The Atlas of Urban Expansion-the 2016 Edition

The Atlas of Urban Expansion—the 2016 Edition, is an open source of information on urbanization trends and developments in the UN Sample of Cities. The 200-city sample was created, tested, and applied in a series of studies undertaken by a tripartite collaboration between New York University, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and UN-Habitat. The maps, data, and analysis contained in the Atlas have multiple intended audiences: local and national governments, policy makers, the academic community, and interested individuals. This launch event will provide an overview and discussion of the Atlas’s key empirical findings along three thematic areas: (1) change in urban population and physical expansion, (2) the quality of urban layouts in recent expansion areas, and (3) land and housing regulations and housing affordability. The Atlas’s findings have already been used to estimate both the worldwide expansion of urban areas between 1990 and 2015 and the share of expansion areas that are laid out before occupation, and also to compare housing affordability against local regulations.  This analysis of the UN Sample of Cities provides researchers the world over with a generic platform for studying cities and for drawing scientifically valid inferences from these studies to the state of world's cities. It also offers a framework for global and regional monitoring of progress of both the New Urban Agenda to be adopted at Habitat III and the city-related Sustainable Development Goals.