The United Nations has designated the first Monday of October every year as 'World Habitat Day'. The idea is to reflect on the state of our towns and cities and the basic right of all to adequate shelter. It is also intended to remind the world of its collective responsibility for the future of the human habitat.
UN-HABITAT in collaboration with Ministry or Environment (MoE) is commemorating the World Habitat Day on Monday (today) with the theme of 'Planning our urban future for 2009' to raise awareness of the need to improve urban planning to deal with new major challenges of the 21st century such as effects of climate change, resource depletion, food insecurity, population growth and economic instability.
These factors will significantly reshape towns and cities, physically and socially, in the century ahead. Many developing countries will, in addition, continue to experience rapid rates of urbanisation, along with its most serious negative consequences, overcrowding, poverty, slums with many poorly equipped to meet the service demands of ever growing urban populations.
With over half of the world's population currently living in urban areas, and this number set to rise to two-thirds in another generation, there is no doubt that the 'urban agenda' will increasingly become a priority for governments, local authorities and their non-governmental partners everywhere.
Unfortunately, current urban planning systems in many parts of the world are ill equipped to deal with these major urban challenges of the 21st century and, to a large extent, have failed to acknowledge the need to meaningfully involve communities and other stakeholders in the planning of urban areas.
By failing to take these factors into account, planning systems in several parts of the world have contributed to the problems of marginalisation and exclusion in rapidly growing and largely, poor and informal cities.