth observations to support local decision-making, as well as an Urban Toolkit for municipalities. Poland also linked data-driven decision-making to its adaptation strategy and action plan, including climate risk and vulnerability assessments.

Key takeaway: Data is not a technical extra. Local, interoperable, and usable data is a prerequisite for planning resilient cities and sharing the benefits of development across urban and rural areas.

INTERPOL made an important connection between security and sustainable development. It highlighted work related to SDG 11.4 on protecting cultural and natural heritage from trafficking, and SDG 11.5 on reducing disaster impacts through Incident Response Teams that can provide support such as disaster victim identification.

Key takeaway: Safe and resilient communities require security as well as infrastructure. Protecting people, heritage, and disaster response capacity belongs inside the SDG 11 conversation.

Canada stressed that sustainable cities are not defined by investment alone, but by whether people can access housing and the services that improve daily life. Its intervention emphasized coordination, inclusion, and people-centered community development rather than isolated projects.

Key takeaway: Urban investment must be judged by lived outcomes: secure housing, accessible services, and better daily life for the people a city is meant to serve.

The Commonwealth Association of Planners emphasized planning as a public-interest function and called attention to the need for professional planning capacity, integrated land-use decisions, and more meaningful local implementation. The intervention reinforced the importance of strengthening the institutions and practitioners who translate broad urban goals into local plans.

Key takeaway: Good planning is not paperwork. It is the discipline that connects land, housing, infrastructure, public space, climate resilience, and community priorities before cities are locked into avoidable inequality.

Malta's youth delegate made the case that sustainable cities cannot be designed for young people without being designed with them. The intervention rejected token consultation and called for genuine co-creation. It also linked affordable housing, transport, public spaces, climate resilience, food systems, and the circular economy as interconnected priorities, especially relevant for an island state with limited land and natural resources.

Key takeaway: Young people are not future observers of urban policy. They are present-day partners whose ideas, needs, and leadership must shape the cities they will inherit.

Mexico described a territorial approach that puts people at the center of public policy and integrates social, economic, and environmental dimensions of development. Its National Development Plan 2025–2030 treats territory as a system in which people, ecosystems, infrastructure, and productive activities interact. Mexico also highlighted land-use planning, sustainable mobility, comprehensive risk management, and participation by young people, Indigenous peoples, and local communities. It invited participants to the 14th World Urban Forum, to be held in Mexico City in 2028.

Key takeaway: Cities become more resilient and inclusive when territorial planning starts with people, ecosystems, mobility, risk, and participation—not with one sector operating alone.

Volunteers International Group described SDG 11 as a local platform where all 17 goals meet. Its intervention argued that a single integrated investment can strengthen water, energy, infrastructure, climate resilience, economic opportunity, and quality of life at the same time. It emphasized evidence, data, green buildings, volunteer action, and the need to measure impact while keeping human wisdom, trust, and inclusion at the center.

Key takeaway: Integrated local action can create multiple SDG gains at once, but measurable impact must remain connected to trust, participation, and the human beings a sustainable city is meant to serve.

Switzerland stresses coordinated action across state, regional, and city levels, together with civil society and all stakeholders, as essential to leaving no one behind. It also describes cities as laboratories for innovation and points to housing, mobility, energy transition, circular economy, and social inclusion as shared urban priorities.

Key takeaway: The available portion of Switzerland's statement reinforces the need for multilevel, all-stakeholder urban action. I have not inferred or added any detail beyond the portion of the supplied transcript available for review.

What the SDG 11 session made clear

Housing and informal settlements: The most urgent message was that housing must be treated as core infrastructure for dignity, health, education, livelihoods, and inclusion. With 1.16 billion people living in slums in 2024, informal settlements cannot be left outside city plans. Upgrading, tenure security, essential services, and co-creation with residents matter more than displacement and exclusion.

Transport: Access to transport has improved, but access alone is not enough. Transport must be affordable, safe, connected, low-carbon, and designed around the trips people actually make. Lagos and Jakarta showed the scale of what is at stake: mobility is access to opportunity. This connects directly to SDG 9 on resilient infrastructure, SDG 7 on clean energy, SDG 10 on reduced inequalities, and SDG 13 on climate action.

Localized implementation and integrated planning: National commitments must reach city halls, local communities, and local budgets. SDG 11 cannot be achieved by separate agencies working in isolation. Housing, water and sanitation (SDG 6), energy (SDG 7), infrastructure (SDG 9), land use, public health, safety, and climate resilience must be planned together.

Inclusion: Women, young people, older persons, persons with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, migrants, displaced people, and residents of informal settlements are not groups to consult at the end. They are partners in creating cities that work. This is the practical meaning of SDG 10: reduced inequalities have to be visible in who can afford housing, use transport, access services, and shape decisions.

Data, science, and climate resilience: Good urban decisions need local data, geospatial systems, science-policy partnerships, and transparent monitoring. But data should not replace community knowledge; it should work with it. Climate resilience also has to be social as well as physical: it includes heat, flooding, disaster risk, housing conditions, service access, and the ability of communities to recover with dignity. This is where SDG 13 must be embedded in everyday urban planning.

Financing and partnerships: The room repeatedly returned to finance. Cities are asked to deliver global commitments while often lacking adequate revenue, authority, capacity, and access to investment. SDG 17 is therefore not the last goal on the list; it is the operating system for delivery. Stronger partnerships must mean accountable collaboration among governments, local authorities, civil society, science, development partners, the private sector, and communities—with resources reaching the local level.

My closing reflection

What I took from this session is simple: sustainable cities are not built by declarations. They are built by decisions that make it possible for a family to afford a safe home, for a young person to reach opportunity, for an older person or person with a disability to move with dignity, for a community to survive a flood or heatwave, and for residents to have a real voice in the future of their neighborhood.

The practical takeaways are clear. Put housing first. Upgrade and include informal settlements. Build transport as a public good. Give local governments the resources and authority to act. Use data and science without leaving people out of the process. Plan for climate shocks before they become disasters. And finance partnerships that deliver visible results, not just impressive language.

SDG 11 is where the promise of the 2030 Agenda becomes visible in everyday life. We have to make sure that promise reaches every community.

By Lady B Bless
Co-Chair, African & Caribbean Energy Network
iamladybbless.com