World Cities Day 2025: Focusing on the Theme "People-Centred Smart Cities" and Its Global Significance

World Cities Day 2025: "People-Centred Smart Cities"

World Cities Day, observed annually on October 31st, represents a significant United Nations initiative dedicated to raising global awareness about the opportunities and challenges presented by rapid urbanization. This international observance, which first took place in 2014, emerges from the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 68/239 adopted in December 2013, establishing a platform to promote the international community's interest in global urbanization and advance cooperation among countries in meeting the challenges and opportunities presented by urban development . The day strategically brings the month-long "Urban October" to a close—a period initiated by UN-Habitat that begins with World Habitat Day and focuses global attention on urban challenges and sustainable development solutions . This observance aligns directly with Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11), which formulates the ambitious target to "make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable" by 2030, underlying the relevance of urban development in the broader global sustainability agenda .

The establishment of World Cities Day reflects a growing recognition of urbanization as one of the most transformative trends of the 21st century. According to United Nations data, more than half of the world's population currently resides in urban areas, with projections indicating this figure will rise to nearly 70% by 2050 . This urban growth is particularly concentrated in Asia and Africa, with countries like China, India, and Nigeria experiencing rapid urbanization rates . This demographic shift presents both remarkable opportunities and substantial challenges—cities generate more than 80% of global GDP and serve as hubs of innovation, culture, and social development, yet they also account for approximately 70% of global carbon emissions and face increasing issues with inequality, housing shortages, and infrastructure strain . World Cities Day was conceived precisely to address these dual aspects of urbanization, serving as a platform to share successful approaches, foster international cooperation, and advance strategies for sustainable urban development that delivers benefits for all residents, not just privileged segments of society.

The historical evolution of World Cities Day reflects an increasingly nuanced understanding of urban sustainability. In its early years, the observance focused broadly on raising awareness about urbanization trends and promoting basic international cooperation. However, as the urban sustainability discourse has matured, the day has embraced more specific and technologically-responsive themes that address emerging urban challenges. The 2016 Habitat III Conference in Quito marked a significant milestone in this evolution, producing the New Urban Agenda which established a new global framework for sustainable urban development for the next two decades . This agenda, seen as an extension of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, emphasizes a holistic approach to urban planning that balances social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability. Against this backdrop, World Cities Day has evolved into a crucial mechanism for monitoring progress, sharing innovations, and renewing commitment to the implementation of both the New Urban Agenda and SDG 11, with each annual theme addressing specific aspects of the urban sustainability challenge .

Thematic Focus for 2025: "People-Centred Smart Cities"

The theme selected for World Cities Day 2025, "People-Centred Smart Cities," represents a significant evolution in the conceptualization of smart urban development. This theme moves beyond technological determinism—the notion that technology alone can solve complex urban challenges—and instead positions digital innovation as a tool to serve human needs, enhance quality of life, and promote broader urban sustainability goals. According to UN-Habitat, this approach focuses on how data-driven decision making, technology, and artificial intelligence can be harnessed to improve urban life and assist cities in recovering from current shocks and crises . The fundamental aim is to ensure that smart city initiatives prioritize human needs, inclusivity, and accessibility rather than pursuing technological advancement for its own sake. This represents a paradigm shift from technology-centered urban development toward human-centered approaches that consider the social, economic, and environmental implications of digital transformation in cities.

At its core, the people-centred smart city concept recognizes that the transformative power of digital technologies is reshaping urban life globally, offering profound opportunities to enhance how cities and human settlements are designed, planned, managed, and governed . In an era marked by both urban and digital transitions, municipalities worldwide are increasingly adopting digital technology solutions and data analytics to deliver better services for residents and address critical urban challenges . However, the people-centred approach emphasizes that these technological applications must be guided by principles of equity, participation, and accessibility to ensure that digitalization benefits all residents rather than creating new forms of exclusion or exacerbating existing inequalities. As expressed by Dr. Mark Charlton of De Montfort University, which serves as the UN Academic Impact Hub for SDG 11, this approach means "build[ing] cities with people, not just for them," recognizing residents as co-designers of their urban futures and valuing lived experience as much as technical expertise in urban planning processes .

The 2025 theme specifically aims to advance three key objectives in the global urban discourse. First, it seeks to promote the conceptual framework of people-centred smart cities and demonstrate the critical importance of prioritizing human needs, inclusivity, and accessibility in smart city initiatives . Second, the observance will provide an international platform for municipalities to exchange best practices, experiences, and strategies in implementing people-centred smart city approaches, particularly in addressing pressing urban challenges such as the global housing crisis . Third, by increasing global awareness about the role of technology and innovation in advancing improved access to adequate housing and achieving broader urban development goals, World Cities Day 2025 aims to foster and encourage international cooperation and collaboration among all societal sectors on people-centred smart cities. These objectives reflect a growing recognition that technological solutions must be embedded within broader social, governance, and economic frameworks to deliver meaningful urban transformations.

The conceptual foundation of people-centred smart cities encompasses several key principles that distinguish it from conventional smart city approaches. These include participatory governance that engages citizens in decision-making processes about technological implementations; digital inclusion that ensures all residents have access to digital infrastructure, skills, and services; ethical technology that prioritizes privacy, transparency, and accountability in data collection and use; appropriate innovation that matches technological solutions to local contexts and needs rather than applying one-size-fits-all approaches; and socio-technical integration that recognizes technology as one element within complex urban systems rather than a standalone solution . These principles respond to criticisms of earlier smart city models that sometimes prioritized corporate interests over citizen needs or implemented technologies without adequate consideration of their social implications, potentially leading to what UN-Habitat has identified as risks of "green gentrification" that can displace vulnerable communities in the name of sustainability .

Global Observance and Host City

The global observance of World Cities Day 2025 will be hosted by Bogotá, Colombia, representing a significant recognition of the city's innovative approaches to urban challenges and its strategic position within Latin America's urban landscape . The selection of Bogotá as host city acknowledges both the particular urbanization challenges facing the Global South and the innovative solutions emerging from these contexts. As a rapidly developing city in a region experiencing significant urban growth, Bogotá provides a relevant setting for discussions about people-centred smart cities that balance technological innovation with social inclusion. The global observance event will bring together mayors, urban planners, technologists, community representatives, and other stakeholders from around the world to share experiences, showcase innovations, and strengthen collective commitment to people-centred smart urban development .

This international gathering in Bogotá will feature high-level sessions, technical workshops, innovation showcases, and multistakeholder dialogues focused on the people-centred smart cities theme. These events are designed to facilitate knowledge exchange, foster international cooperation, and generate concrete outcomes that advance the implementation of people-centred smart city approaches globally . The official events will likely include presentations of successful case studies, demonstrations of appropriate technologies, discussions of policy frameworks, and examinations of governance models that effectively balance technological innovation with social inclusion. A key expected outcome is the strengthening of networks and partnerships among cities facing similar challenges, enabling continued collaboration and mutual learning beyond the observance itself .

The hosting of the global observance in Bogotá also highlights the growing importance of city-to-city learning and decentralized cooperation in addressing urban challenges. As emphasized in UN-Habitat's World Cities Report, cities should be encouraged to innovate and experiment, and also to learn from one another in order to hasten the transition toward sustainable urban development, for instance through "twin town" initiatives or city networks . This represents a shift from competitive city governance approaches toward what the report describes as a "well-grounded cities" approach that serves the interests of all citizens. The Bogotá observance will physically manifest this principle, creating space for direct exchange among urban practitioners and community representatives from diverse contexts.

Beyond the official events in Bogotá, World Cities Day 2025 will be commemorated through thousands of local events, activities, and initiatives in cities worldwide . These decentralized observances enable broader participation and allow communities to interpret and apply the people-centred smart cities theme according to their specific local contexts and priorities. UN-Habitat actively encourages this distributed engagement through its Urban October platform, which provides resources, toolkits, and event registration facilities to support local organizers in planning their World Cities Day activities . This combination of a centralized global observance with distributed local commemorations creates a multifaceted international conversation about the future of urban development, connecting global frameworks with local implementations.

World Cities Day within the Urban October Framework

World Cities Day occupies a strategically significant position within the broader Urban October initiative, serving as the culminating event of a month-long focus on urban issues and sustainable development. Urban October was launched by UN-Habitat in 2014 to emphasize the world's urban challenges and engage the international community in advancing the New Urban Agenda . This extended observance period begins with World Habitat Day on the first Monday of October and continues throughout the month with various urban-focused events, discussions, and initiatives leading up to World Cities Day on October 31st. This sequential arrangement creates an accumulating momentum that builds public awareness, political commitment, and professional engagement with urban sustainability issues over the course of the month, with World Cities Day providing a culminating synthesis and call to action.

The placement of World Cities Day at the conclusion of Urban October creates a strategic opportunity to integrate and amplify the month's key discussions and translate them into concrete commitments and frameworks for action. Throughout Urban October, various events explore different dimensions of the urban sustainability challenge, with World Cities Day serving to consolidate these insights within a focused thematic framework—in 2025, the people-centred smart cities concept . This structural positioning enables the day to build upon the awareness and momentum generated throughout the month while bringing specific attention to the selected theme's particular implications for urban development policy and practice. The sequential relationship between World Habitat Day and World Cities Day also mirrors the conceptual relationship between the broader habitat challenges addressed by the former and the specifically urban dimensions focused on by the latter.

The Urban October framework provides an organizational infrastructure that supports coordinated multi-stakeholder engagement with World Cities Day. UN-Habitat's Urban October platform includes event registration facilities, resource libraries, communication toolkits, and promotional materials that help local organizers plan and implement their World Cities Day activities . This infrastructure significantly expands the reach and impact of World Cities Day beyond the primary global observance in Bogotá, enabling communities worldwide to participate in the international conversation according to their local capacities and priorities. The platform also facilitates connection and mutual awareness among the diverse organizations and communities engaging with Urban October, creating a sense of shared participation in a global movement for sustainable urban development.

The thematic progression within Urban October typically moves from broader habitat considerations toward increasingly specific urban focuses, with World Cities Day addressing the most precisely defined aspect of the urban sustainability challenge. In 2025, this progression will guide participants from general considerations of human settlements through various urban dimensions before arriving at the specific exploration of people-centred smart cities. This structured approach enables deeper engagement with complex topics than would be possible within a single observance, building conceptual understanding progressively throughout the month. The placement of World Cities Day at the month's end positions it as the most specific and actionable component of Urban October, where the accumulated discussions and awareness are channeled toward particular implementations and commitments related to the year's theme.

Key Publications and Resources for World Cities Day 2025

World Cities Day 2025 will feature the release of several significant publications and resources designed to advance understanding and implementation of people-centred smart city approaches. The most prominent among these is the World Cities Report 2024, launched earlier at the World Urban Forum (WUF12), which focuses on the urgent intersection of climate action and rapid urbanization . This biennial publication serves as a global reference on sustainable urban knowledge, revealing critical findings about urban sustainability challenges. Particularly relevant to the 2025 theme, the report highlights the risks of "green gentrification" that can displace vulnerable communities in the name of sustainability, emphasizing the importance of community-led strategies to guide cities toward sustainable futures . The report also identifies a vast funding gap of $4.5-5.4 trillion needed annually for resilient urban infrastructure, underscoring the resource challenges facing cities attempting to implement people-centred smart approaches.

The World Health Organization is marking World Cities Day 2025 with the launch of a set of new resources that provide strategic frameworks, practical guidance, and capacity-building opportunities to help integrate health considerations across urban policy domains . The centerpiece of WHO's contribution is a comprehensive guide titled "Taking a strategic approach to urban health: A guide for decision makers," which offers governments and partners a roadmap for acting strategically to link health with major policy priorities such as climate change, health emergencies, digital transformation, and migration . This guide, which will be officially launched at a hybrid event on World Cities Day itself, highlights the shared responsibility across sectors and levels of government to create coherent urban health strategies that make cities and communities more equitable, sustainable, and resilient . By addressing the health dimensions of urban environments, this resource directly supports the people-centred smart cities theme by emphasizing that technological innovations must ultimately serve human wellbeing, including health outcomes.

Complementing these publications, the WHO Academy is launching the first two modules of a nine-part Urban Health Training Course on World Cities Day 2025 . These educational resources are designed to equip practitioners and policymakers with the knowledge, skills, and networks to improve urban health and well-being through a holistic, integrated approach. The initial modules released for World Cities Day include "Introduction to urban health," which introduces key concepts defining the urban environment and how they shape health, and "Conceptual models and frameworks for urban health and equity," which explains how conceptual frameworks can help make sense of the complex links between urban environments and health . These capacity-building resources respond to the recognized need for enhanced professional capabilities to implement people-centred approaches in urban management and planning, particularly at the intersection of technological innovation and social inclusion.

Additional resources supporting World Cities Day 2025 include practical toolkits and activity guides designed to help local organizers plan and implement commemorative events and initiatives . These include the Urban October Toolkit provided by UN-Habitat, which contains planning checklists, communication templates, and activity suggestions that can be adapted for various local contexts . These practical resources lower barriers to participation by providing ready-to-use materials that help communities engage meaningfully with the people-centred smart cities theme regardless of their prior experience or technical capacity. The availability of these diverse resources—from high-level research reports to practical implementation toolkits—creates a comprehensive knowledge ecosystem supporting World Cities Day 2025, addressing different audience needs and applications while maintaining consistent focus on the core theme.

Implementation and Practical Activities for World Cities Day 2025

The implementation of people-centred smart city principles requires translation from conceptual frameworks into practical applications and civic engagements. World Cities Day 2025 provides numerous avenues for such translation through suggested activities that communities, schools, NGOs, local governments, and other stakeholders can undertake to engage meaningfully with the theme. These activities are designed to be accessible to organizations with varying resources and technical capacities while creating tangible opportunities for learning, participation, and impact related to people-centred smart cities. The activities generally emphasize hands-on engagement, community participation, and practical problem-solving rather than passive observation or theoretical discussion, reflecting the core principle that people-centred smart cities must be co-created with residents rather than delivered to them .

One category of suggested activities focuses on community assessment and auditing to document existing urban conditions and identify improvement opportunities from a resident perspective. These include walkability audits that map broken pavements, crossing difficulties, and missing curb ramps around neighborhoods ; accessibility checks that evaluate public spaces and digital services for their inclusivity for people with disabilities ; and environmental monitoring exercises that use simple tools to map noise pollution, air quality, or shade distribution across urban areas . These activities serve dual purposes of generating useful data for urban management while simultaneously building community awareness about urban design issues and empowering residents to contribute directly to understanding and improving their local environments. The specific focus on accessibility and inclusivity in many of these assessments directly supports the people-centred dimension of the 2025 theme by prioritizing the experiences of often marginalized community members.

A second category of activities emphasizes digital inclusion and literacy, addressing the prerequisite conditions for meaningful participation in smart city initiatives. These include digital inclusion drives that collect and refurbish used digital devices for distribution to low-income households ; data literacy sessions that teach community members to interpret urban data portals and visualization tools ; and civic technology demonstrations that showcase existing digital services while gathering feedback for their improvement . These activities respond to the recognized risk that smart city initiatives can exacerbate existing inequalities if segments of the population lack access to necessary technologies or the skills to use them effectively. By building digital capacity across diverse community segments, these activities help create the conditions for more genuinely inclusive smart city development.

A third activity category focuses on tactical urbanism and prototyping—small-scale, low-cost interventions that demonstrate possibilities for urban improvement and generate evidence for more substantial investments. Examples include public space pop-ups that temporarily reclaim parking spaces for community use ; transit etiquette campaigns that improve the experience of public transportation through better communication and shared norms ; and micro-hackathons that bring together diverse stakeholders to develop simple digital tools addressing specific local challenges . These approaches align with the people-centred smart city concept by emphasizing rapid experimentation, iterative improvement based on user feedback, and solutions tailored to local contexts rather than standardized technological implementations. The low barrier to entry for these activities enables participation from organizations and communities with limited resources while still generating meaningful insights and impacts.

Beyond these specific activity categories, World Cities Day 2025 also provides opportunities for knowledge sharing and networking through events like civic-tech lightning talks, neighborhood service fairs, and city-to-city learning exchanges . These events create channels for distributing innovations, building professional networks, and strengthening the global community of practice around people-centred smart cities. Importantly, UN-Habitat provides mechanisms for local organizers to register their World Cities Day events on the official Urban October platform, increasing their visibility and enabling connection with other activities worldwide . This combination of specific activity guides with supporting infrastructure for connection and visibility creates a comprehensive framework for distributed but coordinated engagement with World Cities Day 2025 across diverse global contexts.

Global Significance and Future Implications

World Cities Day 2025 arrives at a critical juncture in global urbanization trends, with cities facing intersecting challenges related to public health, climate change, housing affordability, economic inequality, and now digital transformation. The specific focus on people-centred smart cities represents a significant evolution in global urban discourse, acknowledging both the transformative potential of digital technologies and the substantial risks of technological solutionism that fails to address underlying social, economic, and environmental challenges. By positioning human needs, inclusivity, and accessibility at the center of smart city development, the 2025 theme responds to growing concerns about technological determinism in urban planning and the tendency for smart city initiatives to prioritize corporate interests over community wellbeing . This reframing has profound implications for how cities approach technological innovation, emphasizing governance models that engage citizens as co-creators rather than merely consumers of smart city applications.

The emphasis on people-centred approaches also represents a strategic response to the funding challenges facing sustainable urban development. As identified in UN-Habitat's World Cities Report, cities face a massive funding gap of $4.5-5.4 trillion annually for resilient infrastructure . In this context, people-centred smart city approaches offer the potential not only to use technology more effectively but also to allocate scarce resources more efficiently through better data-driven decision-making and more targeted interventions. The integration of digital tools with community knowledge can help identify priority investments that deliver the greatest social, economic, and environmental returns, potentially stretching available resources further while ensuring they address the most pressing community needs. This efficiency dimension complements the equity focus of people-centred approaches, recognizing that financial constraints represent real barriers to sustainable urban development that must be addressed through both increased investment and improved resource allocation.

Looking beyond 2025, the people-centred smart city concept advanced through World Cities Day has significant implications for the long-term trajectory of urban development, particularly in rapidly urbanizing regions of Africa and Asia where much future urban growth will occur . By establishing people-centred principles at this relatively early stage of digital transformation in many cities, World Cities Day 2025 aims to influence the development path before technological systems become entrenched and difficult to modify. This proactive approach recognizes that urban digital infrastructures often develop path dependencies that lock in certain models of service delivery, governance, and citizen engagement for decades. By promoting people-centred values at this formative stage, World Cities Day 2025 seeks to steer these developments toward more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable outcomes rather than allowing technological considerations alone to dictate the future of cities.

The international cooperation dimension of World Cities Day 2025 also has important implications for addressing transboundary urban challenges that individual cities cannot solve alone. These include climate change, public health emergencies, economic volatility, and forced migration—all challenges that require coordinated action across multiple cities and governance levels . By strengthening networks of cooperation and knowledge exchange among cities, World Cities Day helps build the collective capacity needed to address these shared challenges. The specific focus on people-centred smart cities within this cooperative framework encourages cities to collaborate not only on technological standards and infrastructure but also on governance innovations, ethical frameworks, and inclusive processes that ensure smart city developments serve broad public interests rather than narrow commercial or technical objectives. This emphasis on shared learning about the governance of smart cities represents a significant contribution to the global urban sustainability agenda.

Conclusion

World Cities Day 2025, with its focus on "People-Centred Smart Cities," represents a critical evolution in the global approach to urban development at a time when cities face unprecedented challenges and opportunities. By positioning human needs, inclusivity, and accessibility at the center of smart city discourse, this observance challenges technological determinism and emphasizes that digital innovation must serve broader social, economic, and environmental objectives. The hosting of the global observance in Bogotá, Colombia highlights the global distribution of urban innovation and the particular relevance of people-centred approaches in rapidly developing contexts where much future urban growth will occur. Through its various components—the high-level international observance, diverse local activities, significant publications, and educational resources—World Cities Day 2025 creates multiple entry points for engagement by professionals, communities, and policymakers at all levels.

The ultimate significance of World Cities Day 2025 may lie in its potential to influence the long-term trajectory of urban development by establishing people-centred principles during a formative period of digital transition in cities worldwide. By promoting governance models that engage citizens as co-creators, emphasizing digital inclusion alongside technological innovation, and maintaining focus on equitable outcomes rather than technical outputs, the 2025 observance contributes to a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive urban future. As expressed by Dr. Mark Charlton in his World Cities Day message, cities thrive when citizens are partners in shaping the places they call home, with urban planning recognizing residents as co-designers of their futures and valuing lived experience as much as technical expertise . This people-centred vision, advanced through the various activities and resources of World Cities Day 2025, offers a compelling framework for addressing the complex urban challenges of the 21st century while realizing the transformative potential of both urbanization and technological innovation.

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