Euronews: Azerbaijan pursuing own active urbanization policy

Euronews has prepared a story on the third National Urban Forum in Azerbaijan, Report informs.

Azerbaijan's third National Urban Forum brought global experts together to promote sustainable, climate-resilient cities, in the lead-up to the World Urban Forum 2026.

Azerbaijan's National Urban Forum in Khankendi gathered more than 400 participants from 64 countries to explore how cities can become more sustainable, resilient and inclusive.

"We started and continue our cooperation with international partners, especially planning agencies, and that helps us to follow global trends, global standards, and also it helps because each international company working in Azerbaijan always cooperates with at least one, in most cases with a few Azerbaijani architects, so national professional capacity is growing," Euronews quotes Anar Guliyev, chairman of the State Committee for Urban Development and Architecture.

As urban areas around the world face growing climate challenges and public health concerns, this forum has served as a crucial platform to explore how innovation and cooperation can help us build cities that are more resilient, more livable and more equitable for all, according to the story.

"And when it comes to education, we wanted children to have the best circumstances they could have to have a good education," said SA Partners founding partner Dunja Kovari-Binggeli.

Azerbaijan is actively aligning its urbanization policy with international standards, and large-scale restoration and construction efforts are underway in the Karabakh and East Zangazur economic regions, former conflict areas applying smart city and smart village concepts.

"The UN and Azerbaijan are working closely in a highly collaborative and co-creative way. Together they are committed to making this event more impactful, more effective, and truly different," reads the story.

"These whole urbanization patterns that we observed in the past, they are just not sustainable in the future," Anacláudia Rossbach, the executive director of UN-Habitat, told Euronews. "We have to look at how cities are growing, we have to plan and design smart strategies such as densification."

Euronews: Azerbaijan pursuing own active urbanization policy