Italian entrepreneur: Around 3 billion people to need adequate housing by 2030

Around three billion people worldwide will need access to adequate, affordable and climate-resilient housing by 2030, Antonio Campagnoli, President of the Italian International Real Estate Federation, has stated.

Speaking via video conference at the Business Assembly held within the framework of the World Urban Forum (WUF13) in Baku, Campagnoli said the responsibility is not only to build more housing, but to ensure it is adequate, affordable, resilient to climate change, well located, connected to services and capable of supporting real communities, Caliber.Az reports. 

“We must do this at a scale the world has never seen before. By 2030, nearly three billion people will need access to adequate housing. This should concern us all: governments, institutions, communities and, of course, the private sector,” he noted.

Campagnoli stressed that housing should be understood as a system rather than a single act of construction or a simple issue of supply and demand, but as a chain of interconnected conditions — land, planning, permitting, infrastructure, financing, operation and long-term habitability.

According to him, if even one link in this chain is weak, the entire system becomes inefficient.

“Too often we ask ourselves why housing is not being delivered at scale, yet the answer often lies long before construction even begins. It lies in unprepared land, in permitting systems that are too slow and unpredictable, in planning mechanisms that are not aligned with infrastructure, in regulatory models that unintentionally increase costs and cause delays without improving outcomes, and in market conditions where even capable private players cannot move forward because an enabling environment simply does not exist,” he added.

Campagnoli argued that if real progress is to be achieved, housing must no longer be treated as a secondary market issue, but as essential social and economic infrastructure.

“This means treating housing with the same seriousness, the same strategic coordination and the same political discipline that we apply to transport, energy and water systems,” he explained.

In this context, Campagnoli particularly emphasised the role of the private sector, describing it as a key stakeholder in the agenda, including large developers, SMEs, corporations, start-ups, manufacturers, service providers, financial institutions and, in many markets, informal builders and incremental builders.

“The question is not whether the public sector should act — it must. And it is not whether the private sector should contribute — it already does. The question is whether they can work together in a way that is structured, accountable and proportionate to the realities we face. […] under the right conditions, the private sector can do more, and that with the right partnership, public goals and market potential can reinforce each other. And that through courage, coordination and long-term thinking, housing can once again become not a privilege for the few, but a foundation of dignity, stability and opportunity for all,” Campagnoli said.

By Bakhtiyar Abbasov