At the World Urban Forum in Baku, a gathering of city leaders from across the globe delivered a blunt message: the housing crisis is not primarily a question of money, but of governance. The mayor of Konya, Turkey's sixth-largest city, told Euronews that the most significant barrier to housing production is the fractured communication between local administrations and central governments.
"What we see in other cities is actually the most important obstacle in the face of housing production, not the financial problem, but the communication problem between the central government and the local administration," said Uğur İbrahim Altay, who also serves as Executive President of the United Cities and Local Governments network. Altay argued that housing built without integration into the broader urban fabric fails its residents. "We have to produce integrated housing with the city, not isolated," he said. "We also need to create an area where people can spend time with their children and families, where they can be happy, where they live."
Resilience and Accountability in Urban Leadership
The perspective from Ramallah offered a different lens. Ahmad Abulaban, City Director of Ramallah Municipality, explained that Palestinians have developed resilience out of necessity. "We have been experts in crisis management because all the time we have to deal with different kinds of crisis, of challenges," Abulaban told Euronews. "We believe in the three main phases of resilience: to survive, to adapt and to grow after any crisis."
Mauricio Rodas, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former mayor of Quito, Ecuador, who held office when the city hosted the UN's Habitat III conference in 2016, emphasized that mayoral leadership is defined by accountability. "Mayors are all about delivery. They are constantly under citizens' scrutiny because everything that a mayor does impacts people's everyday lives," Rodas said. "Mayors cannot afford to think about politics, to discuss ideology. They don't have time for that. They have to work on the ground."
Rodas noted that cities now produce 80% of global GDP, house more than half the world's population, and generate more than 70% of global CO2 emissions — making urban leadership inseparable from climate, economic, and social policy. This interconnectedness is particularly relevant for European cities, where climate change and urban sprawl are reshaping planning priorities.
Local Implementation vs. Federal Policy
The challenge of translating national housing policy into local delivery was illustrated by Dr. Ani Binti Ahmad, President of Sepang Municipal Council in Malaysia. She described her authority as limited to implementing federal decisions. "The policies of affordable houses are made at the federal level. What we do is follow whatever policy is made by the federal government," she told Euronews. "It is very challenging because you really have to deal with the developer, and sometimes the developer is profit-oriented."
This tension between central directives and local realities is not unique to Asia. Across Europe, from Berlin to Barcelona, mayors often find themselves caught between national housing targets and the specific needs of their communities. The WUF13 in Baku concluded with an urgent call for global urban action, underscoring that cities must be empowered to adapt policies to local conditions.
The forum also highlighted the need to integrate migration into urban planning, as Baku Forum: Migration Must Be Core to Urban Planning, Not an Emergency argued. For European cities facing demographic shifts and housing shortages, the message from Baku is clear: effective governance, not just funding, is the key to building homes that truly serve their residents.
