Architecture and urban planning face increasingly complex challenges. Rapid urbanization, housing unaffordability, social inequalities, environmental pressures, climate change and the decline of public space require decisions that go beyond individual preferences or isolated design approaches. They call for knowledge capable of understanding how urban environments affect people’s lives and of identifying which interventions can contribute to more inclusive, sustainable and liveable cities.
The Habitat III Global Report: The Fundamentals of Urbanization provides an important empirical basis for addressing these challenges. Drawing on extensive quantitative and qualitative research, including data from the UN-Habitat Global Urban Observatory and a global sample of cities, the report shows that urban planning and design have been declining in many parts of the world. Cities are increasingly expanding towards peripheral areas, residential densities are declining and public spaces are diminishing. These processes are associated with weak planning systems, inappropriate regulations and insufficient implementation and enforcement.
These findings highlight a fundamental challenge for architecture and urbanism: decisions about the built environment have consequences that extend far beyond the individual building. The design of streets, blocks, housing, public spaces and urban densities influences accessibility, mobility, social interaction, affordability and the distribution of resources. For this reason, professional practice needs to be connected to reliable evidence about what works, for whom, and under which conditions.
Evidence-based architecture and urban planning therefore means integrating scientific knowledge, systematic data and evaluation into design and planning processes. It also requires regularly revising policies and regulations as new evidence emerges and urban conditions change. The report emphasizes that accurate data are essential for identifying appropriate forms of urbanization and for connecting evidence with policy responses.
The challenge is not to replace architectural creativity or professional expertise with data, but to strengthen them through knowledge. Evidence can help architects, planners and policymakers anticipate consequences, evaluate alternatives and design environments that respond to real social needs. In this sense, the future of architecture and urbanism depends not only on designing cities, but on learning systematically from them.
Serra Húnter Fellow of Sociology at Universitat Rovira i Virgili.
Former DAAD-Gastprofessorin at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg