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The Urbanist
UN-Habitat’s call to action on housing, a Bloomberg-LSE programme for mayors and Expo Real in Munich
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I put Real Estate is Dublin's leading property investment company for almost 60 years a custodian of the city, embracing excellence in design, sustainability and occupier experience. More than that I put understands that real change means transforming how valuable, vibrant and loved a neighborhood is. Discover how they build and invest. Head to I put.com now and and learn about their passion for their projects and their unique presence in Dublin. I put Creator of Exceptional places Custodian of the City.
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B
Hello and welcome to the Urbanist, Monocle's program all about the built environment. I'm your host, Carl Carlotta Rebelo.
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C
Coming up, you can't just cookie cutter paste an idea you've seen in one city into another city. But oftentimes, if you're dealing with the same problem, the challenge is really around adaptation to local context.
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What can mayors learn from one another? We discover a new program bringing local leaders together to tackle their city's challenges. Then we speak with UN Habitat to hear more about the agency's global call to action on housing. And we head to Munich for Expo Real to hear how DERI wants to set a new benchmark for pedestrian and green urbanism. That's all ahead in the next 30 minutes right here on the Urbanist with me, Carlotta Rebelo. It's no secret that mayors are being asked to do more than ever before, from tackling housing and climate challenges to strengthening democracy at the local level. Now a new initiative hopes to give them the tools to lead with confidence. Bloomberg Philanthropies has partnered with the London School of Economics to launch the Mayoral Leadership Program, the first of its kind in Europe. Over the next year, 30 mayors from 17 countries, representing some 21 million residents, will be offered executive training and a platform to share ideas and solutions. I spoke with James Anderson, who leads the Government Innovation Program at Bloomberg Philanthropies, to find out more about why this initiative matters, how it could redefine city governance across the continent, and what it tells us about the growing importance of local leadership.
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C
This is a part of the government Innovation programming at Bloomberg Philanthropies, and for the past 12, 15 years, we've been building programs around the world that strengthen the capacity of municipalities to adapt to change, to innovate, and to deliver results for their residents. One of the key pillars of that work is leadership development. Mike Bloomberg zeroed in on this himself. CEOs in big companies are appointed to their roles. The first thing they're offered is leadership development and training for the C Suite. When we started looking around the world we recognized that there was little to nothing available for public sector leaders and particularly for mayors who manage incredibly complex organizations with competing bottom lines, diverse stakeholders, often with too few resources relative to the responsibilities and expectations, expectations of their citizenry. And we realized that leadership development was really critical. This program expands our work robustly into Europe. While we've been working in European cities for a number of years, this will create a real home for the art and science of city leadership across the continent. Operated in partnership with two world class organizations, the London School of Economics and particularly the LSC Cities Initiative and Program, along with the Hurdy School in Berlin. So bringing the best of both institutions to bear to help Europe's mayors achieve all of their sort of ambitions and respond to all of the challenges they face.
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Well, let's stay on that idea of challenges because what is so interesting about this program is it acts as a platform as well for mayors to exchange solutions to common problems. We know that the same solution does not apply to every single city, but it is another layer of that networking platform of bringing together mayors to maybe discuss what is working and what isn't in the cities too.
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It's one of the things I hear the most from these mayors. They are excited to talk about the things that are working in their cities and to share lessons learned. To be honest with their peers about how difficult it was, what went easily, what lessons did they learn along the way, and to hear the same from their peers. One of the, I think remarkable things about this institutional layer and about mayors around the world is they don't have that, you know, not invented in my backyard syndrome. Very eager to understand emerging, promising, proven practices from other cities. They get a lot of fomo, fear of missing out. They want what the other mayors have. And really one of the key capacities that we're building up in these cities is how do you adapt these ideas? You're totally right. You can't just cookie cutter paste an idea you've seen in one city into another city. But oftentimes, if you're dealing with the same problem, the challenge is really around adaptation to local context. How do you understand how this will fit into the current service array? What skills and capabilities do you need to adjust it so that it can in fact work in local context?
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B
Now this is of course a program that's meant to help drive public sector innovation. And we know that sometimes that can come as a bit of a challenge to certain areas of the public sector. But I'm curious to hear from your perspective. You know, what do you believe that city mayors can not only get out of the program, but will this help them and their teams to have more power to implement some of the changes that their cities need?
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We're hearing that from European mayors specifically all the time. In fact, we did a survey a little bit over a year ago in partnership with Eurocities, the large city network in Europe and LSE. And they surveyed mayors and 60% of the respondents believed that improving their innovation capacity was the most critical thing they could do in order to drive their priorities forward. And of course, the challenges facing European city governments are intensifying. We see military conflict, large scale refugee integration, extreme weather events, the exacting carbon reduction targets, new and highly disruptive technologies. So mayors really are the front line and the last mile of responding to all of these challenges and innovation. I mean, figuring out how you use existing resources in new ways, how you create a platform that invites different resources, different ideas to solve problems with you, this is innovation and this is necessary to address the challenges these mayors face.
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B
It's interesting that you mentioned Euro cities there because I remember, I believe last year a report that was Bloomberg Euro Cities nlse precisely outlining some of these challenges that are changing for mayors in Europe and how, you know, needing to innovate and address the way the role of a mayor is changing in the European continent and what are some of the reasons behind that. So it's great to hear that, that collaboration and staying on that, comparing, I guess between Europe and the US what do you think are some of the next big challenges for European cities?
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C
You know, it's interesting, the mayors that are in the classroom this week all came in with a priority issue. Oslo is focused on improving cross sector collaboration so they can leverage in civil society, the business sector around at risk youth, on schools, on health services, et cetera. Madrid Spain wants to speed up the the permitting for construction of housing. They, like so many cities, are dealing with an affordability issue. South Yorkshire in the uk, which is a more rural, urban sort of area, is looking at transportation deficiencies which really undermine economic mobility for their residents. So these are the sort of issues that the mayors come into the classroom with. But I gotta say, underneath all of them is the sense that we are in strange times. Polarization, nationalism has increased, institutional fragility is high, and mayors know that they are the bulwark for democratic legitimacy. And almost every mayor I talk to says I have to show results, I have to show people that we see them, that we understand their issues and their needs and that we're able to move the machinery of local government to be responsive. If we can't show this here, we're really in trouble. So that also is front and center in the Bloomberg LSE City Leadership Initiative, which is like democratic legitimacy. And how do you show the work, how do you bring people along, how do you engage stakeholders so that they recognize in their municipality legitimacy and a government that they can believe in?
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Well, you mentioned there some of the students of this program talk to me about, you know, the lessons and this is more just to understand the content and what they will be doing because this is, as you have described, very hands on, very geared towards taking lessons back home and making sure that they improve their cities. So what does a typical day look like for this new cohort?
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So the key thing to know is that this is a nine month intensive program. We're kicking it off this week with four days with the mayors themselves. And the focus here is really like what is the mayor's role in creating a more innovative culture within their organization? What is the mayor's role in leveraging data and setting a standard within the organization that we need to follow the facts, we need to be informed by data. What is the mayor's role in creating a culture that invites participation from citizens, from civil society, from businesses? These are different skill sets in terms of leadership and different mindsets. And really I'm just such a strong believer that that change has to come from the top of the organization. If the mayor is not permissioning innovation, if the mayor is not permissioning risk taking in the name of doing better than the exist services which everyone knows are insufficient. If the mayor is not permissioning those things, this work is so much harder and it rarely gets to scale. In a few months we'll then bring together the senior leaders for a shadow program. This is now the people who are day to day running the programs under the mayor. They'll learn many of the same lessons but with more of an operational orientation, with more of a team building and team management orientation. In addition to will be inviting each of the mayors to identify 10 individuals early to mid career professionals within their municipality who will participate in a 10 week innovation webinar series to upskill some of the young and promising talent within those municipalities and teach them the same language, the same skill and mindsets. So across all of these different layers, we start with the top, then we go to the top management and then we go into the bureaucracy and really are helping create a shared language around how do we shift the culture of this organization to be more data driven, to be more citizen engaged to be more innovative.
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B
Now, this is the inaugural class, but I'm curious, you know, for next year, is a requirement of the program that you get different cities, or can the same city come back again and again? Or is the hope that they won't need to come back after doing the program?
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Each mayor can be admitted one time and all of the program and supports that I mentioned they benefit from. During the nine months, there will also be alumni activities that they can continue to participate in and deepen their team's understanding of the core concepts over the course of their morality. When a new mayor is elected by the city, that new mayor has an opportunity to apply as well. One of the things I'm so proud of in the United States, with the Bloomberg Harvard Program, which was our first and original city leadership initiative, we've now had three mayors from Philadelphia, two mayors from Denver, three mayors from Durham. One of the things that is happening in the United States is that the mayor who's on their way out calls their successor and says, the one thing you got to do is sign up for this leadership development program. It's my expectation that that same thing will happen in Europe. So we double down on the existing mayor during their time in office and when a new team comes in, we start anew with the city.
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James Anderson there of Bloomberg Philanthropies, thank you for joining us on the urban Last month, as world leaders gathered in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, a different conversation was taking place in the sidelines over one of the most pressing issues of our housing. UN Habitat, together with Kenya's President William Ruto, launched a global call to action urging governments to treat adequate and affordable housing as a human right, not a privilege. Earlier I spoke with Anna Claudio Hosbach, the executive director of UN Habitat, to hear why ensuring everyone has a home is key to creating fairer, more livable cities and how the agency is building momentum on this issue ahead of the World Urban Forum in Baku next year.
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This crisis has been affecting countries globally. We have all over the world about 3 billion people suffering from some sort of housing inadequacy. If we look at the global south, for example, there is a high prevalence of informal settlement settlements. So people that are occupying informally, mostly vulnerable territories, you know, with very precarious access to basic services, water, sanitation, electricity. Right. And very precariously also connected to the cities. We have about 1 billion people living in this situation, but we also have homelessness, about 300 million people worldwide experiencing homelessness. So today you can see and walk in cities all over the world, you're going see people living really on the streets. And at the same time we are losing houses. We have about 120 million people displaced globally in 2024 alone. And if we look at Africa, for example, the Internal Displacement Monitoring center reports that the number of internally displaced people has tripled in the past 15 years to 35 million, with 60% seeking refugee in already overstretched urban areas.
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Those numbers really paint the scale of this huge crisis that is affecting people all around the globe. This shows just how significant as well this call for action is. Tell me a bit more about what was announced during this roundtable.
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President Ruto from Kenya led this process, invited heads of state from all over the world, and we had an excellent discussion in New York. And basically this group of countries are issuing or launching a call to action. The call to action is to place adequate housing at the center of the domestic agendas of their countries. An international agenda. Right. So to make sure that member states, countries mobilize to have more resources domestically for housing to consider and recognize the emergency of the situation that we are living now. I just mentioned the 1 billion living in informal settlements, the homelessness and so on. So recognizing the urgency of tackling the housing crisis and also amplifying the space on the international stage. Right? On the global stage, let's say. So that implies also having more resources and more finances, finance dedicated to housing coming from the global pot. So this is the call for action urgency, the centrality of the agenda domestically and internationally so that we can actually address and tackle the crisis with the political backup that it requires. We know there are technical gaps, but we also know that we have so many experiences, innovation and solutions all over the world. So having this political backup is very important for the work of UN Habitat that had actually placed housing at the center of our work for the next four years.
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B
You mentioned there, President Ruto of Kenya. And this high level roundtable was hosted between the government of Kenya and UN Habitat. Tell me about, you know that partnership and I know that of course UN Habitat partners with a lot of different countries and member states. But I'm curious about why Kenya on this occasion.
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Well, we have been seeing Carlota more and more countries putting housing at the center of the agenda. They are realizing how important housing is. And if we look at Africa and the urbanization dynamics in Africa, we're going to have hundreds of millions of people coming to cities in Africa. Right. So right now for you to have an Idea, we have 50% of the population globally living in cities. In 2050, the estimate rates are of 70% of the population living in cities. 2 billion are going to come to cities and 90% of this 2 billion Africa and Southeast Asia. And we're talking about cities that are already facing, you know, major infrastructure gaps. If we consider Africa, 50% in the average of the urban population live in informal settlements in slums. So I believe as Kenya is looking at Africa housing and informal settlements as a critical political priority, considering the gaps and considering what's going to happen in the future, the influx, mainly young people. But there are many other countries that are in the same situation. I think being strong in the global agenda reinforces their domestic agenda as well. So President Ruto has launched a large scale housing program here, has identified instruments and mechanisms to leverage domestic finance for housing allocated prime land. Working with local and regional governments and their housing strategies and bringing that subject to the global stage reinforces what they are doing here and support what they are doing here. And the Collective for Africa is very, very important. We had last year the first African Urban Forum in the African Union recognized housing informal settlements as a central agenda for the continent. And it's very interesting to make an analogy with Europe because the European Union, the European Commission for the first time also dedicated the specific Commissioner for Housing that recognized the European housing crisis and is working on a plan. So you see this regional engagements on housing housing, you see how countries and member states are more and more prioritizing housing. And I believe President Ruto saw that compared with the domestic agenda and initiated this process.
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And we know that this is just not the first step, but a step towards continuing these discussions. Adequate and affordable housing will continue to take priority in a lot of the upcoming summits and events like COP30 happening in Belay in Brazil and the World Economic Forum in Davos early next year as well. All part of implementing the New Urban Agenda. I'm curious about your perspective about how you're seeing all this movement. We know that, you know, change is slow and takes time. But are you feeling hopeful?
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D
I'm feeling very hopeful, otherwise I wouldn't be here. But I like that you mentioned the New Urban Agenda. And to the people that are listening to us, next year in 26, we are going to celebrate 10 years of the New Urban Agenda that was approved in 2020 in Quito, Ecuador. So we have to review the New Urban Agenda. It will be a high level session at the General assembly for the midterm review of the New Urban Agenda. New Urban agenda goes into 2036. Right. And I mentioned unhappy strategic plan that goes from 26 to 29. So we have 10 years to go and it's very important to right now, you know, establishment. What are the key priorities for these 10 years to go and to establish the coalition that will allow us promoting the exchange of technical resources, promoting the political change and the systemic change that we need to address the housing crisis. Housing is very complex. Housing requires land which is obviously grounded in cities in places. So there is an element of local action, there's an element of allocation of land. Right. That needs to be combined to the urban plans to the master plans of cities. There's a strong social component. We are going to discuss housing at the World Social Summit very soon. And the intersection of housing and social development, social integration, social inclusion, social welfare. There's a strong intersection with climate. You're right. We are going to Brazil to belay to discuss the intersection of housing, informal settlements, not only how we need to build right in the future and minimize the infrastructure, go for more densities in cities, respecting the social and ecological function of the land, limiting the urban sprawl. These are all the principles of the new urban agenda, but also looking at the informal settlements, how they are suffering from the climate events. So all this intersection of housing and the poverty, housing and climate, housing and all the crisis that we are facing, we are bringing to the global stage. Right. So this call to action is part of these larger processes. And to add one very important element of this process, I would like to mention the open ended working Group on housing that has been established in December last year as a result of a UN Habitat Assembly Resolution from 2020. So now we have a group of member states. Actually it's open ended. We have about 50 member states that are coming together at least once a year in person, but also many times online. We are going to have the second meeting now in October in Nairobi. And the idea of this open ended working group that goes until 29th is really to agree on certain aspects of the housing crisis and to define the some standards and to provide some guidances to collect some experiences. For example, we don't have a global definition for informal settlements. We don't have a definition for homelessness. We don't have sustainability embedded in our current definition of adequate housing. So these are the areas that the member states are looking at through this working group. This working group is also expected to come with recommendations in terms of policies to come come up with a platform of practices. So these are all spaces that combined will allow us to connect all the dots and make sure that UN Habitat has the right partnerships to work and support member states, to support cities in building institutions, in building capacity to deal with housing, considering the complexity that it requires.
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That was Anna. Claudio Rosbach, the Executive Director of UN Habitat. Thank you for joining us. Now, no two trade fairs are ever the same, even those that tend to attract similar navy suited crowds. Which is why I was curious to stop by exporeal, Europe's largest property and investment fair in Munich this week to see why this remains a fixture in the diaries of developer, CEO and city officials. Nearly 40,000 visitors, 650 speakers and some 1700 exhibitors were in attendance. And one of those was Diriya in Saudi Arabia, where one of the most ambitious urban development projects in the world is taking shape. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, this is currently being reimagined as a new walkable culture led city transforming some 14 square kilometers. I caught up with Kiran Haslan, the chief Marketing officer at the Riya company to hear about their ambitions for the city and why it was important to be present at an event like Expo Real.
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We've got this spectacular model here in front of us. We just lifted the hydraulics of the platform to demonstrate what makes this gigaproject just truly a world first. Because as you know, it's a pedestrian focused 63 point billion US dollar master plan. It's 10 minutes from the heart of Riyadh and 21 minutes away from the international airport. And this master plan unlocks a quality of life proposition by being pedestrian mixed asset classes. So you've got 37 hotels across the master plan, you've got 12 schools, academies, you've got a university, museums, iconic landmarks like an opera house, an arena, the Saudi Arabian Museum of Contemporary Art. So you can see this all before you. And for your listeners, we're looking at a model which depicts the master plan as it's fully signed off and currently being implemented. One half of the master plan is going to be completed by 2028 and the other side of the master plan is going to be completed by 2030. And so we're moving at a rapid rate. In order to do that, I think we've taken a bit of a world record for the most amount of tower cranes in one square kilometer, which is in excess of 83 tower cranes. But in addition to that, we're just over 54 and a half thousand people on site that are building this project so that we can hit the timelines. We want to be a very compelling contributor to the visitor experience. When people come to riyadh for Expo 2030 at, at this stage, what's so exciting is that we've got here today 1.6 million square meters of commercial office space that we're finding tenancy with. So at the moment we've got a lot of people who are coming to look at relocating their headquarters or setting up office in Drea. And so that's a very, very exciting step that we're in. The team are fully deployed and running around like crazy, taking as many meetings as they can because there's a lot of excitement about that. It seems to be that there's a huge consideration for Saudi Arabia and particularly Riyadh now, particularly amongst people who are no stranger to the opportunities that are in the rest of the gcc, such as in the United Arab Emirates. So that's very exciting. The other great thing is that we have over 1200 retailers that are going to be identified for this master plan today. Here on the stand we're trying to finalize and sign up with tenants for 186,000 square meters of retail space, which constitutes the first big project that's going to help us propel the retail initiatives of the Darreya Master plan, which is called Daraya Square.
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The first time I saw the smaller version of the model was already one of the things that jumped out. But seeing it here, it's very evident. It's just the amount of greenery and I know that sustainability is such a huge part, part of the master plan of Deria and access to green spaces. The pedestrianization and sustainability is such a marquee point for this, right?
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If you look at the entire master plan, which is 14.3 square kilometers, over 25% of that master plan is dedicated towards green space and public realm. Public realm is incredibly important to this master plan, but also the accessibility to that green space. Because we want people to have a recreational approach to life, we want people to be healthy, we want people to have longer life span and to be generally joyful and blissful in their everyday lives. The master plan is designed so that everything's in relatively close proximity. And we've used obviously a particular type of an architecture which is called nudge de architecture. And we've used adobe mud brick as the exterior facade for the buildings. This gives it a unique, unique look and feel. But it also has thermal properties which are really net beneficial without the reflective thermal heat that you would find off other materials. You don't find that with the mud brick. So that makes it an even stronger story to Be outdoors. So unlocking the opportunity for the outdoors, the green space that you can see going all the way across the master plan and skirting around its edges, that green space, we've already planted 6.5 million varietals, plants, shrubs, bushes, trees. And the reason that that has been quite some project for us is we've been mandated that that needs to also be with an indigenous focus. So working with archaeobotanists to understand what was here originally. Looking at the floodplain off the natural wadi. Wadi is the word that we use to describe the valley, the riverbed, which is lined on either side by palm groves. So it's been quite a project to do just that task. To have completed that many plantings is really exciting. To do that we've had to create our own nurseries because we're looking at varietals that you wouldn't encounter in a regular nursery to go from seedling to sapling to planted varietals. So green space, as you can tell, is hugely important. The rest of Riyadh hasn't been able to deliver, in our opinion, to date yet, the public realm experience that I think a lot of Saudis would like to see. And so Diriya is a real major step in that direction. To answer that and to deliver a public realm experience that I think is going to be quite special and quite unique.
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Now let's go back to the retail side of things, because it is one of the key reasons, as you explained, why you're here in Munich this year, is it a curatorial approach.
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So two things really stand out to us. Definitely the curatorial approach is important because we're building a city. So if you think of a city from a blank canvas, it has to be for all walks of life. And you need the glue of society to exist in order for the city to be prosperous. Right. You can't expect university students to go into a five star hotel lobby for their lunch break every day, so they're happy. Has to be a wider array of options to bring the city to life. So there is a little bit of a curatorial approach in that regard. However, I think the thing which is most exciting about the Darrella project is we are really eager to work with retailers who want to do something different. There's a huge opportunity because you're talking about a stretch which is three and a half kilometers long, 1.2 kilometers wide, and that entire stretch is pedestrian. So it reinvents dwell time. It has a huge effect on transaction days. If you think about normal points in retail where you might pivot and say, okay, after you've reached the two hour mark, customers are more likely to then consume a beverage or a snack to eat. Think about what that transaction is going to look like when you're in an entirely pedestrian environment.
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Now I'm going to put you slightly, slightly on the spot. We have the huge model in front of us. What is the part, if you could take me there, that you're most excited to see completed, be it in 2028 or 2030?
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E
You know, that is a really fantastic question. I'll tell you what I think I appreciate significantly. And when it comes to life, it's currently in terms of breaking ground, we're well underway. We worked with some extraordinary architects. When we do design competitions, we do an extension interior design competition and separate interior design competitions for all of the assets. But if you have a look at the Dreya arena, which is what I would describe as it looks like a crumbly cookie right in the middle of this master plan, that arena. The architects walked onto the ground where we had started to prep the sites for the arena and it had just rained and they took a photograph of off the ground as it was drying from a heavy rain. And you had this contracted earth which was fragmented and they took that photograph and they took it back home and they created that as the inspiration for the design. And now that I've told you that you can see it exactly 100%. And that for me is going to be the most exciting part because if you think that they took just mother Nature at its finest and turned it into the most beautiful futuristic architectural form and that's going to be home to 20,000 seated people in the newly built and operated Tyrea Arena. So that's my favorite part.
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And that's all for this week's episode of the Urbanist. You can follow us for new editions of the show every week. And you can subscribe to Monocle magazine for reports on all things design, architecture and urbanism too. Just Visit us@monocle.com the Urbanist is produced by myself and by David Stevens who also edits the show. I'm Carlotta Rubello. Goodbye and thank you for listening. City lovers.
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