The 13th session of the World Urban Forum (WUF13) concluded in Baku on Friday, drawing a record 57,000 participants from 176 countries. The forum’s final declaration, the Baku Call to Action, placed housing at the center of global urban policy, framing it as a systemic challenge that shapes inequality, resilience, and stability across cities worldwide.
Anacláudia Rossbach, Executive Director of UN-Habitat, described housing as a “systemic global challenge that shapes inequality, opportunity, resilience, and stability and peace in our cities and societies.” She identified affordability pressures, displacement, and climate vulnerability as the primary drivers of this crisis. The Call to Action stresses that solutions must integrate land, finance, infrastructure, and governance to create climate-resilient, inclusive cities through urban transformation.
Rossbach noted that “never before has a forum of this nature brought together such a vast and diverse global audience,” underscoring the growing urgency of urban issues. WUF13 National Coordinator Anar Guliyev of Azerbaijan said the forum’s theme “placed housing at the centre of the global urban agenda and reaffirmed that access to adequate, affordable, safe and resilient housing remains one of the defining challenges of our time.”
Displacement, Climate, and the Social Contract
In an interview with Euronews, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed warned that the world will see “much more displacement from climate and from the conflicts that we are not able to solve.” She called for better-designed financial mechanisms to ensure universal access to housing, cautioning against “just siloing the issue of housing, because this is not just about a house or a home, it’s about community and it’s about a life of dignity.”
Mohammed highlighted that over 70% of the global population will live in cities by 2050, with a critical window to lay foundations by 2030. She urged nations to align their policies to “be more resilient and more inclusive, so we could leapfrog if we could just get our ducks aligned.” She also issued a stark warning about a probable “Super El Niño” this year, which will bring “incredible heat into many, many countries that already are suffering from it” and more floods for which the world is unprepared.
The deputy secretary-general linked the housing crisis to broader inequalities, arguing that “the social contract is breaking down, that democracy is not working for people, that a life of dignity is disappearing in front of people's eyes, with no hope and no dignity.” She pointed to young people feeling “completely priced out of cities,” noting that “what used to be let's rent a flat is now let's rent a tiny little room for vast amounts more money.” This, she said, contributes to “anxieties and mental health that we see with young people today that don't know tomorrow.”
Mohammed’s remarks resonate with recent data on global mental health: a surge in anxiety and depression has reached 1.2 billion cases worldwide, as reported in Global Mental Health Cases Reach 1.2 Billion. The housing affordability crisis, she argued, is a key driver of this trend, as young people with education and jobs still cannot afford rent. “There's something very wrong in the way we're structuring our economies and the inclusiveness, particularly for young people,” she said.
Azerbaijan’s Post-Conflict Reconstruction as a Case Study
Hikmet Hajiyev, assistant to the president of Azerbaijan and head of the Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration, told Euronews that the country’s post-conflict reconstruction experience was a focus of WUF13. Azerbaijan is rebuilding “nine cities and 300 settlements and villages from scratch” in territories heavily contaminated with landmines after decades of conflict. Hajiyev said the country is applying “all elements of modern urbanism” to provide “safe and dignified conditions for the IDPs to return to their homes.”
He noted that “at the global level, we see that cities are disappearing in front of our eyes” in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Azerbaijan’s efforts, he argued, offer lessons for the international community. “We are ready and proudly ready to share it,” he added. Hajiyev also highlighted Azerbaijan’s historical urban legacy, citing Gabala, an ancient city that served as the capital of Caucasian Albania and a regional hub for trade and education. “Based on this culture of urbanism, we are carrying within a historical legacy and also applying modern city development. Baku is an exact illustration of that, where we provide it in harmony between culture, history, medieval architecture and modern architecture,” he said.
The forum’s discussions also touched on the need to integrate migration into urban planning, as explored in Baku Forum: Migration Must Be Core to Urban Planning, Not an Emergency. With cities expanding rapidly, the Baku Call to Action urges governments to treat housing not as a standalone issue but as part of a broader strategy for inclusive, resilient urban development. The message from WUF13 is clear: the future of cities depends on addressing the systemic inequalities and climate risks that threaten to leave millions behind.
