The State of the World's Cities 2004/2005 charts the progress and the challenges we face in this rapidly urbanising world. With contributions from some of the world's leading urban scholars, writers and experts, this report carries extensive examples, illustrations and facts that are of use to experts and non-experts alike.

Demonstrates that most arguments leading to the current bias against rental housing are highly flawed. Argues for more tenure-neutral housing policies, and urges governments to modify regulatory frameworks, develop credit programmes and other forms of assistance to support housing production, with a view to creating more rental housing and to improve the existing stock.

This toolkit is a contribution to the Global Campaign on Urban Governance, an initiative led by UN-Habitat in collaboration with a whole range of partners whose development goal is to contribute to the eradication of poverty through improved urban governance.

The publication, Financing Adequate Shelter for All, aims at addressing the housing financing problem in developing countries. The publication is the result of two conferences organised by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) in Gavle, Sweden; and New York, U.S.A., as part of the preparatory process of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the Overall Review and Appraisal of the Implementation of the Habitat Agenda.

This publication is set to highlight the broad range of issues that requires consideration with regard to local democracy and decentralization in East and Southern Africa. It aims at providing brief overviews on decentralization processes in the five selected countries in the region. It summarizes the many different aspects of decentralization highlighting key issues that need to be addressed by practitioners.

This publication documents good practices of water demand management in practice in five African cities namely; Cape Town, Durban, Hermanus, Johannesburg and Windhoek. The publication was supported by the Water for African Cities Programme, an initative developed to help African cities to take a fresh start at managing their most important resource, water more efficiently.

This a report of the seminar held in Fukuoka, Japan in October 2001. The UN-HABITAT Fukuoka office in collaboration with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) organized the seminar which looked into various issues affecting securing land for the urban poor.

This is the premier edition of State of World Cities, now a biennual flagship publication of UN-HABITAT. With a foreword by UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan and an introduction by UN-HABITAT Executive Director Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, the publication was the first attempt by UN-HABITAT to monitor, analyze and report on major areas of the Habitat Agenda in terms of the realities faced by urban population and urban policy makers.

This comprehensive review of the world’s cities analyses the positive and negative impacts on human settlements of the global trends towards social and economic integration and the rapid changes in information and communication technologies.The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) draws on specially commissioned and contributed background papers from more than 80 leading international specialists.