Report of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators.

Urbanization has increased dramatically across Asia, rising from 32% urban in 1990 to 48% urban in 2010. The highest rate or urbanization was in East Asia (2%) which was 59% urban in 2010. South-East Asia was 47% urban in 2010. South and Central Asia remain the least urbanized areas in Asia, and while the Pacific region overall has low levels of urbanization, that is changing quickly. The highest estimated rate of urban growth between 2010 2020 will be in South and South-West Asia (27%), South-East Asia (24%) and East and North-East Asia (20%) close behind.

Citywide Strategic Planning articulates the necessary ingredients for initiating and implementing a planning process that focuses on a set of strategic issues of principal importance for sustainable urban development. The guide presents the citywide strategic planning rationale and approach. Three main questions are addressed – where are we today? - where do we want to be? -how do we get there?

The study provides the background and objectives of the Athens workshop, then provides separate in-depth background and analysis of the informal development solutions being adopted in Albania and Greece. Following a review of just how ‘pro-poor’ the solutions are, the final chapter provides a series of lessons learned, many of which can be applied to other countries experiencing informal development issues.

This publication, Innovative Land and Property Taxation, is derived from a 2009 Conference in Warsaw, Poland. It presents the ways in which land and property taxation policies, legal frameworks, tools and approaches to sustainable urban development have been experimented with around the World. Its key finding is the prominent role that land-based financing and local authorities play at the core of urban development.

This technical publication documents and draws lessons from the Philippines' experience in implementing alternative approaches in securing tenure for the urban poor. It also explores how these approaches can be institutionalized to achieve a larger scale and ensure sustainability. The study examines three approaches: presidential land proclamations, the Community Mortgage Program, and the usufruct arrangement. The key features of each approach are described and their application illustrated through two actual cases

This report provides an overview of the achievements and learning from the Phase 1 of the Tenure Security Learning Initiative - East & Southern Africa (TSLI-ESA) Project. It also looks ahead to strategies for scaling up the initiatives, and to the second phase of the TSLI-ESA project. The main objective of the TSLI-ESA Phase 1 Project has been to identify common land and natural resources tenure issues and to enhance lesson sharing and knowledge management on land-related tools and approaches amongst the various projects, country stakeholders and partners.

This situational analysis of metropolitan Port-au-Prince gives in-depth background to the city’s condition in terms of urban development and planning. The report maps a way forward for future planning of the metropolitan area. It argues that the main stakeholder for any urban development intervention should be the state, and more precisely the municipalities. The municipalities in Port-au-Prince need support in planning and delivering basic services.

The Feasibility Study is designed to provide a business case with respect to the feasibility of data collection for global land indicators. It gives a concrete analysis of the possibility of having land indicators in the post-2015 framework that are relevant, disaggregated by gender and include outcome indicators going beyond the legal framework. This report demonstrates that it is feasible to collect the data required using available methodologies and data sources, and that countries are able to produce these data regularly and at a reasonable cost.

Ten African countries have signed up to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition – the G8 countries’ main strategy for supporting agriculture in Africa that was launched in 2012. As the New Alliance has been under way for three years, some of its likely impacts are becoming clearer. This briefing – covering Nigeria, Malawi, Tanzania and Senegal – shows that some large companies involved in the New Alliance are already accused of taking part in land grabs in some countries.

Over the past 15 years, tens of millions of hectares of land have been acquired by large investors in developing countries. The Land Matrix documented 1,037 transnational land deals covering 37,842,371 hectares during this period, while many more deals remain undocumented.1 This global land rush is causing widespread forced evictions and denial of access to key land and natural resources for millions of women, small- scale food producers, pastoralists, gatherers, forest dwellers, fisherfolk, and tribal and indigenous peoples.

Cities in developing countries are experiencing unprecedented urban growth. Unfortunately, this is often accompanied by the negative impacts of sprawl as a result of rapid motorization such as congestion, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, inefficient use of energy and time, and unequal accessibility. As these cities are often under severe fiscal constraints, they face great challenges in financing capital-intensive mass transit systems to reverse the course of these negative trends.