Global State of National Urban Policy 2024: Building Resilience and Promoting Adequate, Inclusive and Sustainable Housing

Home to around half of the world’s population, cities are hubs of economic, social, and cultural activity – acting as engines of growth, innovation, and global interconnection, accounting for over 80% of the world’s GDP. They attract talent, investment, and creativity, fostering vibrant, diverse communities, and facilitate the exchange of ideas. However, when urbanisation is poorly managed, these agglomeration benefits can be offset by agglomeration costs, such as traffic congestion, air pollution, urban sprawl, and rising housing costs. Cities are often unequal places, with significant disparities in income, housing, jobs, and access to green amenities and public services. Moreover, several megatrends, ranging from the climate crisis to demographic and digital transformations, are also having an impact on citizens‘ well-being. Addressing these interconnected challenges in cities is at the heart of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 ‘making cities and human settlements, inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. However, progress is off-track. Of the four SDG 11 targets where adequate data are available, two (upgrading slums, and access to public and green spaces) are far behind schedule, and the other two (access to public transport, and disaster risk management) still require substantial efforts to be achieved.

Despite varying degrees of decentralisation and capacity across and within countries, cities often hold key policy and investment responsibilities to address urban challenges. However, cities cannot do it alone: they need to work hand in hand with national governments. By providing a comprehensive framework to align planning, investment, and policy interventions across levels of government to drive quality urbanisation, National Urban Policy (NUP) can help address urban challenges more effectively and avoid duplicating efforts or resources. For example, it is estimated that while cities have the potential to reduce one third of urban GHG emissions by 2050, the remaining two-thirds depends either on national and state governments or on co-ordination across levels of government. NUP is therefore essential to steer a whole-of government approach towards sustainable urban development.

Drawing on a survey of 78 countries across the globe, this report shows that NUP is increasingly becoming a critical instrument to manage urban challenges and to advance sustainable urbanisation, with more than 80% of countries having a NUP in place. The share of explicit NUPs, which are defined as formally labelled urban frameworks or policies, increased to 63% in 2024 (up from 51% in 2018 and 58% in 2021). Explicit NUPs are particularly prevalent in countries with significant urban population growth. On average, countries with explicit NUPs saw their urban population grow by 43% over the 2000-2020 period, compared to only 19% in countries with non-explicit NUPs.

Given large differences across countries in the scale of urban challenges, the degree of political, administrative, and fiscal autonomy of local governments, as well as the policy and institutional frameworks in place, significant variation exists in how NUPs are defined and developed. Indeed, there can be no one-size-fits-all approach for effective NUPs. However, many commonalities and lessons can be drawn from diverse experiences in designing, formulating, implementing and monitoring NUPs, which are summarised below to provide a source of inspiration for policy makers and other urban actors. In addition, the report takes a forward-looking view by making a series of recommendations to expand the monitoring and evaluation of NUP impacts.