This report considers how to integrate health into urban planning, investments, and policy decisions, so as to support the implementation and achievement of the goals and objectives of the New Urban Agenda.

This Sustainable Urbanization Strategy outlines how UNDP is responding to rapid urbanization in developing countries and its consequences for sustainable development. It outlines how UNDP will support countries and cities, building upon its past and current work on urbanization.

Cities are growing differently today than before. As much as 70 percent of people in emerging cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America is under-served.

Cities are under pressure from all angles; some pressures are easily forecasted while others are more difficult to predict. Balancing the immediate needs of today without compromising the demands of tomorrow is at the heart of sustainability, and of this report.

The momentum of urbanization and its impacts are so massive that we must face up to this trend. In view of the existing cognitive, technical, economic and institutional path dependencies, a policy of business as usual – i.e. an unstructured, quasi-automatic urbanization – would lead to a non-sustainable ‘world cities society’.