Habitat 1 Conference

Habitat I

Habitat: the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements – commonly known as Habitat I – took place from May 31 to June 11 1976, in Vancouver, Canada and was the first international conference to fully recognize the growing impact of urbanization and the need to secure political commitment for sustainable urban development. The Conference led to the creation in December 1977 of the precursor of today’s UN-Habitat, the UN agency charged with dealing with human settlements issues. Subsequent Habitat conferences took place every 20 years, with the second conference in Istanbul in 1991 (Habitat II) and the third conference in Quito in 2016 (Habitat III).

Process

A detailed look at Habitat I including the Conference’s origins and extensive three-year preparatory process plus what happened in Vancouver and the Conference’s major outcomes.

Audiovisual Archive

The extensive Habitat I Audiovisual Archive is comprised of recordings of the Habitat I Conference plenary sessions, press conferences, as well as 182 films submitted to the Conference by participating countries about their local human settlements issues and interventions.

Document Archive

The Document Archive of the Habitat I Conference contains primary reports, speeches scripts, press releases, newsletters, newspaper articles, books and promotional materials that were made publicly available during the time of the Conference.