While 220 million people have been lifted out of slum conditions over the past 10 years, the number of people living in slum conditions is likely to grow by six million every year, to reach a total of 889 million by 2020. It is necessary to equip cities and their practitioners with the tools and capacities to anticipate and control urban growth and city officials will require knowledge, skills and methodologies that will allow them not only to upgrade existing slums but also prevent the appearance of new ones. This Guide advocates for a citywide approach to slum upgrading, which represents a fundamental shift from piecemeal project interventions to a citywide programme approach. This Practical Guide is part of a trilogy on citywide slum upgrading that includes Streets as Tools for Urban Transformation in Slums: A Street-led Approach to Citywide Slum Upgrading and A Training Module for Designing and Implementing Citywide Slum Upgrading. With the other two partner publications, the Practical Guide provides an accessible tool for practitioners, leading them through UN-Habitat steps towards a successful citywide slum-upgrading program.

The UN-Habitat Global Activities Report formally the Operational Activities Report is an historical progress report to the Governing Council that takes into account the development made in addressing the UN-Habitat’s project portfolio at the national, regional and global levels. The Agency’s work has been more focused on promoting national urban policy reforms alongside building institutional and human capacities, and including helping and supporting the governments with the implementation of the national urban plans. UN-Habitat activities and programmes at the global, regional and national levels are crucial in increasing synergy for greater national ownership of the various sustainable urban development tools and best practices being promoted by the UN and the Habitat Agenda partners around the world. This report of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), the world’s leading authority on urban matters, demonstrates through some of its selected activities delivered by the thematic Branches and the Regional Offices in the last two years how working together as Habitat Agenda partners at different levels can achieve for the urban resident and more specially the urban poor and the most vulnerable members of the urban society being the youth, omen and the elderly who are always at the receiving end of the urban threats and challenges.