WUF13: UN-Habitat urges water-centred approach in urban planning

A senior UN-Habitat official has called for water to be treated as a core pillar of modern urban planning, warning that many cities in Latin America remain poorly designed to manage water systems and related risks.

Rayne Ferretti, head of UN-Habitat’s Brazil office, said at an event during the World Urban Forum 13 that urban development strategies must increasingly adopt “water-centric” models, Caliber.Az reports via local media.

She said many cities, particularly in Brazil and wider Latin America, were historically not planned with adequate consideration of water systems, transport infrastructure or population distribution.

“We can no longer plan — in fact, we never really knew how to plan — but especially in Brazil and Latin America, most of our cities are not planned in terms of water, roads or people,” Ferretti said.

Ferretti added that water-related disasters account for a significant share of fatalities from natural hazards in Brazil, underscoring the urgency of integrating hydrological factors into urban design.

“Planning without taking water resources into account is a mistake,” she said, noting that urban development has often sought to conceal or enclose waterways, including river systems running beneath built-up areas.