Reflections on the 2024 World Urban Forum
Since 2002, the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat) has hosted the World Urban Forum (WUF), the world’s largest convening on urbanization, exploring cities, communities, economies, and the local impacts of climate change. The Twelfth Session of WUF took place last week in New Cairo, Egypt, symbolically returning WUF to Africa 22 years after its first session in Nairobi, Kenya.
Lidya Woldeyesus (MURP ‘27) and Sooin Choi (BSFS ‘21, MURP ‘23) participated in the convening, engaging with stakeholders from governments, development banks, NGOs, academia, and local urban planning organizations, all dedicated to aligning global urbanization with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this piece, Lidya and Sooin reflect on their experience at WUF-12, offering their unique perspectives on the discourse at the WUF and contemporary challenges and opportunities associated with global urbanization.
Sooin Choi is a research assistant in the Georgetown Global Cities Initiative and a graduate from the Urban & Regional Planning program.
Lidya Woldeyesus is a research assistant in the Georgetown Global Cities Initiative and a masters candidate in the Urban & Regional Planning program.
Day 1: Monday, November 4th
Today marks the first day of the WUF 12 in New Cairo, Egypt. This year’s theme is “It all starts at home: local actions for sustainable cities and communities” and it is the first return of the WUF to Africa since its 2002 inception in Nairobi, Kenya.
Before the opening ceremony, we explored Cairo’s bustling downtown. We began at the iconic Tahrir Square, stopped at the beautiful Egyptian National Library Museum, and ended at the vibrant Khan el-Khalili Bazaar.
Along the way, we quickly discovered how un-walkable the city was and how cars and motorcycles are the primary modes of transportation. As a result, the air is ripe with car exhaust, and the transportation system does not adequately support the vehicular demand. With a shocking 22 million burgeoning population, questions of place management in the public realm were central to our conversations.
Hosting the World Urban Forum in Egypt is a symbolic gesture. It calls for a shift in the global attention to the Global South, particularly to African cities experiencing the most rapid rate of urbanization. Cairo, in particular, is an ancient city with both its colonial past as well as its modern infrastructural problems. The government’s building of a new administrative capital, enabling them to gloss over the upkeep of its most populous city, prompts questions about the role of the public sector and for whom we build cities. As we drove to the International Exhibition Center and passed through the construction of the new capital, it was hard not to wonder how the control over urban spaces was being driven further away from the people.
The convention center venue is drastically different and isolated from the Cairo we experienced earlier in the day. The building and environment are reminiscent of Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair. The site was fitted out for this UN-Habitat forum. The exposition hall showcased different countries with urban and housing development ministry representatives. As we walked from one booth to the next, we discussed the strong involvement of international development organizations in “solving” the urban issues in the Global South. Nearby, booths served to market multi-billion dollar development projects in Saudi Arabia that aspire to deliver smart city technology.
Opening remarks included an impassioned speech from co-host Egyptian President El-Sisi, who stated that current global crises necessitate political will to, “embark on serious endeavors to address urban challenges in societies ravaged by wars, fighting, displacement, famine, and disease."
The first day was only a glimpse into the next few days of the conference. We walked away cautiously optimistic to witness governments, global NGOs, and private actors unite to put cities at the forefront of complex, multifaceted global challenges.
Day 2: Tuesday, November 5th
Day 2 highlighted a series of trainings, panel discussions, and keynote speeches. We attended sessions ranging from municipal finance and homelessness to urban resilience. One takeaway was clear: cities are on the frontlines of complex, multi-layered challenges.
For instance, 2024 has seen a record rise in global homelessness, with housing insecurity affecting an increasing number of urban populations. Even robust government and community interventions are struggling to keep up with the growing number of people experiencing homelessness in cities around the world.
Similarly, drug management was presented as a key urban challenge—a transnational issue requiring local action. In a session focused on this topic, the Global Commission on Drug Policy signed a Memorandum of Agreement with UN-Habitat, marking the commitment to implement evidence-based drug policies rooted in human rights, health, and development.
Despite promising projects across jurisdictions, many cities face obstacles in sustainably financing their initiatives. Several sessions explored creative, multisectoral financing approaches, including land readjustment pilots and partnerships with the private sector.
The discussions at WUF challenged us to adopt a broader, global perspective on local issues shared worldwide. We pushed ourselves to stay grounded, continually asking what these topics mean from a local—even hyperlocal—perspective. This tension between theory, advocacy, and practice is something we look forward to navigating in the coming days.
Day 3: Wednesday, November 6th
Day 3 made the reality of urban planning in Africa abundantly clear: contemporary practices are failing the continent.
One training session explored innovative, equitable mapping solutions for informal settlements, a crucial challenge over 1.1 billion people face worldwide. New digital tools were featured, which enabled community-led mapping, geospatial analysis, and artificial intelligence applications.
Case studies demonstrated how collaborative data efforts can support more thoughtful, inclusive planning. Highlights included Community Mappers and Slum Dwellers International's “Know Your City” campaign, which empowers residents to document their communities to advocate for essential services, such as infrastructure improvements in Nairobi’s overcrowded slums.
Another project, the IDEAMAPS Network, combines field mapping, AI, and satellite imagery to map areas of urban deprivation. Piloted in Lagos and Kano, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, IDEAMAPS provides a nuanced understanding of poverty by focusing on community assets rather than challenges alone. They published a new interactive mapping platform this week!
Another session tackled land value capture and financing in African cities, a critical topic for sustainable urban growth. Emphasizing the need for grounded, actionable plans, the session opened with a bold statement: “Urban planning has failed in Africa. Beautiful plans sit on a shelf collecting dust because they lack practical paths to implementation.”
The session spotlighted the unique challenges cities face in land governance. In Egypt, for example, fragmented ownership across agencies slows development, while in Ethiopia, all land is owned by the government. In Kampala, Uganda, land ownership lies solely with the people, complicating the government's financial ability to access land for public projects. Freetown, Sierra Leone, provided a success story where increased property tax compliance has fueled urban development, boosting revenues significantly. Meanwhile, in Cape Town, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy highlighted efforts to include stakeholders to ease the administrative gridlock slowing investments.
Today’s sessions highlighted the need for adaptive, context-driven data approaches to land policy in Africa, particularly in leveraging property taxation as a sustainable funding source for urban growth. It is abundantly clear that urban planners must be ready to practice within unique land governance realities.
Day 4: Thursday, November 7th
Several parting sessions stood out for their timely and thought-provoking discussions as the World Urban Forum was winding down. A session led by Ethan Kent, Executive Director at PlacemakingX, titled “Empathy in Motion,” explored how urban planners can address the unique transportation needs of different demographics, including children and individuals with disabilities.
Another session critically explored the impact of short-term rentals, such as Airbnb, on local communities and their right to affordable housing. By looking at how this has been impacting cities in Latin America and Europe that have a high economic reliance on tourism, the session challenged the assumption that tourism benefits local economies. Participants walked away thinking about how to foster a more symbiotic relationship between tourism and the local community.
Given the UN’s bias on country-level projects, we noticed a gap in the conversations around hyperlocal management of places. We were honored to present the Georgetown Global Cities report developed through last year’s Urban Thinkers Campus event entitled, “International Practices of Place Management through Multisectoral Partnerships.” This report highlights management practitioners from Washington, DC, Diepsloot, South Africa, and Doha, Qatar, to discuss how place-based partnerships address public service gaps and leverage private sector resources to support local communities.
The presentation demonstrated examples of Place Management Organizations (PMOs), often with the most profound community connections, uniquely positioned to serve residents effectively while attracting private capital to neglected places.
Throughout the day, we engaged with universities worldwide that focus on urban planning, design, engineering, or urban innovation. It was inspiring to see academia’s growing global commitment to urban issues, with a deliberate focus on amplifying cities’ potential to achieve innovation, economic development, social justice, and the Sustainable Development Goals on a local level.
We ended the day by joining the World Urban Forum’s festival at the Citadel of Saladin, a medieval Islamic-era fortification in downtown Cairo. While located close to other downtown Cairo landmarks, the Citadel felt secluded from the buzz of the city. Cairo’s governors greeted WUF participants by introducing us to traditional Egyptian dance and music. Yet, just as the WUF venue felt geographically isolated from the rest of Cairo, we were struck that the celebration of the urban life at the Citadel was utterly detached from the vibrancy and frenzy of the city hosting us.
Day 5: Friday, November 8th
The university booth closed down as the conference ended, and we attended the few remaining sessions. Overall, the conference was insightful, but as urban planners who find inspiration in our surroundings, our biggest takeaways came from experiencing Cairo and New Cairo on the ground.
Throughout the week, we talked with shopkeepers at the famous Khan El-Khalili Market and Old Cairo Bazaar, our guides who took us to the pyramids, and our Uber drivers about their views on urbanization in Cairo. President Sisi’s large infrastructure projects are visible to all, but many residents expressed concerns about capital investments being focused in the new capital city and not in populated Cairo. Massive investments are being made in bridges, highways, and metro lines to connect Old and New Cairo.
Some of this infrastructure are built on historic Islamic graveyards with little community input. As American-based planners, we couldn’t help but see parallels with mid-20th-century U.S. urban renewal, when large-scale infrastructure often came at a social and cultural cost. Granted, the political climate in the U.S. and Egypt are very different, but how would Cairo recover from such losses? Today, so much of American planning practice is dedicated to undoing the harms of urban renewal, and Egypt, sooner or later, will be challenged to think through the repercussions of today’s projects.
Walking through Cairo and Giza, we encountered piles of concrete rubble and waste, reminders of development pressures without sufficient disposal options. We passed gated communities sealed off from their surroundings. We observed stark contrasts between new multifamily buildings, freshly painted and dust-free; and neglected, weathered structures perched next to highways. These contrasts underscored the inequities within urban communities, reflected in the built environment.
The insights gained at WUF-12 and our time in Egypt will continue to inform our work. We feel compelled to critically engage with questions about (1) how planning decisions impact local communities, (2) how to decentralize control from central governments and international development banks to local stakeholders, and (3) how to adapt planning practices to unique geographical and cultural contexts—rather than imposing one-size-fits-all models from the Global North and risking that the practice of urban planning becomes an inherently colonial practice.
