Housing as an infrastructure for more sustainable, caring and fairer cities

Across Catalonia in north-eastern Spain, an alternative housing system is emerging. This article on The Conversation explores what can be learned from this experience to help address the European housing crisis. 

From 2024 to 2025, urbaMonde, together with nine grassroots organisations from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, collaborated to systematise nine community-led financial mechanisms. The outcome is a comprehensive publication that highlights the history and functioning of these mechanisms, the main challenges they face, and the best practices that enabled their establishment and growth.

These documents are the outcome of a two-part dialogue on housing, climate justice and care organised by the Habitat International Coalition (HIC), Isandla Institute, and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The documents aim to give visibility to propositions from civil society and housing movements with local and regional governments, employing the lenses of climate justice and care to advocate for more just and adequate housing policies and practices.

This collection features 14 case studies on community-led urban innovations, showcasing existing scalable solutions to create more just and sustainable cities. It draws on experiences shared during the ‘Global Peer Learning Series: Urban Innovation for Just and Sustainable Cities’, convened and hosted by GIZ and Cities Alliance in 2024, as well as the wealth of grounded cases in which Slum Dwellers International (SDI), the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), and others have been involved over the last few years.

Build Change has published a white paper linking housing justice to disaster resilience, and how it can address the disproportionate impact of disasters on the world’s poor. It proposes why integrating housing justice principles is essential for building effective disaster- and climate-resilience programs.

There are currently 87,000 unoccupied homes in the central region of the city of São Paulo. What would be the impact of fully utilising this housing potential? This study by Instituto Polis demonstrates that allocating idle properties and empty land in the central area of ​​São Paulo for low-income housing could contribute to fair energy transition strategies and climate mitigation and adaptation.

A research project in Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone investigates the factors affecting the governance of the supply chain for building materials used in informal settlements, seeking to fill a knowledge gap that is crucial to improving the housing conditions of the urban poor and achieving a fair transition towards a more sustainable building and construction industry.

This Habitat for Humanity and IIED report for the "Home Equals" campaing shows that the substantial benefits from increased access to adequate housing not only improve the lives of those living in informal settlements but also affect entire societies.

Publication explaining how to approach informal settlement upgrading from the perspective of the Just Urban Transition. The first publication in South Africa to explicitly look at and engage with this question in any real way. By Isandla Institute.

Publication examining how the City of Cape Town could actively support the delivery of small-scale rental housing to boost housing supply, encourage formalisation, improve the city's urban form, stimulate more equitable income and address infrastructure challenges. By Development Action Group and the Human Sciences Research Council.

An advocacy publication which challenges the use of centrally located public land as parking lots for government vehicles. The report argues that it makes no sense from a housing justice or city-building perspective to use valuable public land to park government vehicles. A set of alternative proposals are put forward that center the social function of public land. By Ndifuna Ukwazi