Indigenous housing is one of the key ways to improve global equality and sustainable lifestyles, the UN says.

Australian researchers contributed to a new UN declaration saying Indigenous housing rights have been left behind, but there could hardly be a more important point of focus for improving humanity.

The UN Habitat World Urban Forum in Medellin made declarations on the status of gender, youth and indigenous equality in cities.

RMIT’s Professor Ralph Horne was one of three academics invited by UN Habitat to present and participate in a discussion about Indigenous rights to adequate housing.

“The session was full and the debate lively, with many pressing issues raised for Indigenous housing rights around the world,” Professor Horne said.

“Urbanisation has been a force that has changed almost everything: ways of thinking and acting, ways of using space, lifestyles, social and economic relations, and consumption and production patterns,” the UN’s Medellin declaration states.

“However, cities are also spaces where multidimensional poverty, environmental degradation, and vulnerability to disasters and the impact of climate change are present.

“Today, more than two thirds of the global population live in cities with greater levels of inequality than 20 years ago.”

It says there is a “need to promote a new urban agenda that can overcome the challenge of the lack of adequate legal framework and planning, which leads to the relentless expansion of cities, intensive energy use, alarming and dangerous on climate change impacts, multiple forms of inequality and exclusion, and increased difficulties in providing decent work for all.”

The full declaration is accessible here. 

The panel session was the first time the World Urban Forum had hosted an Indigenous Housing Roundtable.

The forum included four dedicated events by the Cities Programme, the urban arm of the UN Global Compact.

A panel on Innovative Cities was organised by Deputy Director of the Global Compact Cities Programme, Elizabeth Ryan, for city government executives to present models of socially inclusive urban development in Barcelona (Spain), Bogotá and Medellín (Colombia), and Porto Alegre (Brazil).

Ms Ryan said there was much to be learned from socially-focused urban innovation in Latin America,
“a fact that was acclaimed by many of the 37,000 people who went to Medellin”.

The World Vision International Centre for Expertise in Urban Programming unveiled a new research methodology focusing on “Just Cities for Children” was unveiled, with ongoing work to make urban environments a safe and productive place to grow up.