Habitat II: city summit to forge the future of human settlements in an urbanizing world.

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Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home; a charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, which, sought through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.

--J. H. Payne

"The strength of a nation is derived from the integrity of its homes."

--Confucius

For most human beings, as the old saying goes, "there is no place like home". Yet by the turn of the century, one half of all the world's people will be making their homes in cities, where growth rates topping 1 million people per week have resulted in a long list of afflictions: some 40 per cent of city dwellers worldwide do not have access to safe drinking water or adequate sanitation, while urban poverty rates in some areas top 60 per cent of residents.

These alarming statistics are compounded by unemployment, homelessness, growing insecurity, rising pollution and increasing vulnerability to disaster. Indeed, primarily due to a deteriorating urban environment, more than 500 million people worldwide--half of whom are children--live in substandard housing or have no homes at all.

To find ways to deal with this urban overload and to help ensure in the twenty-first century that all people have access to homes that provide adequate shelter in a healthy and safe environment, UN Member States will convene in Istanbul, Turkey, from 3 to 14 June 1996, for the second UN Conference on Human Settlements. Commonly known as Habitat II and called the "City Summit" by UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Conference will focus on two major themes: sustainable human settlements development in an urbanizing world and adequate shelter for all.

"The City Summit encompasses many issues", the Secretary-General said. "There are hard questions to answer. How can we improve the governance and finance of human settlements? What policies are needed to improve conditions for the poorest people, families and communities? How can we ensure basic hygienic conditions in urban areas, while avoiding long-term damage to the environment? Can we ensure that, by a target date, adequate shelter will exist for all? What must be done to mitigate the effects of natural disasters and war? Can the cycle of deprivation, conflict, devastation and failure to develop be broken?"

The answers to these questions must be focused on urban areas, for cities are where most of the world's population will live and work, where most economic activity will take place, and where most pollution will be generated and most natural resources consumed.

Significant advances

Since the first UN Conference on Human Settlements, held in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976, there have been significant advances in the approach to addressing human settlements issues. The UN General Assembly in 1978 created the UN Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat)--UNCHS--to help both individual countries and the global community improve housing conditions and manage urbanization.

Habitat was instrumental in drawing up the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 to coordinate global efforts to facilitate the provision of adequate shelter for all by the end of the century. This Strategy was formally adopted by the General Assembly in 1988 and provides the focus for Habitat's work. Yet, despite two decades of efforts, rapid urbanization has outpaced the ability of Governments to provide housing, and living conditions for the urban poor have continued to worsen.

Conference aims

Thus, Habitat II aims to achieve what the first Conference did not, by addressing pressing human settlements issues with a more localized approach, and solving housing and urbanization problems within the overall context of sustainable development. The long-term objective of Habitat II is to arrest the deterioration of global human settlements conditions and ultimately improve the living environment of all people on a sustainable basis, with special attention to the needs of women and vulnerable social groups, whose quality of life and participation in development have been hampered by the exclusion and inequality affecting the poor in general.

In addition, the General Assembly has affirmed that Habitat II should:

* review trends in human settlements policies and programmes undertaken to implement the recommendations adopted at the first Conference;

* conduct a mid-term review of the implementation of the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000;

* review implementation of Agenda 21--the wide-ranging action plan adopted by the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, the so-called Earth Summit--with respect to human settlements; and

* review current global trends in economic and social development as they relate to human settlements, and include recommendations for future action at the national and international levels.

The Conference, says Habitat II Secretary-General Wally N'Dow, is about "striving for shelter for as many people as possible and addressing the challenging task of planning the urban world". Moreover, he has stated, "Habitat is not just about inadequate housing and decaying infrastructures, not just about...