Press - Launching the Barcelona Metropolitan Declaration Bold Commitments to Tackle the Housing Crisis at Metropolitan Scale (WUF 13)

Okay, so good afternoon everyone and thank you for coming to this press conference in where we want to explain, we want to launch the Barcelona Metropolitan Declaration, both commitments to tackle the housing crisis at metropolitan scale with our friends and colleagues and partners that I'm going to introduce them at the moment that they are going to speak why we are here. And I think that we need to start saying that and obviously thanking also the people who came here and all the media that came today. We are facing at a critical global juncture where housing has become one of the most pressing challenges of our time. Today, billions of people around the world face inadequate housing conditions, from unaffordability to informality and homelessness. This is not only a social issue, it is a structural crisis that undermines inclusion, resilience and and sustainable development worldwide. Against this backdrop, this press conference is not about diagnosis alone, but about contributing to a shift toward concrete coordinated action. The Barcelona Metropolitan Declaration was adopted in October 2025 and it reflects a shared commitment by metropolitan leaders worldwide to reposition metropolitan governance at the center of the global agendas. It is not just a statement of intent, but it is a call to transform how we design policies, allocate resources and coordinate across levels of governments, particularly in addressing housing. Housing must be understood first and foremost as a fundamental human right and a prerequisite for dignity, social inclusion and equal opportunity in metropolitan regions. Access to adequate housing is also a cornerstone of economic productivity, social cohesion and territorial balance. When housing system fails, the consequences cascade across all dimensions of urban life. The most acute housing dynamics, affordability pressures, speculation, tourism driven demand, displacement and special inequality operate at a metropolitan scale that goes far beyond municipal boundaries. People live, work and move across entire urban regions and housing markets function accordingly. Yet governance frameworks often remain fragmented and insufficient to address these realities. Addressing the housing crisis requires integrated approaches that connect housing to land use, infrastructure mobility, finance and social policy. Metropolitan governance is uniquely positioned to enable this integration. Coordinating across municipalities and aligning local action with national and global frameworks. Metropolitan areas, despite being the scale where housing challenges materialize, are not systematically included in policy design, implementation or financing mechanism. This creates a structural gap between the scale of the problem and the scale of of decision making, limiting the effectiveness of public action. The Declaration and I'd like to highlight that sends a clear message. Metropolitan areas must be fully recognized as partners in housing policy. This means not only being involved in implementation, but also involved in shaping policies and implementing solutions and accessing stable and adequate funding. This is what we strongly demand and we strongly say that to national and international institutions that if they want to succeed in this major challenge, they have to take into account on us and they have to involve us as local and metropolitan institutions to address the challenge of housing. Said that I'd like to give the floor to my colleagues on the table and first of all, I'd like to give the floor to Mrs. Fiona McCarthy, Head of Policy and Legislation, Global Solutions Division of UN Habitat. Fiona, thank you for being here. The floor is yours.

Thank you very much. And I want to thank AMB Metropolis and all the partners for convening this important discussion and reminding us of the Barcelona Metropolitan Declaration. My name is Fiona McCloony, I am the Chief of Policy and Legislation in the Global Solutions Division of UN Habitat and I speak here on behalf of UN Habitat and Recognizing the global the Metropolitan Reality of Housing Many housing commitments are ambitious in practice principle, but fragmented in practice. Housing systems today operate at a metropolitan scale. People live, work and move across municipal boundaries every day. And housing markets, transport systems, infrastructure networks and land pressures do not stop at administrative boundaries. Yet the governance systems we've put in place to manage these things, the financing mechanisms and the institutional mandates are still fragmented and don't reflect the scale and nature of the issues involved. Metropolitan governance matters because it creates the opportunity to address these implementation gaps. It creates an opportunity to prevent the disconnection between housing supply and demand, and it also creates the opportunity to address the unequal access to services and infrastructure that arises when municipal when a metropolitan view isn't taken. Metropolitan if metropolitan governance isn't considered, it contributes to urban sprawl, affordability pressures and growing spatial inequality. So considering these issues at a metropolitan scale isn't adding an additional layer of bureaucracy. It's a mechanism for better coordination, integration and consideration of long term territorial planning. Metropolitan areas must therefore be included not only in implementing housing policy, but but also in shaping it. And this includes in terms of planning, land management, financing and the delivery mechanisms. Within my section at UN Habitat, we see growing demand from metropolitan areas worldwide for this kind of cooperation and support, not only in Europe, but in other parts of the world too, across regions. Metropolitan areas are increasingly looking for governance models that might be reflected in the partners here and institutional mechanisms that better reflect how urban territories can be managed and function better in the future. Through the Metro Hub Global Program, UN Habitat has supported the transfer of these lessons to metropolitan and regional areas in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe. This work has included support or on metropolitan governance frameworks, strategic and territorial planning, metropolitan legislation, financing mechanisms, capacity development and multi level coordination. We're also seeing increased interest in more integrated approaches that connect housing with land management, mobility, infrastructure, climate resilience and service delivery. So effective metropolitan management depends on integrated finance bringing these things together, and also stronger coordination between levels of government, between local, sub national and national levels of government. Alongside the technical support, UN Habitat has also been supporting peer learning, training, knowledge exchange and global advocacy. It is increasingly essential if we're going to address issues such as housing affordability, infrastructure delivery, climate resilience, spatial inequality and equitable urban development, to address these issues at a metropolitan scale. I therefore concur that the Barcelona Metropolitan Declaration is very timely. It moves the discussion beyond diagnosis towards implementation and it recognizes, and I hope that we can now recognize metropolitan areas and treat them as equal partners in this multi level governance. I look forward to working with you as you take this work forward and will follow closely with my support. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ms. Fiona McClunney. And now it's a pleasure to me to give the floor and to introduce to you to Jordi B. Mr. Jordi Baquet, the General Secretary of Metropolis, the World association of Metropolitan Areas.

Thank you very much. I represent here a network where the members are agglomerations that exceed 1 million people from all the continents. And my first point is going to be that there's not one of the over 160 cities that are part of our network that is not a metropolitan reality, a reality that is not contained into the old idea of a city with limited margins, that are completely separated from nature, from rural areas, from anything around it, and which does not function as a system with other localities around it, not one of these hundred and sixty. And I believe it would be very, very difficult indeed to find urban realities these days of such size that are not at the same time metropolitan realities. So Fiona was very eloquently explaining the importance of these horizontal and vertical dimensions of metropolitan governance, of bringing together different municipal governments around issues that bind them together, and also of doing it vertically across the different levels of government. I will add there's at least another perspective that's really important in metropolitan government, which is this circular perspective of the city or the metropolis, indeed operating in cycles that link it to its surrounding areas, not just through the flocks of people that go every day and work in the center and back, but also fluxes have to do with the quality of the air, with ecological corridors, with the sources of energy, with food security, with many issues which in the past we did not look into when we thought about the metropolis and which we now realize are part of the metabolism of the metropolis. Any governance that does not take into account these other dimension is, in my opinion, going to fail. The interest of the citizens and of the territory. The good news and the Barcelona Declaration is clear on this, is that there are already institutional answers to these metropolitan realities. They are imperfect, they are often weak, sometimes badly financed. In many cases, they are not embedded in the Constitution. Very often the Constitution will say there's three levels. There's local, regional, national, or versions thereof. And the metropolitan level is seldom constitutionalized, is seldom formalized in this way. Allow me to say one thing that is actually also an advantage of these configurations. Because those organizations are by nature inclusive, consultative and open. They don't have this attitude of we govern this territory, that's only us. They have this naturally collaborative approach, and they are by nature flexible and dynamic, just as metropolitan realities are. The metropolis is not a fixed reality that doesn't change for 150 years. Many of our municipal borders haven't changed for 150 years. That's beyond comprehension, but that's the reality. Whereas metropolitan institutions, in their imperfection, in their weakness, in their institutional constraints, however, are able to respond to this dynamic nature of the borders, of metropolitan phenomenons. So here's the main point I wanted to bring. Institutionalization exists, but it's seldom recognized, it's often overlooked. When big funding schemes are put into place, it's seldom at the table where the big decisions are made. Everyone wants the mayor, that's fine, let's have the mayor. But without the metropolitan perspective, we are missing the picture of what's happening on the ground. We're governing over paper structures, but not over urban realities. And I believe that's one of the strong points of the Metropolitan Declaration, of the Barcelona Declaration. There is a need to actually engage with the structures already existing to encourage those that are starting. Oftentimes, this kind of cooperation starts with just mayors, WhatsApp groups, almost, right? Calling each other, how are we, how are we solving this problem that we share? And slowly it gets institutionalized. And there's a point where we're not used to this, right? We like our constitutional lawyers to say this is where it sits. Well, actually, the reality is coming through these organizations to the table of the big urban conversation. So our. Our strong point from Metropolis, I think from everyone in this table, probably, is where they exist. Bring them to the conversation, fund them, bring them to the table where they don't exist, encourage those incipient forms of governance, of collaborative governance in metropolitan spaces, because that is the Future. Let me save my last word for the topic of woof, which is housing. What is the problem? Rise of housing policies that are not designed with a metropolitan dimension. Very clear. We are building housing without city. We're delivering housing units, but we're not delivering good places to live that take into account that the good life isn't just a roof on your head and maybe a connection to the electricity grid and to the sewage and all this, that is of course crucially important. But if that is disconnected from the realities of life, which include access to jobs, community life, good education, leisure, access to green spaces and more, without this, we're not building city, we're just building houses. We're just delivering on our spreadsheets. I need to build 100,000 housing units, right? Maybe you're doing this, but you're not building good lives. So the metropolitan dimension isn't just a nice to have. It is essential to deliver the housing policies that will really allow people to build the lives they deserve. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Jordi Baque for your words. And it is also a pleasure to introduce you and give the floor to Mr. Chamil Arslan, the Secretary General of Marmara of our Friends of Marmara Municipalities Union of Turkey.

Thank you. Thank you, Jordi. Thank you very much for these meaningful platforms. Thank you too, and your colleagues. I'm very happy to be part of this organization and among distinguished experts. There are six metropolitan municipalities inside of Marmar region. I came from Marmar region in Istanbul. It consists of 9% of space of Turkey. However, there are 30% of population of Turkey are living in these spaces. So because of that we have been saying Marmara region is metropolis area of the metropolis. Just if you think of istanbul consists of 16 million inhabitants. Of course every metropolitan area have unique problems, but at the same time they have some connections. For example, I mentioned about Istanbul. Istanbul have been using the water from two other metropolises. From Sakaria and from Tekirda, from east part of Istanbul and from west of Istanbul. Unless they use the water from these two metropolises, they can't find any water for citizen in Istanbul. So networks and association like us are critical to connecting metropolitan areas with similar and sometimes linked challenges and issues. Also, if you think about transportation and logistics, these two metropolises take care. The Sakaria, Kojeli and Istanbul are the center of industrial production of the Turkey and they have well connected just between two cities, there are 200,000 lorries per day going and coming. So unless you're thinking the relation between Two these municipalities, how you can solve transport per transportation problems, how we can solve housing problems. Or you can do something for daily life of the people. As MMU, we are trying to strengthen relation between 200 member municipalities, including metropolitan areas and districts. Because of that, we started prepared Marmara Region Strategic Spatial Development Program. Of course, what we can do is at a regional scale within the boundaries of Turkey. However, we need to more international perspective to be able to see the big picture about talk about what we share in common. The team of housing is very good example for showcasing this. Last year the Emma Forum celebrated its 10th anniversary particular focus on metropolitan housing. This issue of adequate housing is not only a policy challenge. It's matter of dignity. As my friends mentioned and well being in our metropolis. Safe and resilience. You know that at the same time Turkey has a specific earthquake problem. Just last three years ago we had big earthquake in 11 cities. 14 million inhabitants affected by that. Now the National Mass Housing Committee have been constructing 455,000 units. Houses? Yeah, we have been constructing houses, but it does not mean we have been constructed. Good life, well being, Social Security, etc. Constructing house. House is just physical things, but the relation between people well being, it's different part of the life. So we have to think about that. And it's obvious that metropolitan solidarity is the key. Addressing such urban challenges, acting together with different stakeholders, municipalities, national and international organizations and networks is essential. And it's our responsibility as a local government association. Strategic policy recommendations and solidarity visible to national and international institutions. As MMU, we also organize Marmara Urban Forum every two years in Istanbul with help of UN habitats with the same vision. Last year around 8,000 participants participated in the forum and we discussed housing from diverse perspective. Of course, we organized also expert group meeting with UN Habitat on Metropolitan Planning and Finance for adequate housing. We will launch the reports on Friday at Wolf at the Canada Pavilion. We also discussed affordability, urban poverty, post disaster housing practices and many more at the forum. This discussion we had during Maruv perfectly aligned with the shared goals and commitments we had at the Barcelona Metropolitan Declarations. Our position is clear. Housing shouldn't be seen just as a pre privilege. It is a fundamental right for everyone. In other words, housing is an undeniable human rights. Because of that, we have been working about localization of human rights. I think the very important topic of these days against authoritarian politics, trying to work about localization of human rights. And I believe EMMA Forum also particularly important for providing these tools to us. So I would like to take this opportunity to Say that I am very happy. Emma Forum will be in Istanbul this year. We will be honored to welcome you all in Istanbul in 7 and 8 of October to participate this important forum. We will have two main agenda this year. The first one is the critical role of metropolitan areas in shaping global and European agendas and how to recognize this unique role of metropolis in strategic decision making. And secondly, at this turbulent time of climate emergency we wish to focus on climate driven water risk at the metropolitan scale. For instance, how to manage water scarcity, flooding and related socio environmental vulnerabilities. So I am hoping to continue our dialogue in Istanbul and thank you, thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you very much Mr. Tamil Arslan and it's a pleasure also to introduce Also our friend Mr. Rashid Sidat, executive director of the Gauteng City Region Observatory in South Africa. Floor is yours.

Good afternoon everyone and thank you very much for the opportunity. Let me just very quickly say what the Gauteng City Region observed here is about we in Urban Observatory. We're actually part of UN Habitats Global Urban Observatory network and we've been working very closely in other respects with the metropolitan area Barcelona. And just to say that I've been asked to talk about the importance of data in relation to housing policy. So. But, but let me just start. Well, I should say that I'm taking the lens of understanding of our sort of experience in data collection and analysis and trying to generalize it for our particular circumstances. But I think there are sort of three points of departure, some of which have been mentioned, but I think it's important just to say them. The first is that there's been a significant increase especially in the 21st century on large metropolitan areas. They're now called megacities and mega regions and so on. And I think they're growing all over the world in the global north and the global South. We, I think the second Jordi Jodi from Metropolis basically was saying, spoke about the fact that there hasn't been adequate sort of governance institutions in relation to this new phenomenon of metropolitanization. And then thirdly, obviously there's the fact that we have a lot of informal settlements, informality that's becoming very ubiquitous around the world. So but sort of pivoting to the issue of data. Let me just say that there are a couple of key things that I think are fairly well known but let me state them for the record in relation to this conversation. The first is fragmentation and inoperability. So again I mean for. From my own experience working, I work in government in South Africa and I work for an urban observatory. And I think that situation just gets reproduced all the time because different government agencies, research bodies, etc. Are basically collecting their own data. And it's never in a form that is uniformly usable. In many cases, due to capacity issues, the data is just outdated. Very low levels of accuracy. There was a UN habitat workshop in Nairobi in January that actually looked at the data challenges in relation to SDG 11, for example. And I think that is a big problem. If we have to achieve. I don't know whether we're going to, but I think going forward to achieving the SDG 11 goals. Then there's the issue about new urban forms. And what I mean by that is in South Africa, for example, we have inform the densification informal densification informal areas. That sounds like a complete contradiction, but what it is is that you have houses, formal houses, and then around you have backyard checks and several like in the most famous township in South Africa called Soweto, which many of you may have heard of, I mean we've seen a huge acceleration that now they're just one example of the kind of situation that one sees. And how do you measure that is really important. And then of course the technical, technological and institutional roadblocks, as it were, by adopting all these, you know, the modern AI machine learning kind of technologies require complex data systems and specialized talent. And of course there's a dearth of that. So why do we need good data and how do we get there so very quickly? The one really important issue is the issue of scale. So the combination of national scale indicates with local and regional intelligence. So that kind of combination is really important to strengthen our targeted interventions and place based policy interventions. I think Fiona from, you were saying early on that the issue around the normative issues, if you like, are really important. Data is not neutral.

Right.

And should be used to facilitate evidence based and just social, economic, environmental outcomes. So how do we kind of use that in that way? It also provides policymakers with evidence to balance housing supply and demand, which is mentioned earlier on as well prevent spatial inequality and access to affordable housing. I should just say that we for example, have done seven iterations of a massive quality of life survey our region. And it has given us enormous intelligence, not just ourselves, but for government, for civil society, for everyone to actually understand in a very deep way what's actually happening. So that kind of evidence is really important and data can do that. And then of course we need to enable these different forms hopefully of metropolitan government to, to come and Sort of ensure that they have the capacity to collect and analyze data effectively. So that's really my story. So, you know, we therefore call for appropriate forms of metropolitan governance, develop the institutional capacity that's required so that we can enable evidence based policy and programs. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Rashid Sidat. And the last but not the least, I'd like to introduce you and to give the floor to Ms. Valeria Fedeli, full professor of the Politecnico Milano in Italy.

Good afternoon everybody. Thanks for having me. I have three key points that have to do with the fact that I'm a professor and not involved directly in government, but we are here together with colleagues. Antonella Contini is here as well to say first important thing, that is a very important and positive note. We are working, we have been working in the last years with all the colleagues here and trying to contribute to the UN Habitat Metro Hub program to establish a large community of stakeholders, policymakers, academics, experts that all share the idea that we need to feed spaces which are a continuum between research and practice, between theory, what we study at university, what we know as experts and what happens on the ground. We are in a moment in which the relationship between city and science should be reinforced. A lot. We have heard also this morning, and we will repeat it several times, the UN arena is hosting several events about that. And when we say the city science relationship, we always mention city and we do not mention a lot metropolitan or whatever, because we have a large idea of cities, of course, that deal with the fact that the urban is everywhere. But if we do not think that the metropolitanism specific perspective, we miss a point. There are many initiatives at city level linking together the local university and the city trying to co produce knowledge. But I would say there are a few that try to reflect and produce an interface between the metropolitan regional dimension and the universities that remain quite attached to a traditional idea of the city as actors. Indeed, this metro dimension in the relationship between city and science is crucial, as you have all said, especially for housing, but not just for housing, from the many issues that metropolitan governance framework to deal with. And this is the good news, we are aware of that and we are here to serve in that direction. The second point is that it's more a concern, even if we are aware that we still use words, as I said, that stick to the idea of urban as the city and we should go more in the direction of producing new imaginaries and as experts, we try to produce new imaginaries as policymakers. You are trying to force and support and lobby for these new imaginaries. But still we have very fragile governance, metropolitan governance frameworks. And I completely agree on the fact that we do not need fixed or city like governments for metropolitan areas or regional areas. But indeed we have to find innovative ways to shape the governance at metropolitan level. We cannot just reflect the city model. Why? Because we know that institutions are fragile and this is a big problem. Governance, metropolitan governance is very fragile. But if we design metropolitan governance like city governance, we reproduce fragility and we end up producing more fragility than ever. So we are all trying to invent, on the one end, forms of governance that are flexible, optional, dynamic, as you have said, but still they are far from being there. We are far from being there. So we need an effort from both experts and policymakers to try to find out not just spatial imaginaries, but also governance imaginaries that can really reflect the complexity of the role of metropolitan areas within larger urban regions. Metropolitan areas probably work, as cities have done for the metropolitan context for a long time, but now, as the Marmara Unit says, no, they are the core of large urban regions. Quite a few years ago or quite recently, we have been working on the north of Italy corridor, the ice pit corridor that has been created 10, 15 years ago. And we had the task from ESPON, the European Special Observatory, to understand the effects of the high speed train on the most important Italian cities, Milan, Bologna, Florence. And what we understood, it's not the. It is that it had very important effects, territorial effects on these three cities served by the ice pit. But the most important effects were all around, even if not directly served by the ice pit train. And what's the problem? If you compare the territorial effects with the governance frameworks able to deal with them, There is no governance framework, it's inter regional, it's national, it's super local. And if you map the cooperation frameworks, there is no cooperation framework that really is able to deal with housing dynamics, economic dynamics, environmental dynamics affecting those places. So my last point is that we need an effort to establish a stronger cooperation, stronger spaces of interaction between research and practice, to both work on imaginaries and governance to give voice to the invisible people. There is a very famous interesting book from French scholar, the Parlement des Invisible. I would say that metropolitan areas are still much invisible in the, rather in the agenda. And also metropolitan citizens are out of the rudder and if we don't take care of them, we miss the point. So just an aspiration as the end of this short speech is that the Metropolitan Declaration, Barcelona Metropolitan Declaration will not remain unearthed that it will be an important step in the direction of a UN state at some point where metropolitan governance and metropolitan citizenship is state as a crucial issue. And we are here as universities to co produce the knowledge needed or that the diplomacy, as Antonella always says, that could be used to raise this issue. Thanks for this invitation.

Okay, thank you very much, Ms. Fedeli. And now if there is any question, we obviously we are open to answer it. And if not, I don't see any hand up. So I think there is no question. I'd like to finish thanking to UN Habitat for having this opportunity to share the metropolitan message from different perspectives, but with, I think with a unique voice saying that, and I get some sentences that you have said before, that if we want to build better lives for our citizens, for our neighbors, and we don't want to only build houses, Metropolitan authorities in metropolitan scales it have to be heard and it is urgently needed to integrate metropolitan areas into the full policy cycle, from designing to implementation and obviously financing. So thank you very much for coming, for being here, and obviously thank you very much our colleagues from UN Habitat, Metropolis, Marmara, Municipality, Municipality, Union, Gauteng Observatory and Politecnico de Milano for sharing with us this event. Thank you very much.