WUF 13 Press Conference in Baku : Key Insights by Ad Astra Journal

Why WUF13 in Baku matters more than expected

On the second day of the World Urban Forum in Baku, the sun finally broke through. After the unseasonal rain that had swept across Azerbaijan’s capital, delegates emerged into unusually bright Caspian light — an atmospheric reminder of the paradox hanging over WUF13: cities are simultaneously humanity’s greatest achievement and its greatest vulnerability.

For one week, Baku has become the centre of the global urban conversation. More than 42,000 participants from 182 countries have arrived for the 13th session of the World Urban Forum (WUF13), the UN’s flagship gathering on sustainable urbanisation.

This year’s theme — “Housing the World: Safe and Resilient Communities” — sounds technocratic. In practice, it is political dynamite.

The world is urbanising faster than governments can govern. Nearly three billion people now live in inadequate housing conditions; over one billion reside in informal settlements or slums; and more than 300 million face homelessness. What was once considered a housing shortage has metastasised into something broader: a crisis of inclusion, governance and social legitimacy.

“We are opening the World Urban Forum at a defining moment for cities and communities worldwide,” declared Anacláudia Rossbach, Executive Director of UN-Habitat, in the forum’s opening press conference.

Her most striking line cut directly through the diplomatic language that often defines UN gatherings:

“This is not only a housing crisis. It is a crisis of inclusion, of opportunity, resilience and dignity.”

That framing mattered. WUF13 is not merely another development conference filled with aspirational declarations. The forum’s organisers are consciously attempting to reposition housing as the organising principle of urban policy itself — linking land use, climate adaptation, mobility, infrastructure and economic growth into one integrated political challenge.

The ambition is enormous. Whether governments possess the institutional capacity to realise it is another question entirely.

From Dialogue to Delivery

UN conferences often specialise in moral consensus while struggling with implementation. Organisers in Baku seemed acutely aware of that criticism.

Again and again, speakers returned to a single phrase: “from dialogue to delivery”.

Rossbach insisted that “the challenge is not the absence of solutions, it is the speed and the scale of their implementation.”

Ng Kor Ming, Malaysia’s Minister of Housing and Local Government and President of the UN-Habitat Assembly, sharpened the point further with unusually blunt language for a diplomatic forum:

“It is critical to move from motherhood statements to measurable impact on the ground.”

That may prove to be the defining tension of WUF13. The urban policy community already knows, broadly speaking, what works: denser cities, integrated public transport, affordable housing finance, climate-resilient infrastructure and better municipal governance. The obstacle is not conceptual scarcity but political execution.

This explains why WUF13 has leaned heavily into practicality. Alongside ministerial meetings and high-level dialogues, the forum includes a “Practices Hub”, a “Business and Innovation Hub”, and a startup pavilion designed to showcase scalable urban technologies and financing models.

The subtext is unmistakable: city-making is no longer solely a public-sector endeavour. Private capital, technology firms and municipal innovators are now central actors in the geopolitics of urbanisation.

Azerbaijan’s Soft-Power Bet

For Azerbaijan, hosting WUF13 is about far more than urban policy.

Baku is attempting to position itself as a convening power between regions — a diplomatic crossroads linking Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and the Global South. The forum is another step in the country’s increasingly sophisticated international branding strategy following COP29 preparations and its broader infrastructure diplomacy.

Anar Guliyev, Chairman of Azerbaijan’s State Committee on Urban Planning and Architecture, framed the event in almost civilisational terms:

“Baku becomes the meeting point for governments, mayors, international organisations, financial institutions, academia, civil society, youth, women, the private sector, local communities — all united by one common purpose, shaping a better urban future for all.”

The Azerbaijani delegation repeatedly highlighted reconstruction efforts in Karabakh as evidence of what it calls a new model of post-conflict urban redevelopment.

Here, the rhetoric became particularly ambitious.

“We’re not just building houses,” Guliyev said later during the Q&A session. “We’re designing and creating a new quality of life.”

Officials described “smart city” concepts, green infrastructure and integrated planning frameworks as foundations for rebuilding territories devastated by decades of conflict. Whether this model becomes internationally influential remains uncertain, but Azerbaijan clearly intends to export the narrative.

WUF13 also introduced what organisers described as the first-ever “leader segment” in the forum’s history, bringing heads of state directly into urban governance discussions.

That shift reflects a deeper reality: urbanisation is no longer a municipal issue. It has become geopolitical.

Climate, Density and the Future City

Perhaps the most revealing exchange of the press conference came during a discussion on climate change.

Asked what future cities should look like, Rossbach answered with the language of the New Urban Agenda adopted in Quito in 2016: compact cities, balanced densities, integrated public spaces and planning systems that include women and informal communities rather than displacing them.

But it was Guliyev who delivered the conference’s most human moment.

“Only the first two days of this forum showed us very different weather,” he said. “As a person who grew up in Baku, I never seen this much rain in May. This is not natural.”

The remark briefly cut through the polished choreography of the event. Climate change, after all, is no longer an abstract future risk discussed in conference halls. It is already reshaping the rhythms of cities themselves — from heatwaves in Southern Europe to flooding in Central Asia.

Urbanisation and climate adaptation are now inseparable. Cities generate roughly 70% of global emissions while simultaneously concentrating the populations most vulnerable to environmental shocks.

That contradiction hovered over nearly every discussion in Baku.

The Real Test

The World Urban Forum has always excelled at producing consensus language. The harder question is whether global politics still allows for coordinated urban transformation at the scale required.

Many governments remain fiscally constrained. Housing affordability crises are destabilising democracies from London to Toronto. Municipal debt burdens are growing. And geopolitical fragmentation increasingly complicates international cooperation precisely when urban investment needs are exploding.

Still, WUF13 has succeeded in one respect already: it has elevated housing from a niche planning issue into the centre of global economic and political debate.

As Rossbach put it:

“Housing must be placed at the heart of integrated urban solutions.”

In Baku, under unexpectedly clear skies, that argument suddenly feels less like development jargon and more like a description of the next great global fault line.