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World Cities Day
Urban October 2025

Urban October is an opportunity for everyone to be part of the conversation about the challenges and opportunities created by the fast rate of change in our cities and towns. Each year, it begins with World Habitat Day on the first Monday of October and ends with World Cities Day on the 31st. In 2025, the theme of World Habitat Day (6 October) is "urban crisis response", and the theme of World Cities Day is "people-centred smart cities." Archnet joins this annual effort to promote a more sustainable urban future by highlighting related resources from our collection. These will change as the month goes on, focusing on issues of housing, urbanization, and cities, so check back soon.

Related Archnet Resources
  • Zanzibar Community Based Rehabilitation, Tanzania
    In Zanzibar, poverty, degradation, inequity live side by side with built heritage of great beauty. The community-based rehabilitation programme addresses these realities
  • Lahore Walled City Urban Regeneration Project, Pakistan
    The historic core of the city is filled with historic buildings reflecting the rich cultural heritage of a rapidly growing megacity.
  • Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme: Prestel Heritage Series
    A collection of six volumes on the projects of the Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme in Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, and elsewhere, providing important documentation of the manner in which contemporary urban challenges can be addressed even as heritage is preserved.
  • Shaping Cities. Emerging Models of Planning Practice
    A 2016 study of innovative, hybrid forms that go beyond conventional methods of city planning, integrating practices of other disciplines.
  • Tunis in the Husaynid Period: Urban Design and Planning Principles in Traditional Islamic Cities
    A study of the city under the dynasty that ruled Tunisia from 1705 until independence, from the archive of Besim Hakim.
  • Envisaging the Future of Cities: World Cities Report 2022
    This UN-Habitat report considers trends, challenges and opportunities confronting cities after the COVID-19 pandemic to suggest ways that cities can transition to sustainable urban futures.
  • Enhancing the Quality of Urban Life: Fifteen Winning Projects of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture
    23 films that look at AKAA-recipient projects around the world and how they have contributed to improving the quality of life for city residents.
  • Architecture, monuments and urbanism, Part II: Cities on the overland Silk Roads
    The second of three volumes studying cultural exchanges along the Silk Roads
  • DISEGNARECON. Vol 15, No 28 (2022). Cities and Migration: Visual approaches to the challenges of increasingly diverse cities.
    Essays on cities in Algeria, France, Italy, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey.
  • Cities as Built and Lived Environments: Scholarship from Muslim Contexts, 1875 to 2011
    Abstracts of scholarship from the Muslim world, each translated into Arabic, English and Turkish.
  • Inclusion of Women and Girls and Ensuring Their Rights: A Toolkit for Arab Cities
    This toolkit considers strategies to remedy the historical and structural exclusion of women from decision-making and development planning in cities.
  • Toolkit for urban inclusion in Arab cities.
    A 2020 investigation of cities promoting inclusion through public participation, access to information, sport, and citizenship and human rights education.
  • City Records
    A collection of various Archnet records for historic Islamic cities.
  • City Planning (Makiya Archive)
    City planning projects from the archive of Iraqi architect Mohamed Makiya
  • Peggy Crawford: Photographs of Yemen
    Includes photos of the centuries-old, mud brick, multistory buildings that prompted Freya Stark to declare Shibam the "Manhattan of the Desert."
  • Écochard: Urban Planning in Morocco
    Urban planning projects of the French modernist architect Michel Écochard.
  • Isfahan Urban History Project
    The archive of a 1970s project that sought to understand the structure and fabric of medieval Isfahan prior to large scale changes instituted under Shah Abbas of the Safavid Dynasty at the end of the 16th century.
  • International Journal of Architectural Research (IJAR), 2007-2018
    Scholarly exchange about the built environment across cultures, disciplines, languages, and nationalities. It highlights often-overlooked scholarship and aims to bridge international knowledge gaps.

World Cities Day
Urban October 2025

Urban October is an opportunity for everyone to be part of the conversation about the challenges and opportunities created by the fast rate of change in our cities and towns. Each year, it begins with World Habitat Day on the first Monday of October and ends with World Cities Day on the 31st. In 2025, the theme of World Habitat Day (6 October) is "urban crisis response", and the theme of World Cities Day is "people-centred smart cities." Archnet joins this annual effort to promote a more sustainable urban future by highlighting related resources from our collection. These will change as the month goes on, focusing on issues of housing, urbanization, and cities, so check back soon.

Related Archnet Resources
  • Zanzibar Community Based Rehabilitation, Tanzania
    In Zanzibar, poverty, degradation, inequity live side by side with built heritage of great beauty. The community-based rehabilitation programme addresses these realities
  • Lahore Walled City Urban Regeneration Project, Pakistan
    The historic core of the city is filled with historic buildings reflecting the rich cultural heritage of a rapidly growing megacity.
  • Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme: Prestel Heritage Series
    A collection of six volumes on the projects of the Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme in Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, and elsewhere, providing important documentation of the manner in which contemporary urban challenges can be addressed even as heritage is preserved.
  • Shaping Cities. Emerging Models of Planning Practice
    A 2016 study of innovative, hybrid forms that go beyond conventional methods of city planning, integrating practices of other disciplines.
  • Tunis in the Husaynid Period: Urban Design and Planning Principles in Traditional Islamic Cities
    A study of the city under the dynasty that ruled Tunisia from 1705 until independence, from the archive of Besim Hakim.
  • Envisaging the Future of Cities: World Cities Report 2022
    This UN-Habitat report considers trends, challenges and opportunities confronting cities after the COVID-19 pandemic to suggest ways that cities can transition to sustainable urban futures.
  • Enhancing the Quality of Urban Life: Fifteen Winning Projects of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture
    23 films that look at AKAA-recipient projects around the world and how they have contributed to improving the quality of life for city residents.
  • Architecture, monuments and urbanism, Part II: Cities on the overland Silk Roads
    The second of three volumes studying cultural exchanges along the Silk Roads
  • DISEGNARECON. Vol 15, No 28 (2022). Cities and Migration: Visual approaches to the challenges of increasingly diverse cities.
    Essays on cities in Algeria, France, Italy, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey.
  • Cities as Built and Lived Environments: Scholarship from Muslim Contexts, 1875 to 2011
    Abstracts of scholarship from the Muslim world, each translated into Arabic, English and Turkish.
  • Inclusion of Women and Girls and Ensuring Their Rights: A Toolkit for Arab Cities
    This toolkit considers strategies to remedy the historical and structural exclusion of women from decision-making and development planning in cities.
  • Toolkit for urban inclusion in Arab cities.
    A 2020 investigation of cities promoting inclusion through public participation, access to information, sport, and citizenship and human rights education.
  • City Records
    A collection of various Archnet records for historic Islamic cities.
  • City Planning (Makiya Archive)
    City planning projects from the archive of Iraqi architect Mohamed Makiya
  • Peggy Crawford: Photographs of Yemen
    Includes photos of the centuries-old, mud brick, multistory buildings that prompted Freya Stark to declare Shibam the "Manhattan of the Desert."
  • Écochard: Urban Planning in Morocco
    Urban planning projects of the French modernist architect Michel Écochard.
  • Isfahan Urban History Project
    The archive of a 1970s project that sought to understand the structure and fabric of medieval Isfahan prior to large scale changes instituted under Shah Abbas of the Safavid Dynasty at the end of the 16th century.
  • International Journal of Architectural Research (IJAR), 2007-2018
    Scholarly exchange about the built environment across cultures, disciplines, languages, and nationalities. It highlights often-overlooked scholarship and aims to bridge international knowledge gaps.