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Innovation:

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innovation

Overview

Cities need an integrated, dynamic and nuanced understanding of innovation in order to inspire organizations and communities to develop imaginative, effective solutions to the biggest challenges. When applied in the right context, innovation can act as a catalyst for change, deliver impacts at scale, put people at the center and build a better future for all. For UN-Habitat, innovation means embracing new ideas, up-to-date means and fresh approaches to our work. It incorporates both digital and non-digital technologies as both work in tandem together. It can take shape as an approach, a process, a practical tool or an application. It is based on horizontal and collaborative working practices that consider a diverse range of views and the context in which the innovation is taking place.

UN-Habitat has a long history of innovation. To consolidate on its work, an Innovation Unit was created as part of the 2019-2020 restructuring to strengthen innovative thinking, practice and solutions both within the organization and externally for the benefit of our partners and the beneficiaries we serve. The Innovation Unit promotes an innovation culture for improved sustainable urbanization outcomes, acts as an enabler and broker for new ideas and partnerships for inclusive and at scale impacts, develops knowledge and tools to strengthen innovation, and promotes innovation in project and programme design and implementation by providing advice on tools, methodologies, technologies and partnerships.

The challenge

Many cities around the world, both in developed and developing contexts, continue to face key challenges related to housing, livelihood generation, climate vulnerabilities, basic service provision and the delivery of essential community infrastructure.

Harnessing and accelerating the opportunities that knowledge, science and technology and human capital provide across all dimensions of the urban sphere is now more important than ever. Both SDG 11 and the New Urban Agenda cannot be achieved without deep, transformative societal commitments and resources necessary to deliver Agenda 2030.

Innovation does not happen by magic. Rather, it requires leadership to develop a culture of open mindedness and creativity, as well as inclusive partnerships and resources to translate ideas into action. All stakeholders need to be encouraged to think and engage with innovative ideas to achieve sustainable urbanization. This is especially the case as new challenges, like the COVID-19 pandemic, impact cities and people around the world. Innovation will lie at the heart of many solutions to achieve sustainable and safe urban environments. UN-Habitat intends to continue playing a key role in developing the dynamic partnerships and solutions required to make this happen.

Innovation Impact Stories Competition Guide

UN-Habitat’s guide for the Innovation Impact Stories Competition is designed to outline the competition process and highlight innovative approaches and activities that contribute to efficiencies, inclusiveness and the maximization of impacts in different urban contexts. The goal of the innovation story competition is to identify examples of innovative, impactful and scalable approaches and solutions while fostering a culture of innovation and inspiring new innovative ideas and interventions. The guide provides step by step guidance to design and execute innovation impact stories. It also includes guidance to decide on objectives, thematic areas and other design parameters as well as templates to capture and assess submissions. The guide also has a section on how to write innovation impact stories outlining what goes to into an innovation impact story, things to remember, and links to additional resources.

News and Stories

News

16 July 2026

Bahrain showcased sustainable urban development and housing innovation at WUF13

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News

17 March 2026

Cities worldwide invited to apply for the fourth cycle of the Shanghai Award

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News

10 March 2026

Urban October Report 2025: responding to crises and advancing people-centred smart cities

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Story

2 June 2022

More than 200 children co-design the Central Park of Madrid Nuevo Norte using digital gaming

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Story

13 April 2022

UN-Habitat and Microsoft work to make datacentre communities more inclusive and sustainable

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Innovation Impact Stories Competition Guide

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UN-Habitat’s guide for Innovation Impact Stories Competition guide is designed to outline the innovation impact stories competition process and highlight innovative approaches and activities that contribute to efficiencies, inclusiveness and the maximization of impacts in different urban contexts. The goal of the innovation story competition will be to identify examples of innovative, impactful and scalable approaches and solutions while fostering a culture of innovation and inspiring new innovative ideas and interventions.

The guide provides step by step guidance to design and execute innovation impact stories competition and includes guidance to decide on objectives, thematic areas and other design parameters as well as templates to capture and assess submissions. It also has a section on how to write innovation impact stories outlining what goes to into an innovation impact story, things to remember, and links to additional resources.

Download

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Highlighted Publications

Toolkits, Manuals and Guides

Managing smart city governance – A playbook for local and regional governments

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Technical Report

Future Cities and New Economy, Carbon Neutrality Driven by Green Innovations

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Technical Report

Global Review of Smart City Governance Practices

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Technical Report

Human rights in the digital era: Learnings on local governance from pilots in Europe

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Technical Report

AI & Cities: Risks, Applications and Governance

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Brochure

People-Centered Smart Cities

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More publications

Cross-cutting themes

Safety: UN-Habitat’s Safer Cities Programme uses a range of innovative digital technologies to promote safer urban contexts. Often the processes of getting diverse stakeholders together is innovative in and of itself. In addition, more stakeholders, particularly local authorities are using technologies to map safety hot spots.

Resilience: Urban resilience is at the forefront of the UN-Habitat’s work, featuring in the Strategic Plan 2020-2023 as one of the Domains of Change. For example, the CityRAP tool has been adapted and modified to help national and local governments innovate in data-scarce contexts to get first time data on resilience and develop multi-stakeholder action plans.

Donors and partners

UN-Habitat is already working with a diverse range of partners to explore the role and capacity of innovation to sustainable urbanization. We are working with private sector partners such as Microsoft, national innovation development agencies such as Vinnova in Sweden and UN innovation entities such as the UN Innovation Network.

Partners

Partners

Microsoft

United Nations Innovation Network

Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA)

Viable Cities

UN OICT

HafenCity University

Shenzhen Association for International Cultural Exchanges

Our Experts

Melissa Permezel

Unit Coordinator

Innovation Unit

Email

United Nations Offices Nairobi, Kenya

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