Report from Cairo: For Global Cities, Pressures Just Keep Building

Urban planners, elected officials, representatives of nonprofit organizations, and others came together in the historic metropolis of Cairo in late 2024 to confront the relentless pressures that global cities are facing, at the World Urban Forum 12 convened by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). The theme of the summit was “It all starts at home.”

Growing populations, a continuing housing crisis, and climate change–triggered disasters including floods, droughts, and fires—as well as vast destruction associated with military conflict—have brought new intensity to efforts to support burgeoning urban areas across the globe, particularly in the developing world.

At the closing ceremony, UN-Habitat Executive Director Anaclaudia Rossbach, noting that two-thirds of the world’s population resides in urban areas, highlighted the pivotal role of local governments in shaping cities and human settlements. Rossbach, previously the director of the Latin America and the Caribbean program at the Lincoln Institute, said the conference set new records of engagement, with 24,000 participants from 182 countries.

“The World Urban Forum is a uniquely relevant event for those concerned about the quality and promise of human settlements large and small,” said Enrique R. Silva, chief program officer at the Lincoln Institute. “It’s an event that tackles the complex nature of urban issues by embracing a diversity of voices, techniques, and tools. For the Lincoln Institute, the World Urban Forum is a key space in which we can demonstrate how land and land policy can provide effective solutions to address housing, climate, and public health concerns, among other global, national, and local policy priorities.”

At the summit’s Dialogue 4: Localizing Finance and Financing Localization, Silva lauded local government efforts to boost own-source revenues, especially revenues that can be generated through the property tax or land value capture. “A local government’s capacity to leverage and manage own-source revenue not only strengthens its local finances, but also demonstrates to national and multilateral funders that it has the ability to plan, finance, and deliver projects,” he said. “This capacity can help local governments access larger sources of funding for much-needed projects.”

Representatives from the Lincoln Institute delegation participated in panels and training sessions focused on financing local development, climate mitigation and resilience, land value capture, and affordable housing. They also took part in an open house presented by the Center for Geospatial Solutions and a special Urban Library event featuring municipal leaders and the Lincoln Institute book Mayor’s Desk: 20 Conversations with Local Leaders Solving Global Problems. That event included the governor of Cairo, Ibrahim Saber Khalil, who will be the next local leader interviewed in the ongoing Mayor’s Desk series. Other municipal leaders who participated in the panel, Mayors and Innovators: Replicable Strategies for Local Political and Technological Change, included Manuel de Araujo, mayor of Quelimane, Mozambique; Kostas Bakoyannis, former mayor of Athens; and Marvin Rees, former mayor of Bristol, England.

The issue of climate change remains prominent in any consideration of global cities and their future, said Amy Cotter, director of urban sustainability at the Lincoln Institute.

“In this unparalleled global conversation about all things urban, the context of a changing climate is ever present,” she said. “City leaders are very aware of their dual roles—both agent and victim of climate change impacts—and eager for levers of change that they can control. I was impressed with their level of engagement in our sessions on land-based climate finance and on preparing for a potential climate-induced population influx, and their commitment to putting ideas and approaches into practice back home.”

At the Urban Planning & City Solutions for Climate Mobility panel, Cotter acknowledged “the increasing difficulty of people to remain in precarious places” and offered ways that communities anticipating a potential influx of climate change–induced relocation can plan and prepare for that future, drawing from the recent working paper “Insights for Receiving Communities in Planning Equitable and Positive Outcomes Under Climate Migration.”

The Lincoln Institute continued to expand the knowledge base and create new resources on the topic of land-based climate finance. Economist Cynthia Goytia, lead author of the recently published working paper “Examining Opportunities and Challenges for Implementing Land-Based Financing Instruments for Funding Climate Action: A Study of Land Markets and Flood Risk Pricing in Different Contexts,” explored the ways cities can recoup the costs of resilience through value capture, at the session Financing Strategies and Smart Solutions for Cities Worldwide.

Luis Quintanilla, program analyst at the Lincoln Institute, led a training workshop on value capture and participated in Financing Urban Infrastructure: Innovative Options to Attract Investors. In collaboration with the Cities Forward initiative, the session Overcoming the Project Implementation Gap to Address Urban Sustainability and Resilience revealed the opportunity and benefit of land value capture for climate action.

Housing inadequacy—affecting an estimated 2.8 billion people worldwide—was the weighty topic at Meeting the Moment: Innovations in Housing Supply to Address Inequality in Cities, where Darla Munroe, director of Research and Cross-Cutting Initiatives at the Lincoln Institute, discussed the affordability of manufactured homes, as well as zoning reform efforts in the US aimed at increasing housing supply.

The Lincoln Institute has been engaged in UN-Habitat’s World Urban Forum summits for nearly 20 years.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Lead image: Anthony Flint of the Lincoln Institute, center, meets with Cairo Governor Ibrahim Saber Khalil, left, at the World Urban Forum. Khalil will be the next local leader profiled in the ongoing Mayor’s Desk series. Credit: Lincoln Institute.